I'm sure y'all had pintail whistles and I'd bet you used em. On our best pintail days ever we quit using a mallard hen call all together and only used whistles. We had several groups act like pintails when we used mallard hen calls with whistles mixed in circle, circle, circle then geek out or lose interest. We've tried no calling and have had mixed results, our best by far was straight whistles, mainly pintail calls with even a drake mallard thrown in and wigeon whistles to mix it up a bit. I has worked for us when the large numbers of pintails are migrating. The mallard hen call seems to scare em more than anything. That's our experience.