Cutdown Contest Saturday

June isn’t a month that you normally think a lot about duck calling, but maybe you should change your thoughts about that. Especially this coming Saturday, June 5.

Simmons’ Sporting Goods in Bastrop is hosting the North Louisiana Cutdown Classic Duck Calling Contest. You can pre-register by calling Devin Singleton at 318-478-1924 and be eligible to win a Xpedition Archery Crossbow before you even pull out your call.

Or you can sign up at noon Saturday on site for the contest, which begins at 1:30 p.m. And there’s more. Even if you don’t enter, everybody who shows up will get to register in a drawing for a Retay Masai Mara 20 guage shotgun in Realtree Max 5 camo.

“Basically this is a contest to keep the tradition and heritage of the old P.S. Olt style calls alive,” says Singleton, who lives in Bernice and makes Singleton Game Calls. “Back in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s and even before that, this was the most popular call around. Today there are many variations of it, but the Cutdown is still used mainly because of its volume and reach while duck hunting.”

Originally the only Cutdown contest left in America was in Stuttgart, Arkansas, but Simmons and area duck hunters and callers like Singleton wanted to bring one to north Louisiana. So if you blow one of those type calls, or just want to hear, this is a great opportunity. Any Cutdown type duck call is eligible for the contest, not just the Olts. However, several contestants will be using the Olts, Singleton says.

More about the P.S. Olt:

There is no sure-fire way to determine exactly how many game calls were produced by the P.S. Olt Company during its nearly 100-year history. But the smart money would bet that, over the years, Olt made and sold more calls than any of its innumerable competitors. Period.

Phillip Sanford Olt started the business in 1904, making his first calls, as the story goes, in a converted chicken coop on his farm. His D-2 duck call went on to become the most popular model of all time, and the same could likely be said for his A-50 goose call.

Single–reed calls have more range and are more versatile than double–reed calls, but they are also a little more difficult to master. Double–reed calls take more air to blow and don’t have as much range as single–reed models. But most double–reed calls have a ‘sweet spot’ that sounds very realistic to passing ducks.

Olt is credited with developing the Arkansas-style duck call. Call historians and collectors have determined that Olt was the first individual to develop a one-piece insert with a straight-reed and a curved tone board—at least on a commercial basis. Olt is known for experimenting with a wide variety of tone board designs. His early calls were made of hard rubber, but the company later made a number of styles of wood calls, as well as a few molded acrylics. Olt is still in business today.