I found this call in a tool box full of .410 stuff from when I was a kid and I was wondering if anybody had ever had any luck with one. It's one of those types with the bellows and a wooden tube at the end and a little squeaker inside the tube. It's still in the packaging so apparently I never used it.

You know what?

Earlier this fall I used one of them Mr. Squirrel whistles and in came a fox squirrel. First time I ever used it. Latter that day, I saw another squirrel and used it and that squirrel payed no attention to it.

Its a different call than the bellows kind.. instead of a bark, the whistle makes the distress call of a young squirrel.

I used that type of call hundreds of times when I was younger and lived in squirrel country. Anyway, they are very effective. Like everything else, they don't work all the time, but when they do (and I found they did most of the time on what we called fox squirrels, red ones) they are lots of fun. Squirrels are very curious. If you've hunted deer, etc in squirrel country I'm sure you have had them spot you and come all the way to the same tree you're in to just sit there and bark at you. If there were any other squirrels around, they probably joined in. That's what this call does. It gets their curiosity going and they will either come to investigate or begin barking themselves and give their location away. I was scouting for deer season one time and had a Ruger 10/22 with me just in case I decided to harvest a squirrel or two. Well, I stopped in one bottom to look around and in a little while, a squirrel spotted me and began to bark. Before long, squirrels everywhere were barking. I began head shooting them and then sitting still and before the smoke cleared, I had 13 squirrels to carry back to the truck. I missed the football game that night because I was too busy skinning squirrels. Give it a try and just mimmic what you hear. I'll bet you will be surprised. By the way, I never had as much luck with it on what we called grey squirrels. They didn't respond as well and one shot sent them all running for cover. Good luck and have fun. Let us know how it turns out.

Thanks for the input man. We have mostly what I call the grey squirrels here so I guess we'll see! hehe

Any tips or a website with good instructions? The package isn't very helpful.

I just remember that most of the time we'd hit the call pretty hard twice with about a half second between the 2 and then follow that up with about 10-12 quick lighter hits. It imitates a squirrel barking like he's just seen something and is sounding off to let all the others know something is going on.

Other times we'd go with about 5-6 slower softer hits on the bellows. That worked too. Good luck. You'll have fun with it. Merry Christmas.