Here's everything that you wanted to know about a duck call lanyard.
Just to review, the word lanyard actually comes from the French word "laniere" which means strap or possibly thong depending on translation. The first lanyards were said to be simple straps made of rope or cord found aboard sailing ships and tied around everything from pistols and swords to emergency whistles.
Lanyards were originally meant to be as decorative as they are functional, and that still holds true today. They can be worn around the neck or the shoulder based on the item meant to be kept close to the user, and they are quite useful.
Honestly, the keys we all carry every day can be said to be carried on a lanyard whether in our pockets or around the wrist. For our purposes, we'll discuss those that keep our favorite game calls close by.
Duck Call Lanyard
These can be used to hold from just two or three calls all the way up to some that can carry a dozen or more. Some are made from rope, twine, or string, but most seem to be made from common 550 paracord material. The best part is that these materials are factory made with camouflage patterns to help them blend into your surroundings as you hunt.
They can be made with adjustable loops and often times have removable clips for ease of use and can hold everything from mallard, teal, and wood duck calls to goose calls and much more. Manufactured lanyards can cost anywhere from $10 to $20 to over $40 or can be made as a DIY project, one that is great for kids!
Game Call Lanyard
These can come in the form of a lanyard that will carry your favorite deer grunt tube to predator calls and even your dog whistle. They will hold acrylic calls, wooden calls, and plastic calls equally without dropping them on the ground, as long as you have attached them correctly.
Both types of lanyards can come with double loop drops to keep two styles of call next to each other and close at hand when the chips are down such as a common hen mallard call next to a drake mallard whistle.
Common Brands of Game Call Lanyards
Among those manufacturers that make duck and game call lanyards are Avery Outdoors, Rig Em Right, Heavy Hauler Outdoor Gear, Avian-X, Banded Gear, Canvasking Waterfowl, Greendhead Gear, Mendota, and many more.
One of the most well known of course is the vaunted Duck Commander brand, which has surged into an empire all its own, not just for lanyards either, but for all things waterfowl and even deer to an extent.
If you ask ten different waterfowl hunters their opinions on the best lanyards you'll get ten different answers. Rather than trying to figure that out, let's look at making one of your own and cutting out the middle man.
DIY Duck Call Lanyard
As with so many things in our hunting and fishing world finding this kind of information is usually only a click away from all the results that you will ever need. There are many videos and tutorials on the subject, but the included result above gets right to the point and ends up with a decent lanyard.
Certainly, even folks who have done this more than once will tell you that ultimately there will be a bit of waste by the time you get to the end result, but once you have done this a few times you will be able to get there with less and less paracord lying on the floor, and more duck and game calls hanging around your neck.
28-30 inches is presumably a good length to get around your head. If you want a shoulder lanyard you will need a longer length before you are done. When done correctly in this fashion, more calls can still be added after the fact since using the weaving method with the paracord leaves room to intertwine more loops onto the original lanyard.
Hunting Lanyards
Paracord lanyards, rope lanyards, or twine lanyards have been in use for many years to keep our game calls and other smaller gear in good accessibility to make our hunting lives easier. They have gone from simple camo to some of the deluxe versions that you see today, but are still one of the most basic forms of gear we use. Hey, if the system is not broken, do not fix it right?
Whether you are hunting mallard duck or a big buck, the hunting lanyard has proved its worth over and over to outdoorsmen and women over the course of many years. Parachute cord, also known as paracord has been one of the greatest things that we ever discovered for the outdoors and it has many uses. Duck hunters sometimes even use it for tying decoys into strings of multiple birds for use in the calm waters of swamps and bogs.
The bottom line is that they have many uses above and beyond those that call for them to carry our game calls. It's just that once we found out how useful they were for doing that, we've been using them ever since, and we may have even made a few ourselves.
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NEXT: THE 7 BEST DUCK CALLS FOR THE MARSH, FIELD, AND TIMBER
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