The late Clarence "Dud" Faulk (foreground) and Clarence "Patin" Faulk calling from their blind near Lake Charles, Louisiana in about 1960.

Dud Faulk made--his granddaughter now carries on the family business--several cane calls, but the select ones were his Black Label cane calls whose labels proclaim, "Made especially for guides and hunters of Southwest Louisiana." "Dat call give you Hell boy," Faulk said when I asked to buy one. Made of native cane--"I grow cane all around Lake Charles," Faulk said--they blow very lightly, not much is air needed, and the notes easily end in the squeal of "Dat ol' hen mallard."

In an effort to better understand the style of calling the old Cajun guides used, I spent some time with Terry Saughnessy, the founder of the Hackberry Rod & Gun Club, and my old friend Eli Haydel.

Saughnessy is a giant of a man who played center for the expansion Miami Dolphins, but then feeling a higher calling, joined the Army as a Special Forces officer. He picks up the story in 1972.

"When I came back from my second tour in Vietnam, I decided to come to southwest Louisiana to just hunt and fish," Saughnessy said. There was a place called Chateau Charles that was run by Rick Murdock; the biggest duck club around Lake Charles. I was soon hired as a guide at $22.50 a day plus a $10 tip," he said. "That worked out to about $900 a month, to hunt ducks!" Saughnessy exclaimed. "Within a week, I was put in charge of 10 hunters that I would take every morning to a place called Boone's corner. It was a store near the marsh that Amos Faulk, part of the Faulk family who made cane calls, hunted.

"One of the guides there was Camille LeJeune," Shaughnessy said. "Camille was a robust man, as wide as he was tall, who caught catfish in the summer and guided duck hunters in the winter. He lived on a houseboat out on the marsh, and put himself through life living off the land," Saughnessy continued. "By the time I met him, Camille had been doing this for 50 years! He only wore overalls, hip boots and a shirt. He had a hunting coat that started off as what we now call sage, but was bleached to tan by the sun. Camille had a big, loud voice and spoke only French until he was about 10 or 12 when he started guiding hunters," Saughnessy said. "At best he spoke heavily accented, fairly broken English.

"They [hunters in southwest Louisiana] have all the calls: They have a pintail whistle, greenwig and bluewing teal calls , a mallard call," said Eli Haydel. Guide Kirk Stansel carries all those calls every day of the Louisiana duck season.

"It's politically incorrect to say now, but every morning when he arrived at Boone's corner at 4 a.m., Camille would buy a half-pint of whiskey, take a slug, and go meet his hunters for the day. When Camille died, I don't remember the year, they buried him in his overalls, hip boots with his duck calls around his neck, one hand on a half-pint of whiskey and the other on his shotgun.

"Camille liked the little cane calls. The first ones he had were homemade, then he started using calls made by Dud and Amos Faulk. He liked the short little cane calls with a squeal in it. As far as calling, Camille said everyone called too much. He'd say, 'Listen out on the marsh, you don't hear ducks making all those long calls, only the little short quack, quack, quack, quack. When the ducks are coming just a little single quack now and then, and when they go by, just that little short [hen] call.'

"We had lots of pintails then," Saughnessy continued, "and Camille and the other guides used a little whistle where you could put your finger in the back and make that little toot, too-toot, that pintails make. For geese, Camille called only by mouth. He had a whistle and two cane calls around his neck, and those cane calls were hard to blow. They were easy to squeal out; you couldn't blow them very hard, and they sounded very soft. Camille LeJune was a classic, you'll never find another like him."

A Lesson From Eli
It was Eli Haydel, one of America's most successful call makers, who makes a Cajun Squeal call, who introduced me to both Dud and Amos Faulk. While I was hunting at the Hackberry Rod & Gun Club in 2004, I dropped in at Haydel's duck camp that is on the opposite side of Lake Calcasieu from Hackberry. I asked him about the legendary squeal-style of calling.

"I believe the best callers I've heard, those who can really work ducks are in this area. They have all the calls: They have a pintail whistle, greenwing and bluewing teal calls, a mallard call, and most important, they make the sounds the ducks make.