January 11, 2021
By John N. Felsher
In the 1930s, Clarence "Patin" Faulk, a southwest Louisiana guide and trapper, began selling hand-made, hand-tuned waterfowl calls. Upon returning from World War II, Patin’s son, Dud, grew the family business, after learning how to make calls from his father.
Dud bought a custom six-bit drill press to make more than one call at a time. He and his wife, Rena, made the calls in their Lake Charles, La., home, and the family still makes calls in Dud’s old house with that same drill press today.
"People who visit the factory can see the original concrete square that used to be my grandmother’s wash shed,” says Canaan Heard, Faulk’s Game Calls marketing and pro staff director and Dud’s grandson.
"Someone would be hard-pressed to find another organization anywhere in America that’s owned by the fourth generation of a family and still in the same building where it started."
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With more calls to sell, Dud took to the road, making demonstrations at sporting shows, inviting media to hunt with him and promoting the product. He won the International Duck Calling Championship once and the World Goose Calling Championship twice.
"My great-grandfather made a name for himself in southwest Louisiana, but my grandpa took it international," Heard says. "We still make calls out of a patch of cane my grandpa planted next to the shop. Today, we meet people who still use calls their grandfather bought from my grandfather 60 or 70 years ago."
