Dustin,
I think I still own the first DR-85 I bought and it's still got the guts in it. I've owned a dozen various Haydel models over the years and never lost the interior of any of them. Just personal experience which is all I can ever offer on anything as I'm by far no expert.
I like good guns and I like good decoys, that's very true. But I like a duck call that sounds like a duck and that you can kill ducks blowing. These big price single reeds, unless you're really a duck caller, won't sound much like a duck when you first start running air through them. With a DR-85, almost anybody (with some practice) can get a duck-like noise to come out of them.
I don't blow them because they're cheap, I blow them because they produce success. I've got all the fancy wood, checkered, carved, metal reed stuff too. But when I put something on my lanyard that I know is going to produce ducks over the decoys it's almost always a Haydel product.
This past season was 25 years on the water for me, calling with success for 23 of those years. I'm not saying I know what I'm talking about, I never claim to be an expert. I'm just saying I've been at it for quite awhile, seem to have a pretty good tally of birds killed at the end of every season, hence feel like I must be doing something right.
Best Regards,
Destry
P.S. As far as cheap black decoys, the finest goose floaters I've ever seen where ones they used on Reelfoot Lake that were made from empty freon cans dipped in tar. Geese would fly over 3 dozen G&H floaters to land in a dozen of those things. Just something about the way they sat on the water, I've never seen anything like it. If I could get some today I'd be using them, not because they're fancy but because they work. And this is a guy who has 2 dozen hand carved wooden floaters......
