Has anyone else given up on ecallers?

I sure love the electronic callers for cats. Hour long stands and very realistic bird sounds make them a great tool for the felines.

As for coyotes, I just hate lugging the darn thing stand to stand and going through the set up process. Hand calls around the neck allow me the pack both long and short range weapons to each stand and not feel like I'm moving across country by foot.

Too each his own, and good luck to all.

Paul
 
Im new to the game, started last year. I just recently called in and shot my first coyote with an e-call, Johnny Stewart pm3. I would love to try a wireless Foxpro but havent gotten to that point yet, $$. I like the hand calls I have but havent quite found the best one for me yet. Both have worked for me so Ill keep using each.
 
I still use my tape recorder with Johnny Stewert tapes
with a speaker on 200 feet of wire that I have since the mid 70's always works with out a problem
 
I to have the low end Fox Pro which is great for calling cats. The problem I have is having the lungs to blow continuously for a long period of time, a smoker. Probably use the mouth blown calls 95% of the time. But will always have the electronic call with me. I've called alot of coyotes in using the red-gray fox in distress call on the electronic when the mouth blown calls have failed to produce on a stand.
 
I went out this morning with my new FX3, it seemed to be a perfect morning. Fresh snow with fresh sign everywhere. but five sets and nothing.
I must say as of now I'm disappointed with the results I've had. I've only had it out about four or five diferent days now and had very limited success.
I've tried all of my high percentage spots too.
I must admit I'm not real encouraged, however I probably have a ways to go on the learning curve with this thing.
I'll NEVER go into the woods without a hand call.
 
I thought I was the only one that had issues, foxpro is the only electronic call I have used, and they are excellent to deal with, however I have the same issues, mine has been back for repairs as well, I now only use the caller right by me to keep in from happening, earlier this year the stand dictated it would be better to have the caller behind us. so I put the caller in the sage about 50 yards behind me, and sat down just over the other side of a little knob, guess what, no F ing communication with the main unit, so lets see I have to get up wander over to where I think the call MIGHT be, remember there is sage brush everywhere, then I have to get close enough to turn the caller on to hear it, which basically totally screws up my stand. keep in mind if the sage had not been there where I went to sit down I could have looked over my shoulder and still seen the caller, so its not like I lift it on the other side of the ridge.

next the dial knob on the main unit acted up, and caused it to not work, I have since pushed and pulled on it and can't get it to repeat the issue. sometimes the remote will just flat out not communicate with the main unit, I push mute and nothing happens, the caller is bascially out of control playing a sound I do not want to play, I had to turn off the remote and main unit to correct the issue. it is extremely difficult to use the caller with gloves on the buttons need to be alot more raised and easily activated. sometimes I just wanna throw the thing.

however I did use it the other day, with what I call a cocktail of sounds to call in a dog at the 20+ minute mark, which I would not have done likely using handcalls. I know foxpro is doing the best they can, but to tout how great the fury remote range is compared to the FX series is stretching it a bunch.
 
Originally Posted By: 417coyotesoldier...but five sets and nothing.... I've tried all of my high percentage spots too.

Been there, done that. When I got an FX3 early last year, I was SO excited to use it and have coyotes come magically running in! Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.... finally got a double coming in and then I couldn't shut thing down because you have to click once to get its attention, then click again to actually mute. By this time, the lead dog was 15 yards away, so I just shot him. The rear dog stopped and I shot it, too. A few minutes later, a 3rd dog ran behind us but wouldn't stop. So, okay, at least I know the FP works and kind of how to use it now. This "can't mute" scenario repeated itself, resulting in the loss of one coyote that came to 5 yards and another that I shot at 12 yards.

After thinking about it, I decided the remote was the issue and that's when I started rolling my own sequences, complete with pauses, lower volumes here and there, different sounds (ravens, magpies, prey, coyotes, etc) all mixed in. I sold the FX3 about Feb last year and after selling it, I went out with some hand calls and called in coyotes 5 stands in a row. Hmmmmm....

I didn't think I'd get another Ecall after that, but during the summer I started thinking about some things I wanted to try and one of those was continuous corvid calls while I handled the prey distress. Another was making my own 20-30 minute series. And then there's the value of the E call in calling cats. So, just before this season started I got an NX3. After selling the FX3 and buying the new NX3, I was still $100 ahead.

This year, I've used the NX3 almost exclusively. I've missed 2 dogs because they came in too fast (as in "within 1 minute") and I just wasn't ready for them. Third dog, I missed with a hand call and I think if I've been using the NX3, I might have gotten him as he had me pin-pointed. The E-call might've given me a little leeway.

Best solution, IMHO? A calling buddy. Although when stormking and I went out last week we still let one get away!

So, I dunno!

 
I have only ever had one e caller and it was a cheap cass creek. I thought I had problems just because it was cheap. It seems that Even the expensive calls can have problems. I still use it put only when I see a coyote coming in to take the attention off of me. I mostly hand call and think that works best for me. If I want to stop I just stop If I want to call louder I just do so and If I need to change sounds I can do that too. I think I will just keep buying hand calls.
 
I've been pretty regularly disappointed by my FX5. I've had it freeze and not work in the cold. It sounds distorted at high volume and the remote range is terrible.

I went hunting with my brother-in-law yesterday and he uses one of the Wildlife Technologies calls. If I was ever to buy another e-caller that's the one I'd get. At least as far as I could see it performed as advertised.

Nate
 
I am an electrical engineer that works as a marketing person in lasers and optics. I think I can take a guess at the "problem" Foxpro is having.

The ecaller industry has exploded in popularity over the last few years. This is no secret. So, companies like Foxpro are under considerable pressure to stay ahead of the competition. Unfortunately, this means getting products to market fast with tons of (questionable) features. This also means things do not always get fully tested and developed properly. The reason why people rant and rave about their "customer service" is that people have to send so many of them back to fix things that should work without "fixing" the first time out. Gunowners and now ecaller buyers always rave about "customer service" when they really should be asking more about why the quality assurance is such that makes "customer service" necessary.

Foxpro is doing what it needs to to survive. That does not always equate to a 100% functional product. They need to make sales in a small and quickly saturating market. This means adding features of dubious value to make the product look good on paper. Reliability must be good. But, it doesn't have to be perfect. For the time being, the down economy is driving them to the low end of the market. There will be a shakeout in the industry. There are only so many predator hunters and the market is becoming saturated.

It is what it is. I am done with ecallers. When they are rock solid reliable and more affordable, I may jump back in.
 
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I use a Jhonny Stewart Pred 1. $35.00 It hasn't had any gliches in 3 yrs, batteries died once, but I was still using last years batteries.

Remote works out to 40-50 yards(farthest I set it), might work farther but I don't use it to call so much as to distract once the target is close. Usually a grey fox.

Made a bad shot in the woods one night and me and my buddy looked for 35 minutes in the woods for that fox, forgot I left my caller over a tree branch for 2 weeks while we had record breaking rain amounts.

I picked it up, hit the remote and it worked, and has continued to work.

I don't know what issues other may have, I certainly can';t complain. I use alot of hand calls too.
 
Originally Posted By: GJJI am an electrical engineer that works as a marketing person in lasers and optics. I think I can take a guess at the "problem" Foxpro is having.

The ecaller industry has exploded in popularity over the last few years. This is no secret. So, companies like Foxpro are under considerable pressure to stay ahead of the competition. Unfortunately, this means getting products to market fast with tons of (questionable) features. This also means things do not always get fully tested and developed properly. The reason why people rant and rave about their "customer service" is that people have to send so many of them back to fix things that should work without "fixing" the first time out. Gunowners and now ecaller buyers always rave about "customer service" when they really should be asking more about why the quality assurance is such that makes "customer service" necessary.

Well said.

The other parts of the story are the abomnible quality of the cheap electronic parts these days and the failure to do extreme value worst case analysis (costs money). Cheap is the key word - cost, as you say, is "everything".

The other part of the equation is volume. If it was a bigger market, turning out automobile quantities of units, the e-caller companies would have more units to amortize development cost and quality could go way up with out increasing price.

I'm an electrical engineer that spent 35 years in Aerospace. Our stuff (satellite power systems and rocket engine controllers for man rated vehicles) had to work, no way to get it back for repair 99% of the time. We made sure it worked. By the time we were done doing qual testing and pedigree testing on parts it would have resulted in e-calls that would have had to sell for a couple hundred grand each. But you could have sent them out from your stand by slingshot and they would still work.

Space Station boxes were different, they could come back on the shuttle, same for shuttle boxes but we tested them anyway. We investigated every single failure to root cause and frequently taught the electronic parts folks what was wrong with their wafer build and packaging processes when we had to have a part and the quality wasn't good enough.

Anymore, any company that is building electronics with out sending the parts out for sample based DPA (which costs money) is building them knowing they are going to have a significant failure rate. The parts are fine for kids toys (that will be broken before the parts fail) and room temperature use in domestic appliances, but take them outside and subject them to temperature extremes and the reliability goes way way down. They will be working when they ship, but not for months never mind years.

During visits to the Hi-Rel Lab for other reasons, I've seen bushel basket sized boxes of parts from companies making domestic home products going in the trash after they failed DPA. What we would see inside was truly egregious parts design and manufacturing practice. Sometimes the boxes have a list of the countries where the parts inside "might" have been made, but nothing is for sure.

It's hard to make reliable electronics these days. To tell the trugh I'm surprised stuff works as well as it does. But that won't stop me from buying an e-caller in the next couple of months.

I'm drooling all over my computer studying the CS-24, it looks like the most reliable packaging design to me. Here in PAQ I definitely need weatherproof. The other versions with bells, whistles, switches, and displays don't look like as inherently reliable a design, to many moving parts, so at this point the plan is to get a CS-24. I've almost got the cash saved up (my e-caller purchase suffered a setback when I got a remarkable deal on a used 3.5-10x40AO Leupold scope). I want to see it in person to be sure it looks as good as I think it should, so I'll see it at the BIG Show in Harrisburg in February to make a final decision. I've not been able to find one in a store. I called FoxPro and they will be there, so my hunting partner and I are going to the show to see the call. I'll have my money with me ... but I'm willing to walk away too if it doesn't look like I think it should.

Fitch
 
Originally Posted By: steve garrett I know foxpro is doing the best they can, but to tout how great the fury remote range is compared to the FX series is stretching it a bunch.

It's not stretching it at all. The FHSS range IS so much better.
 
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