- Hold the call between your lips, not between your teeth or you might chip a tooth
- When the groundhog drops down after having a peek around, aim your rifle right there
- Take your shooting breath and exhale normally through the call
- The groundhog will hear the call and stand up again to have a look
- You know what comes next
Don't blow through the call, just exhale as you normally would before the shot. Groundhogs have great hearing and a loud blast on the call may send them running for the nearest hole. You may find that partially exhaling through the call and then through your nose will prevent too much sound.
With a little practice the groundhog will stand up darn near in your crosshair. If you are a little too far off target and can't risk a sudden movement, just wait until it drops down to feed again and repeat the process.
Standard distress calls have some problems. I have used the Thompson PC3, a Weems-style call made from wood. Like most closed-reed calls, the PC3 is meant to be held in the hand with the user's lips pressed against the mouthpiece. Even though the call is small and light, when it is held between the lips in the corner of the mouth, the diameter is a little too large and I end up pressing my teeth on the inside of my lips to hold the call in place.
Dan Thompson's calls at All Predator Calls: http://www.king-cart.com/cgi-bin/cart.cgi?...me=Dan+Thompson
One open-reed call I have used is Verminator Predator Calls' Syco Tweety. It is easy to hold the Syco Tweety mouthpiece between my lips without any discomfort or awkwardness since that's the way an open-reed call is meant to be blown. Also because of the open-reed mouthpiece, it's easy to adjust the tone made with the call by adjusting the position of the reed in my mouth. I don't know if groundhogs can be "educated" like a coyote that's been shot at, but I like being able to change the sound I make.
Verminator calls at All Predator Calls: http://www.king-cart.com/cgi-bin/cart.cgi?...name=verminator
The common problem with both types of calls is that they are too loud. Unlike calling coyotes, where we try to bring an animal from an unknown location into firing range, the location of the groundhog is already known, more or less. Predator calls are meant to project sound a long way out with very little effort. If you blow a lot of air through the call, it can make a lot more sound than is necessary to get the attention of a feeding groundhog in the tall grass one or two hundred yards away.
The solution: the humble squeaker.
I have two squeakers. The second squeaker I bought is from Dan Thompson. It is a wooden tube four inches long with a squeaker in the end, and comes with a really neat coyote pup squealer made from a .223 Remington case. The pup squealer fits into the mouthpiece of the squeaker when they are not in use. The squeaker is far too large to hold it in my mouth hands-free.
The first squeaker I bought is a rubber bulb shaped like an egg cut length-wise, made by Primos. It fits into the hand so it can be held with the rifle and squeezed. The bulb is very sensitive and it doesn’t take much of a squeeze to make a nice little squeak, but even a little squeeze makes the rifle move a little bit, and the longer the range, the more the point of aim is moved. Remember, the idea is to have the groundhog stand up in the crosshair.
Primos bulb squeaker at Cabela's: http://www.cabelas.com/cabelas/en/template...&hasJS=true
The instructions that came with the bulb said it could be inserted in the mouth to keep the hands free. This actually works quite well and would be the answer to the problem except the bulb is just a little too easy to set off. If the bulb is in a shirt pocket, inadvertent pressure from a binocular strap or any bump or press will faithfully produce a squeak. If you don’t have a shirt pocket you’re really in trouble. I guess you can walk around with the bulb in your mouth all day. It doesn’t taste very good.
What is needed is a squeaker that is short, light, and has a mouthpiece that is small and thin so it can be held between the lips comfortably. Fortunately such squeakers are available. The custom call makers certainly can make a squeaker to suit your personal requirements if you can’t find one you like off the shelf.
If anyone is using a small squeaker for calling groundhogs, particularly one of the custom jobs, I would like to hear about it. Until then, I’ll be walking around with this green rubber bulb in my mouth.
