Graham tops junior field with calls of wild

Andrew Graham, 14, gave the waterfowl world a wake-up call this month by winning four junior titles at the Hunt for a Lifetime duck and goose calling contest in Moses Lake.

The field was pitifully small – just the Cheney High School freshman and two other contestants in the junior division.

But the competition was stiff.

After three rounds in the goose-calling event, Graham emerged from obscurity to defeat Michael Ritter of Carterville, Ill., the reigning junior winner of the World Goose Calling Championship held each November at the Waterfowl Festival in Easton, Md.

“I’ve judged the Maryland contest and the level of callers is unbelievable – they are the best of the best,” said Bill Saunders, a competitive caller and call maker from Kennewick who helped judge the Moses Lake competition.

The only contest Graham lost at Moses Lake was the goose-talk open division – he was runner-up to an adult who’d placed fifth in the world competition.

“It was pretty big for me,” said Graham, who’s trying to sort whether this is his calling at this junction in his young life.

A talented football player, he’s recently been diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis.

“He’s had bouts of excruciating pain and I think all his goose-call practicing has helped him keep his mind off of it,” said his mother, Becky.

“We’re kind of used to the calling now; it’s constant,” said his dad, John, associate head football coach for Eastern Washington University.

Most of the practicing occurs in a storage room – his 7-year-old sister refers to it as Andrew’s goose-calling room.

It’s also the furnace area. The ducts run from there to every other room in the house.

“The sound of geese is everywhere,” Becky said. “Everyone around us hears it constantly. It’s a neighborhood thing.

“Is it irritating?” she said, repeating the question. “No. He used to do percussion.”

Andrew passed his hunter safety exam at the age of 9. With his father tied to the EWU gridiron, his grandfather and uncle introduced him to waterfowling.

“I can’t call a lick,” John said. “I sound like two tomcats fighting in the alley. He didn’t get it from me.”

And he didn’t get his world-class talent from a few weekends in a stubble field pit blind.

“Last year when I first heard Andrew (at the Hunt for a Lifetime contest), I’d say he was an OK caller,” Saunders said. “This year, he was, for a kid his age, an awesome caller. You don’t make that leap without hours and hours of practice.”

That’s why most of the best callers in the world are young, he said: “If they have the passion, they can make the time to practice because they don’t have the financial responsibilities.”

Graham and other top callers often are youths who know how to search the Internet and listen and learn from the champions.

Andrew takes it a step further.

“I was out at The Fairways (golf course) until after 9 last night,” he said. “There’s a ton of geese there and I just sat and listened to them talk.”

Said Saunders, “We’re not talking about the old-style goose calling, where the hunter puffs out his cheeks. These competitions are about forward and back pressure, chamber dimensions – it’s a discipline.”

“Air control,” Graham said when asked where he’s improved the most. “On my older tapes, the notes are slurred together, terrible.”

An upgrade in the call also played a role. This year, he was talking through a pricey competition call made by Saunders.

“The notes are crisper; that’s the first thing you notice,” Graham said.

“ Virtually all top competitors are using short-reed calls that produce a large variety of realistic sounds, some of which are still being discovered,” Saunders explained. “Only in the past 10 years or so have they been accepted by judges. Our vocabulary with a short-reed call is tenfold greater than with the older flute calls.”

Graham won the contests with a model called The Heavy, which imitates big honkers, a sound that gets a hunter’s attention – judges, too.

“It’s like a hot rod,” Saunders said. “It has a short mouthpiece, tight bore and shorter flared exhaust, so it’s loud and fast. You want judges to recognize you as powerful.”

That’s what Andrew Graham did on July 10 in Moses Lake.

After sitting in the bullpen and listening to the dazzling routine of the reigning world champion, Graham walked out onto the fairgrounds stage, hands clammy with nervousness.

“I practiced every day for this,” he said. “I know every note by heart. Around the house when I’m not using the call, I whistle the routine.

“On stage, I’m visualizing the geese and just thinking about the next note.”

He started loud and slow, with big hails as though the geese have showed up far in the distance.

He’s just one teenager with one call, but he sounds like an entire flock of geese as he coaxes the big Canadas toward him with faster and faster notes until the birds are within 100 yards.

The notes get softer as the birds lock their wings … but wait, the birds see something; they flare and begin flying away!

The calling pace picks up again, pleading the geese to come back, faster and louder until he succeeds in turning the birds back. Then the moment is Graham’s, as he gently lures the geese in for a landing in the decoys.

“That’s the story you tell the judges,” Graham said. “If you don’t tell that story, you’re out of luck. And you can’t go one note over 90 seconds or you’re gone from the competition.”

While Graham ponders the possibility of entering the Worlds in Maryland this fall – the costs and conflicts with football weigh heavy in the decision – he knows the countless hours of practice won’t go be in vain one way or the other.

“The competition honker call is expensive – $180 – but I use it for hunting, too, especially on the second day of a weekend hunt,” he said, noting that he loves to do the calling for his grandpa and uncles.

“Two years ago, when I was OK at the call, we killed 30 geese. Last fall we bagged 120 geese. I think that’s a big improvement.”

Contact Rich Landers at (509) 459-5508 or e-mail richl@spokesman.com