Rita LeBleu

rlebleu@americanpress.com

Faulk’s still calling around world

De-cluttering, organizing and cleaning out storage areas can yield some interesting finds. Lake Charles resident Sheron Faulk recently discovered a cache of hand crafted, one-of-a-kind duck calls made by her father, Paul Dudley”Dud” Faulk, when she decided to clean out a warehouse. She plans to use the find to launch the new Faulk’s Game Call Company’s Heritage call.

Over 80 years ago, long before the TV family’s Duck Dynasty, Clarence “Patin” Faulk began what eventually became a small family business that’s still in operation today.

From a modest home and workshop on 18th Street in Lake Charles, Faulk’s Game Call Co. Inc. has made, assembled and tuned millions of calls that have been shipped to countries all over the world. For years, Sears, L.L. Bean and London’s Abercrombie & Finch sold Faulk’s exclusively. Today the biggest distributor is Amazon. On the day of the American Press interview, orders were going to Russia and Italy. The order for Estonia wasn’t complete yet.

“In the ‘30s, my grandfather, was a well-known local guide, hunter and trapper in Big Lake,” Sheron Faulk said. He would take out hunters who were not from this area, some of them affluent, and they would ask him to make their duck calls. He used Louisiana cane because it grew everywhere. We still grow and harvest it from the backyard.

Sheron’s father learned the craft and started a side business that turned into a full-time living for a family of five in 1951.

“After dad finished his enlistment with the U.S. Navy, he came home to Southwest Louisiana and got a job at Cities Service,” Sheron Faulk said.

He and wife, Rena Lantz Faulk, purchased a home on 18th Street in the 1950s and added a shop. The house hasn’t changed much in over 60 years, except the living room is now the packing room.

“My mother never wanted the packaging materials in her office, Sheron said. “That meant you had to go between three locations to fill an order. When I began to consolidate things, I found the calls.”

The shop doesn’t appear to have changed at all in 60 years.

“Dad never veered from the original process except for buying a custom boring machine at one point. He believed the hand work, the personal attention to detail, certain woods and the ear of the tester were necessary to produce a quality call, and still, he kept them very reasonably priced.”

In the past 68 years, the medium for Faulk’s instructional materials went from a 33 album to a .45 record to a CD. He went from personal selling to sales reps to selling straight to distributors and now products are purchased from an online catalog. Faulk’s Game Call Company continues use the highest quality wood such as walnut, cherry, zebrawood and Louisiana bamboo.

“He thought the acrylic calls were a piece of junk,” Sheron Faulk said. There’s a common misconception out there that wooden calls aren’t waterproof. That’s not true. All of our calls are treated to be water resistant.

Faulk’s Game Calls has two Master Call Makers.

“Both were trained by my dad,” Sheron Faulk said. “Art LeJeune has been here 55 years. Kwan Madith came here from Thailand 45 years ago. This was his first job here in The States, and he’s in the shop working today.”

Dud Faulk was a natural when it came to promotion, earning the moniker, “pied piper of the marsh.”

In 1960, Roy Rogers invited him to accompany him during a Los Angles Sportsmans Show where he demonstrated duck calling, according to Glenn Hebert of Sweet Lake.

“Dad didn’t just make duck calls,” Sheron Faulk said, “he also made goose, predator, coon (squalls), squirrel, hog and even elk calls. Right now the hawk call is our best seller after our duck and goose calls.

Dud Faulk was named World’s Champion Goose Caller in 1955 and ‘56, and ’58 through 1965. He was named International Duck Calling Champion 1954 through 1955.

In 1966, he appeared on ABC’s “The American Sportsman. On one show he demonstrated the proper duck and goose calling technique to Rip Torn and Burt Reynolds. In the next show, the three hunt together in Grand Chenier. He judged too many duck calling competitions to count and he even taught a class in calling at LSU.

“He was the best caller I ever heard,” said Bill Shearman, a friend and fellow duck hunter who interviewed Dud Faulk for the American Press in the 1980s, “and an American success story if there ever was one.”

Sheron Faulk in Faulk’s Came Call Co. Shop

Clarence “Patin” Faulk working in his Big Lake Shop