The metal “instrument” Bigelow made “to imitate the quacking of ducks” was probably the prototype of the Elam Fisher tongue pincher duck call, who lived in Detroit. As he was hunting at St. Clair during the Civil War and after, home to the canvasback, redhead, mallard and black duck, he would have been close to Detroit and Elam Fisher who was the only one who patented a call that early. His patent read: “Be it known that I, ELAM FISHER, of Detroit, in the county of Wayne and State of Michigan, have invented a new and useful Improvement in Duck-Call.” According to the patent, the two curved radius tone-boards were made of wood while the “bell-mouth” was made of horn or bone. It had no barrel. Then we come to a duck call with a barrel and a single tone board. The earliest known written reference to a duck call is from Joseph W. Long’s American Wildfowl Shooting, 1874. Long gives instructions on how to make a “squawker,” a call with a barrel. Duck calls did not occur in a vacuum. The next two duck-call styles to evolve after the tongue pincher—Allen’s and Horner’s/Grubbs’—were fashioned after an “organ’s reed pipe,” and, like so, those that followed, which had a barrel, a single tone-board and metal reed. It was only a matter of experimenting and experiencing for duck calls to evolve. Another call style came with a wooden barrel and became known as the “Illinois River duck call.” Like the Allen call with its straight tone board and curved metal reed, this style became highly commercialized and promoted by Charles Grubbs. It made its appearance sometime during or right after the Civil War by Sam Horner and soon thereafter by Frank Wood, both who sought anonymity, then Charles Grubbs, who sought fame and fortune, and then others. This style would become the forerunner of our modern wooden barrel calls to the present-day. It is my belief that Fisher got his idea for making a call from Dr. Bigelow and that Sam Horner was the first to make an Illinois River duck call, which was the forerunner of all our modern-day duck call, which Olt and the Glodos and others took to perfection. And from Sam, the Wood’s brothers began making calls, but much too late in the game. That is if their birth dates are correct.