Well seems I have made a HUGE breakthrough with this. For awhile there, the harder I tried the worse it got, went from high pitched to just disgusting sounding.

Last night was the breakthrough, turns out I was trying to hard, or rather, blowing to hard trying to get loud I guess.

Had the house to myself for a few hours last night and after hitting the driving range to work on getting rid of the slice (finally the swing changes seem to be comfortable), I then shot the bow for 1/2 hour and finally sat down with my two bugles (picked up a "free" pack bugle from primos for renewing Eastmans bowhunting journal), plugged in an elk hunting video and just tried to sound like them.

The break through came when I just started cow calling with the pack bugle, then went a LITTLE louder the pitch changed into almost a bugle, then a bit harder and WHAM a great sounding bugle.

Kept working on it and can bugle, change pitch and volume mid bugle and even work in a bit of a groan and chuckles at the end of the bugle. Figured, hey, on a roll, so I picked up the power bugle and tried the same approach. While I still have problems with the chuckles, the bugle itself is like night and day from what it had been.

To good to be true, figured I'd push my luck and move to the diaphram (actually one of my turkey calls). Same approach, started with cow call volume and worked up from there. Again, great sounding.

Seems I hit a major breakthrough and confidence is again climbing.