provided by John Phillips
Chris Kirby, the president of Quaker Boy Calls, and his wife, Michelle, are now the owners of Quaker Boy Calls in Springville, New York. Here at Mossy Oak, we’ve seen Chris grow up working with his dad, Dick Kirby, the creator of Quaker Boy Calls. Following in Dick’s footsteps, Chris became a major national and world’s champion turkey-calling champion and also is involved in the Quaker Boy videos and television shows. He’s been calling game and taking game since he could walk. As Chris Kirby says, ‘I’ve been a Mossy Oak Pro as long as I can remember. Under our ownership, Quaker Boy will continue to produce its award-winning, quality calls in the USA.” Chris hunts all over the nation for not only deer and turkey with his bow and guns, but about every other type of game that can be called or decoyed into the hunter.
One important fact to remember is that deer are vocal 12 months out of the year. Now sometimes during the year, they’re more vocal than they are at other times, including a deer in the rut. In the post-rut, I don’t stop using rut calls, unless the place I’m hunting has an almost perfect buck-to-doe ratio. New York’s breeding season will last from 14-17 days. But, in most sections of the country, a deer herd usually will be made up of more does than bucks. That being true, the does that don’t get bred during the first rut will have another estrous period in what’s known as the second rut.
Our peak of the rut in New York, generally ends by November 7-8. But recently in 2020, during the first week of December, I saw a mature buck chasing a doe. That buck wouldn’t be chasing that doe just because she was cute. She was more than likely coming into estrus during the second rut and must not have been bred during the first rut. Therefore, during the post-rut, I use a grunt call less than I do in the first rut, and I don’t use it as aggressively as I do during the first rut. I mainly use the grunt call when I’m hunting between the bedding area and the feeding area. And, I rarely if ever use the grunt call when I’m hunting the feeding area.
I use the new Quaker Boy Brawler Buck call. The mouthpiece is big to make more of a sound like the one that comes from a buck’s chest, and we have a rubberized what we call a trach tube. So, the sound coming from the mouthpiece and the trach tube sounds like the sound coming from a deer’s chest through his nose and his mouth. This tube on this call is not the old tube that you see on many deer calls that collapses, extends and makes a sound as it goes from high to low. This is a silent adjust tube with no plastic sound at all. You can compress the tube and make the grunt call sound very soft, and you can extend the tube and make it sound very deep and loud. This call won’t stick when it gets wet because there is more distance between the reed and the sound board of the call.
