The Olt is Back!

My recent article in Greenhead magazine that focused on the Olt D-2 included current manufacturers of copies of the classic call that has built a large following in Arkansas and around the country.  What I did not know is that Philip Olt IV has brought the original company back to life as P.S. Olt, LLC.  In addition to the D-2, he is manufacturing goose calls, predator calls, and turkey calls as well.  I spoke with him on his way to a duck hunting trip in North Dakota and he filled me in on more Olt history and why he decided to bring the Olt name back in to the game call business.

“I was a career military officer, not a call maker, but I couldn’t stand the thought of what my grandfather and father built being put in the ground.  So when I retired I started working on manufacturing the calls again.”  Philip found that many things had changed since he helped his grandfather put calls together when he was five years old.  “My initial attempts were met with the same answer, that I would need to have the call specifications put into a computer program.  I told them that my ancestors just drew what they wanted on a piece of paper and that is all they needed to get it made.  That observation only received the reply that times have changed.”

Philip’s main goal was to be able to make the D-2 as close to the original as he could but stronger.  “The old hard rubber calls were not very durable and they had a tendency to break over time.  It took several years to perfect the formula but we now have a product that is identical to the old calls but with added durability.”  He told me that the very first calls were molded from a compound derived from ground horse’s hooves.  Hard to believe that now with today’s technology but they had to be inventive in the late 1800’s.

The D-2 of today is made with the round hole tone board and also as the D-2-K.  The “K” stands for keyhole or keyway, a change that was made to the call during World War II.  Philip explained how this change came about.  “All of the rubber in the United States at the time was need for the war effort, so my grandfather had to change to a different form of plastic.  Early attempts to extract the tone board from the mold were difficult with the new material.  He went back to the drawing board and came up with a groove in the end of the board that would allow for easy removal.  That became know as the keyhole model as was sought after many years later as the best call for modification, cutting down as it came to be known,” he explained.  “Many people kept requesting the keyhole model so I knew that I needed to bring it back.”

To purchase any of the new Olt line of calls simply visit their website at www.psolt.com and have one shipped to your door.  The D-2 is alive and well in many variations, good to know that in a world of constant change some things still remain the same.