Answering the call

Bailey Ortley is one of state's top waterfowl callers

Bailey Ortley leaned into his instrument, closed his eyes and lost himself in the music.

He stood in tall cattails, mud pressed up around his boots, while rain spattered at a nearby lake. His notes descended a staircase of tones, step by step, until the short song fairly ended with a "honk."

There was no applause to follow, just the rampant wildness of his Chesapeake retriever, Buck, which tore through the mud and cattails near McWennegar Slough with abandon.

For Ortley, 16, this performance - designed to coax and entice Canada geese to within gun range - was just a dress rehearsal, but Saturday is the real performance, when the curtain will rise with the sun on the opening day of waterfowl hunting season.

While the general hunting public must wait another week to hunt waterfowl in Montana, youth hunters get a one-week headstart. And that's when Ortley and his father, Flathead County Justice of the Peace David Ortley, will take to the field with two young hunters who have never hunted waterfowl before.

It's a chance for the Ortleys - a family passionate about duck and goose hunting - to instill a bit of that passion into two young men who have not had the chance to witness the sound of duck decoys being splashed into the water before sunrise, or to hear the sound of cupped wings whistling as they descend toward the water.

This weekend will also be a chance for these new hunters to share a blind with Bailey Ortley, one of the best waterfowl callers in Montana.

It was five years ago that Ortley and his brother first put duck calls to their mouths.

"We didn't even know how to blow them," Bailey Ortley said.

But after winning top places in duck and goose calling at a Spokane competition last year, he came to recognize what was to be his true "calling."

His music has a two-fold purpose: to win waterfowl calling competitions, and moreover, to lure waterfowl within gun range over his decoys. Both pursuits - competition calling and hunting - share equal passion for this junior at Flathead High School.

Competition calling is much different than actual calling in the field. In competition, or Arkansas-style calling, you're out to impress the judges with a seamless flow of notes or special sounds. For instance, the "spit call" is a difficult technique where the caller blows a bit of the liquid substance into the call and makes a coquettish chirp.

"You're just sweet talking to the judges," Ortley said, "but you don't use that in the field. When you're hunting, you're trying to impress the birds."

In competition calling there should be no obvious misses in the notes of the waterfowl love songs: from the hail calls and moans, to the spit notes and double clucks.

The other style of calling is "meat" calling; the kind where you're actually working the birds over decoys.

"You're just trying to sound the duckiest," Ortley said.

Still, good competition calling can lead to success in the field. "If you're a good competition caller and you hunt a lot, you should be able to literally talk to the birds," Ortley said.

Success still depends on a number of factors, including quality of decoys, scouting, a trained dog and having a good caller in the blind - all things that two new young hunters will experience this weekend.

"We're just hoping to see if we can get them bitten by the passion," David Ortley said. "The valley is changing, and we want to see sport hunting continue as a legitimate activity."

Youth hunters this weekend get first dibs on waterfowl, which after a week of being shot at, will begin to turn a wary eye at decoys and a blind ear to callers.

"The beauty of this weekend is that there's no other hunter pressure," David Ortley said.

Bailey Ortley is a member of the junior pro staff for Avery, a manufacturer of hunting equipment. After high school, he hopes to one day translate his passion for waterfowl calling and hunting into a profession, perhaps as a call designer or in the business of waterfowl sporting goods marketing.

Bailey Ortley has a natural ear for hearing the sounds that waterfowl make - and for being able to replicate it with a four-inch acrylic device.

"I've called for years, and he puts me to shame," David Ortley, said. "He's just an avid duck and goose hunter. It's an obsession with him."

Like most teenagers in high school, Bailey Ortley has a busy social schedule. But while other students are headed to the mall after school, Ortley is off to the local rivers and fields where he's constantly scouting for new flyways and feeding grounds - and he'll be at it all the way through January, when only the diehard waterfowl hunters remain. While other teenagers may be listening to grunge or rock, Ortley prefers the sounds of the wild. He hones his calling technique by listening to DVDs of ducks and geese.

"They have an incredible vocabulary," he said. That young man you might see at Woodland Park, in fact, could be Ortley, listening to the subtleties of a goose or duck talking.

Ultimately, though, Ortley has a bead on being a professional caller.

"If it takes me five years to get to the world finals, it doesn't matter," he says, "just as long as I get there."

The Ortley patriarch takes a much more humble, laidback approach to hunting. While Bailey is all about numbers and hunting success, David Ortley is there for the annual autumn ritual; that of getting up before dawn, loading the boat and slipping into the dark water while most people are sleeping.

"I'm there mainly for the sunrises," he said.