I'm not old enough to tell tales about walking 10 miles uphill in the snow both ways to school, but my first ecaller about 25yrs ago played vinyl records through an Edison horn, powered by a boat battery - just to illustrate how far ecallers have come in a VERY short timeline.
I killed hundreds of coyotes over a Foxpro Spitfire - the precursor to the Wildfire, which itself was the precursor to the Inferno. I did have an SP55 speaker, with a home brew power supply for calling in high Kansas winds. I picked up a FoxPro Hellfire several years ago and quickly came to prefer the extra volume and Foxbang feature, then picked up a Shockwave, which is the pinnacle for electric caller capabilities. The price difference doesn’t kill more coyotes, it just makes it easier to get the job done in the field. The Shockwave makes calling alone RIDICULOUSLY simple - I preprogram sets and "speed dial" sounds, so when I'm on stand, I really minimize my need to operate the call (aka, move).
I do take a standard lanyard of custom handcalls any time I go on stand which will allow me to make almost any sound I could ever need, but in the last 10yrs or so, most of my calling has been done with ecallers - for 2 reasons:
1) when calling alone, the ecaller lets me place the sound away from my shooting position, distracting the coyote from me, giving me more opportunity to make the shot without getting “busted.”
2) when calling with a partner, most often in these years I have been guiding a less experienced hunter/shooter, so having more time to advise them, give them time to shoot, and having the directional distraction pays off in spades. Also having extra opportunity to ready my own rifle or scattergun to back them up is a huge advantage in itself. It’s easier to push a button on the ecaller remote to run the remote (and less movement) while on the gun than it is to run a handcall.
I’m a bit of a custom call collector, or accumulator, and I absolutely PINE for opportunities to hunt with other experienced callers where I can run the handcalls with confidence they can sufficiently do their job as shooter, but ecallers do certainly make life easier. It's just less and less common to find other experienced coyote callers (truly experienced - not the guys who have shot a few while deer hunting, or went calling with their buddy a few times).
Here’s my go-to lanyard of custom calls for calling coyotes, which includes more cost than a FoxPro Inferno - there's about $300 pictured there, which is relatively inexpensive for such a set of custom calls. For any lanyard, I like to have a coaxer, a big horn howler, an open reed distress (primary call), and a closed reed cottontail distress. If you have any experience with call material affects, you can see the "flavor" of sound I prefer. That lanyard below has killed coyotes in New York, Arizona, Kansas, Nebraska, Texas, Iowa, Minnesota, Colorado, Oklahoma, Missouri, North Dakota, North Carolina, and Wyoming (seems like I'm forgetting someone) - with the only exception being the Howler Horn would have been swapped with a Rich Cronk horn for several of those, which I put on the shelf to preserve once he passed (Rich made the best sounding, easiest blowing, and best controlled horns I have ever played). I have blood on a lot of custom calls, and I could replace any one of these calls on this lanyard with a dozen others like it in my collection and be just as successful, but these are the ones I have found to have the best sound for what I want, best range/versatility, and don't have excessive collector value or high cost due to material or craftsmanship (I have some exotic material calls, like hippo "tusk" and some intricately engraved/carved calls which were a few hundred bucks each).
- John Ryan, Lights Out Game Calls Buffalo Horn howler
- Jered Brisby Buffalo Horn Coaxer
- Doug McCarty, Ironstone Customs Acrylic open reed distress call
- Will Horting, North Central Kansas Game Calls Pronghorn double closed reed distress
- Brad Gainey, Yote Hunter Buffalo Horn and Yellow Box Elder cottontail distress
