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Featured Stories

A Calling for the Birds

May 15, 2009

After the Bears’ baseball season ended, freshman pitcher Forrest Carpenter switched gears and started warming up for one of his other passions: competitive duck and goose calling.

Waterfowl calling competitions are big business in the United States. Competitors – some sponsored by hunting equipment manufacturers – take part in local, state and regional calling competitions that lead to rankings and world championships with first-place prizes of $10,000 or more. Many use hand-crafted calls costing $150-$200 or more.

But Carpenter doesn’t compete in the calling competitions for the money, or the fame, for that matter. The reigning state duck and goose calling champion does it to get the same feeling he gets when he’s on the mound and makes the perfect pitch to strike out the opposing team’s best hitter.

"I love the adrenaline rush of going out there in front of all those people at a contest and knowing that you’ve got 90 seconds to blow your routine and impress the judges," Carpenter said. "When you know that you did the best you could and it comes out right, it feels like my chest is on fire."

Carpenter has impressed his share of judges since getting his first duck call when he was 12. After four months of practicing on his own and mentoring via telephone with an experienced caller in Kansas, Carpenter entered his first duck calling contest there and placed third.

"That’s what happens when you take a kid who tends to get obsessed with things and who has time on his hands," Carpenter related. "I locked myself in the basement and practiced constantly."

He quickly also mastered goose calling and started entering those competitions as well. He worked his way up in the sports’ junior division rankings for three years and at 15 became the first caller from west of the Mississippi River to win the Junior World Goose Calling Championship since the competition’s inception in 1976.

In the past four years, Carpenter’s won seven goose and eight duck calling competitions and placed second or third in 21 other events, including his third-place finish at the 2008 World Goose Calling Championships in Easton, Md. Most of those finishes were after moving up to the senior division in 2006 when he turned 16.

He’s traveled to competitions in a dozen states across the county, paying his own travel expenses and entry fees.

But baseball remains the 19-year-old’s primary passion and he’s displayed no small level of skill in that sport. His standout career at Niwot High School culminated his senior year when a 6-1 record and 1.17 earned run average earned him all-state honors.

And while he dreams of some day playing major league baseball, he’s covering all his bases by majoring in Business Administration, with hopes of parlaying his love of hunting, the outdoors and photography into a self-owned business opportunity.

In the meantime, he’ll spend the summer working on his curve ball and sharpening his calling skills in preparation for the world championships in November.

"To me baseball and calling are great ways to compete and I’m a very competitive person," Carpenter said. "I aspire to be the best in the world in whatever I do."

- Gary Dutmers

View a video clip of Forrest Carpenter practicing his goose and duck calling.

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