I'd stay away from the big river as well and start with a shortreed, especially if you plan on getting into waterfowl seriously. Short reeds aren't that tough to master, and sounds 110 times better. Last year we had a guy setup in a field right adjacent to ours and he was blowing a big river. We would let him start to work the geese and then 3 of us would lay into them with shortreeds, needless to say, he never fired a shot that day.