What did football referees use before whistles?

Football officials used the bladder of an elk before whistles were invented. It would make a sputtering noise similar to that of a struggling engine trying to turn. This practice ended when referees continuously got sick from the infectious diseases that would come out of the bladder.
They then tried using the horn of a ram, similar to a Shofar in Judaism, but that was too difficult also, thus making the wood flute the final tool used to call attention and stop action during a game. The flute could only be made of Cherry or Oak wood, however, because other woods had too high of a splinter factor. Other ideas that were tried when the whistle was developed was putting a beetle or bumble bee in the wood flute with a tiny ball of cobalt and blowing it. The cobalt's vibrations would cause a high pitched noise to echo from the insect but that would often lead to the implosion of the critter's internal organs due to the concentration of the noise/vibrations and pitch. Eventually, they got it down to a metal base with a wood ball on the inside, thus the modern whistle was born.