Callers seem like they should be a simple and easy to use tool in Way of the Hunter. However, we often see a lot of misunderstanding and misinterpretation of how the different callers work. Some of this is simply based on our expectations, some on other experiences, and some just because of how callers work. Some callers, like the Duck and Goose, I could not even figure out how to effectively use them; meanwhile, others feel just completely broken such as using the Jackrabbit Predator Caller for large packs of animals. The rest, however, seem to be working fine and very consistently, albeit, with a little variance on some of the timings and phases.
Contents
Callers Guide
At the highest level, callers do exactly as the name implies: They call animals to your position (With the exception being birds – they are an exception and are addressed later specifically. All following info, unless otherwise stated, is related to all non-bird callers).
As we explore callers further, we find that there are a few common events while using callers. You Initiate the call and the animal walks in. It then will stop and stand there for several seconds. Following that, it will return to the herd. All mammal callers do this consistently, some with a few additional events. It is important to understand this basic sequence as all use relies on this understanding. Walk in, stop, return.
As you can see, callers work in a sequence. But there is a lot of variance as you are using callers. To begin with, on the first call you make, you MAY get what I call “bogies” coming in. These are animals which are responding, but really should not. A very common and known example is with the Deer Grunt Call. When you first call for a High Fitness Male, often a female is the first responder. The catch here is that you may have a Low Fitness Male respond on the first call as well or instead. This leads to a lot of confusion, and complaints of bugs. “Why did a low fit respond?!” “Why are Does coming into my high fit call?!” Common complaints, until you know this is normal. Is it a bug? That is for NRG to decide, but it is common and consistent across multiple callers. The good thing is they ONLY respond to the first call made. So, when the time comes for you to make your second call, they will stop responding to the caller, and eventually trot back to the herd.
The second piece of the sequence is when the animals stop coming in. In almost all callers, the animal will stop and stand still – sometimes calling. They will stay in this state for a short time, usually around 15 seconds or so. This is the third piece of the sequence and what I call the “shooting window”. But it is much more than that. It is also the EARLIEST point in which you should “re-call” on the caller to keep animals coming it. Note in ALL examples the “stop” point is well beyond the point on the caller bar that is the “thick middle section”. Many people tend to re-call shortly after the triangle gets over the thick part of the bar. This will not always, but often, cause animals to lose interest and trot back to the herd. This is of course another common complaint of callers, “My animal just turned back early!” Yes it did, but you caused it to by calling too early. When calling in the shooting window, I observed no animals losing interest with most callers.
If we make another call during the “shooting window” then the cycle starts again with another “walk in” phase. Here is where things first get more interesting. Depending on the caller, and the herd makeup you may get a second, or more, animals from the herd to start walking in. At this moment, things may look really confusing. You may have a doe, or some other bogies standing still, you may have a closer animal (or animals) begin walking towards you again, and you may have new animals begin walking in. Let’s assume 1 bogie, 1 first responder, and 1 new responder. The bogie will continue to stand there for a short while, and this is an obvious phase now, so you know that is not a responder whom you are looking for (High fit / Low fit / Doe etc). Do not shoot those, as they are not the right responder. However, you can have full confidence ANY animals walking in now, after the second call, do fit the requirements of the caller selected. These are your first actual safe responders to shoot.
As they continue to come in, they are on the same time sequence. So when one stops, they will all stop, within a few seconds. They (some or all) may call or not. But they will stop, and generally look around. You are back into the “shooting window” phase now. Again they will stand there for about 15 seconds before they move to the next phase, assuming you do not call again, to start the cycle for a third time (which if you do call again, you may pull even more responders).
Assuming you do not call, the time will pass through the shooting window, and here is where some callers act differently. (Maybe species specific). With the Deer Grunt, and Rattling Bag you will find at least White-tailed and Mule Deer will “alert”, sometimes with a call. This is not a “normal” alert, and it does not force the herd to act differently; but they consistently do this for a few seconds, but do not move. After a few seconds they will move to the next phase which is “trotting back”. This is where they will turn and trot back, usually, towards the herd or where they came from originally. Making a call now will, after they finish the current animation sequence they are in (usually taking a few seconds), turn them back and they will go into the “walk in” phase again. Occasionally you will lose interest with a few by waiting too long and doing this.
If you do not make another call while they are trotting back, they will not alert or spook your herd, they will just continue to trot around. If you do not make any calls for the rest of the call cycle, effectively letting the caller time out (about 1:50 from the most recent call), then you would have to start at the beginning again as if you have not called them at all.
To recap you have these phases: Walk in, stop, shooting window, *alert (some callers), trot back, caller time out. These are consistent across all of the mammal callers (except predators), but as we will explore now, some callers do have some different rules for what and how they call animals in.
Specific Caller Rules
*Note we are operating under the confirmed by NRG assumption all species for a given caller act and respond the same way.
Deer Grunt Caller
(Mule Deer, White-tailed Deer, Sitka Deer, Fallow Deer, Gemsbok, Greater Kudu)
We’ve explored the deer grunt, but I wanted to recap that it uses the “alert” phase as well as very often having bogies come in. But it also has a very limited “expected responder” list. Of course it has three levels. Level 1 – Does only. This will pull in any Doe of any age. Level 2 – Low fitness males. This will target only Mature Low Fit males. Level 3 – High Fitness males. This will target only Mature High Fit males. This is important as the Deer Grunt doesn’t seem to pull anything but mature males.
Primos Big Buck Rattling Bag
(Mule Deer, White-tailed Deer, Barren-ground Caribou, Sitka Deer, Black Wildebeest, Blue Wildebeest, Springbok)
We touched on this one as well. It only has two levels: Level 1 – Low Fitness Males. This will call in Low Fit males of ANY age. Level 2 – High Fitness Males. This will call in adult or mature high fit males. No young were observed responding to the High Fit caller.
Primos The Great Big Can Doe Bleat
(Mule Deer, White-tailed Deer, Sitka Deer)
This caller has a very limited use, but is a great way to see how making multiple calls will call in more animals. It only has one level, and it pulls all deer. Male or Female and of any age. Generally, it will pick up one more animal for each call cycle. This can be a good caller to practice letting animals walk back to the herd and recalling to keep them closer together while calling in.
Elk Caller
(Roosevelt Elk, Rocky Mountain Elk)
This caller is much less unique than some of the first callers. It only has two levels. Level 1 – Calls in Low fit males only. May be Adult or Mature. No young were observed responding. Level 2 – Calls in High Fit Matures. Only Matures were observed responding.
Moose Caller
(Western Moose, Alaska Moose)
This caller has 3 levels. Level 1 – will call in only females. Level 2 – will call in low fit males, adult and mature only. Level 3 – will call in high fit males, mature only.
Red Deer Caller
(Red Deer)
This caller has 2 levels. Level 1 – will call low fit males of any age. Level 2 – will call high fit males, only mature.
Hog Caller
(Wild Boar, Common Warthog)
This caller has three levels. Level 1 – will call ANY hog, male or female of any age. Level 2 – will call low fitness males which are Adult or Mature. Level 3 – will call high fitness males who are mature.
Primos Ki-Yi Predator Call
(American Black Bear, Gray Wolf, Red Fox, Brown Bear, Golden Jackal, Kodiak Bear, Lion, Spotted Hyena)
This caller only has two levels, but it’s mechanics are extremely complex as compared to most other callers. Level 1 – Low fitness animals of any age, including females. This caller is one where you truly need to make multiple calls if you want to use it for culling low fitness males.
The Low Fitness Level 1 call tends to start with females. Maybe just because of the male to female mix, but the result is often females come in first. Each subsequent call will pull another viable animal from the herd. With large groups, obviously, this puts a lot of females coming very close before the males. You can let them “alert” and walk back then call again and usually most of the previously called, plus a new animal, will come in. If you let the caller time out completely, then you have to start fresh with the first animal again.
However, you can “speed things up” by calling multiple times early, at the risk of losing interest of a few. Calling every 5-10 seconds pulls multiple lowfit and females much more quickly than by waiting out the full time of the first call. You can call, spot the herd and see who starts to come. If it is a female, wait 5-10 seconds from when you called, and call again. You should see a new member respond. Continue this until the male (if any) responds in order to cull. Speed spamming the call early just back to back to back did not seem to work as effectively as giving a small gap. Animals losing interest does not spook or alert them or the herd. Given the time it takes to cycle through the walk in cycle each time, I recommend using the “speed calling” until you see the first male respond. After the first call, you can be confident that it is a correctly responding male.
Level 2 is not nearly as complex to work with. It will just call in all high fitness males, of any age.
Jackrabbit Predator Caller
(Level 1 – Snowshoe Hare, European Hare)
(Level 2 – American Black Bear, American Badger, Gray Wolf, Red Fox, Brown Bear, Eurasian Badger, Golden Jackal, Kodiak Bear, Honey Badger)
This is probably the most unique of all callers. I also think it is potentially one of the most broken or at best least efficient to use, specially for Level 2 – Predators. This is made worse on large packs of predators. Note the calling times on this caller only, are different depending on the level.
Level 1 Hares. All hares, male or female, any age. This works just fine. Each call cycle adds a new responder as expected. There is no “Stop” or “Shooting Window” with hares. They just come in, hop around, then return.
Level 2 – Predators. This is a mess. *Note the bulk of the “pack” testing was done on Golden Jackals, it is possible other packs respond differently, albeit unobserved by me.
It does call all predators, male or female of any age when calling large packs. When calling pairs it sometimes will call both, or one and sometimes will eventually bring in the second or not. I was unable to determine any logic behind the responders. It usually uses the same logic as others, where additional calls made during the appropriate “shooting window” will bring additional responders. However, very often the responders already coming lose interest and turn back well before you can bring them in close. This is consistent, and seems to happen regardless of age or sex. Effectively it makes the caller borderline useless on large packs of predators, and only semi-effective on smaller ones. On a good note the Ki-Yi covers all of the same predators except for badgers, and I would absolutely use the Ki-Yi instead of this one. However, this is your only option to call badgers.
Bird Callers
I cannot affirm how these are designed to work, or have much useful information on using them. I was unable to see any benefit at all.
Primos The Original Wench Duck Call
(Lesser Scaup, Surf Scoter, Wild Duck, Egyptian Goose)
This single level caller does seem to usually make the entire flock fly lower. It does not direct them to you, nor make them land. All I observed was that it would lower the altitude of a responding flock. Yes, Egyptian Goose is correct for the caller, as it is a duck not a goose, regardless of the name.
Duck Call / Goose Call
(Duck Call – Lesser Scaup, Wild Duck)
(Goose Call – Ross’s Goose, Greylag Goose)
These callers never did anything consistently that I found valuable. Calling nearby flying birds usually resulted in nothing (of course birds on the ground did nothing as expected). If they happened to be landing “near” you, maybe it pulled them a little closer. However, the closest landing flock I had was just over 90m away. That is not useful. I could not see any changes in timing or behavior while using either call. In their current state, I classify these two callers as 100% useless and add no value.
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