The 7 Best Single Reed Duck Calls of 2026

Tone is what the money buys when you move up in duck calls, and the Daisy Cutter is the clearest proof of it here. The bocote barrel gives this single reed a warm, full mallard hen, rich rather than sharp, and it keeps that character when you push the volume, which is exactly where molded calls start to sound like molded calls.

Nothing inside is clever. No tone channel, no adjustable anything, just a single reed in a wood barrel, and the craftsmanship shows. It rewards a caller who already has a hail and a feed chuckle without thinking about them, and it is not the call to learn on; the Pro Mallard does that job for less money.

The trade-off is weather. Wood does not shrug off a soaking the way polycarbonate does, so this is a fair-weather call in the literal sense, one to keep dry and out of the bottom of the boat. What you get back is the best-looking call in this group and, to our ear, the best-sounding one.

A single reed lives or dies on its tone channel. Get moisture or grit in there and the reed lays flat, squeaks, and stops sounding like a duck. Zink cuts the Power Hen's channel in a Z, a shape designed to resist that sticking, and it is the most interesting piece of engineering in this group.

We like it as the midrange poly here because it covers more ground than its price suggests: soft feed chuckles at the bottom, plenty of top for a working flock, and every call is hand-tuned before it ships. It is molded after Zink's custom acrylic Power Hen, so you are getting the shape and the tone channel of a much more expensive call in a body that handles wet, cold mornings without complaint.

Where it gives ground is looks and feel. The gunsmoke polycarbonate is plain, the fit is workmanlike, and it does not have the heft of a wood barrel. None of that matters at 6 a.m. on public water, and it costs about what the top pick does, so the choice between them comes down to whether you want the widest range or the easiest blow.

Loud is the entire point of the Lohman Gold Series. Flambeau builds it for hail strings on open water and across big fields, and it is the loudest call in this group by a wide margin, the one that carries when a flock is trading along the far tree line.

It is a single reed in a polycarbonate body, hand-tuned in the U.S. and rated fully waterproof rather than merely wet-friendly, and it will run from mellow feeding chuckles up to a raspy smack. Getting there takes more air and more practice than the Primos calls do. This is not the call to hand a kid on the first morning; it is the one you grow into for long shots.

Price is the other half of the story. It is the least expensive call here, and it shows in plain plastic and a finish nobody will admire. Keep it for hails and comeback calls, use something softer for finishing birds over decoys, and it earns its loop on the lanyard. Availability comes and goes on this one, so do not sit on it.

The Easy Mallard is the Pro Mallard's cheaper sibling, and the savings come straight out of the tone. It takes almost no air to blow, less than anything else here, which makes it the easiest call in this group to get a sound out of. The problem is the sound itself: it can come out thin and reedy rather than ducky, and that is the risk you take at this price.

As a first call, that trade is a fair one. A kid can get noise out of it, a brand-new hunter can feel what a feed chuckle is supposed to do, and it handles a wet morning as well as its bigger brother does. It is small, it is light, and it is the call in this group nobody worries about losing over the side of a boat.

What it will not do is sound like a hen that has been at this a while. If you are buying one call to hunt with, spend a little more for the Pro Mallard, because tone is the whole difference between the two. If you are buying for a young hunter or a spare for the blind bag, this is the one, and nobody will mind when it ends up in the bottom of a jacket pocket.

There is no plastic on the CA-22. It is a bamboo cane barrel with a reinforced metal band around it, and it looks like it belongs in a canvas blind bag next to a wooden Thermos. For a certain kind of hunter, that is the whole appeal, before anyone blows a note.

The sound is old-school too: raspy, with a Cajun squeal that comes easily once you find the air. It is an easy blower and it does not need much of a push to produce a decent quack, which makes it a friendlier call to run than you might expect from a natural barrel.

Where it gives ground is support. Faulk's lists no warranty on this call, so a split or a dropped barrel is yours to solve, and cane is cane: it wants handling, not a tackle box. What you get instead is a call with real grain in it that sounds raspy and unhurried in a way no polycarbonate does, and that is worth something to a hunter tired of black plastic on the lanyard.

If wood ducks are the bird you are chasing in the timber, a mallard hen call is the wrong tool, and this is the right one. Duck Commander built the Specialty Series call around a wood duck's own vocabulary, the flying and sitting sounds that species actually makes.

It delivers them. The call covers the basic wood duck sounds, the volume works both for birds overhead and for birds working the far edge of a hole, and the pitch stays under your thumb instead of running away from you. For a species-specific call, it is unusually forgiving of a beginner's air.

The catch is the assembly. The body is high-impact plastic and it comes apart for cleaning, and putting it back with the reed seated flat is the part worth slowing down for, because a reed off by a hair turns a wood duck into a kazoo. Take it apart over a table, put it back the way it came, and check the sound before you leave the truck.

Specialists like this are why a lanyard holds more than one call. It is the second call you add, not the first, and if you hunt flooded timber even once a season it will earn the loop it hangs from.