Game Calls???

Oregon Fishing Guide · Oct 6, 2003

Hey Everyone,

Was just wondering if any of you have been successful in calling bear or cats? My son and I are going to give that a try this year and we are getting as much info. as we can about it. I have called coyotes quite a few times but never cats or bear. I am looking into gettting an electronic game caller and I keep hearing that wildlife technology is the best. We just looked at the Phantom yesterday. Anyone have any REAL advise and experiences with either. I am not sure I like the ones using CDs. It just looks too bulky and mechanical to work very long int he weather I can be in.

By the way, in my other post about the cat crap. It was cat crap. Between the 2 of us we ended up seeing 7 cats, 3 bears and 2 bobcats in a week. The farmers up there are so happy that we are hunting them that we now have 3 new private places to hunt so it should be good to us the next few years.

Thanks for any info. and you can call me or email me if are effective with calling bear and cats and would be willing to help us out. Call me on my dime. 1-877-347-4662 or email me and that is on MM. Later, Jon

Bearhunter · Oct 6, 2003

I have the Phantom Predator caller, it works great for coyotes, and I even scared one bear away with it, the only time I tryed to call bears though. We have been very succesful on coyotes with it. It is not extremely loud, and I have always been told that bears dont hear that well so you might want to go with something a little louder. One thing we do with coyotes is use a mouth call and the Phantom, generally the phantom brings them in a lot closer with bow range, because you can vary the noise level on the call. YOu can call real quite when they get in close. I want to try it out on bear more also. Good luck

Longliner · Oct 7, 2003

LAST EDITED ON Oct-07-03 AT 01:04PM (MST)[p]OFG: "I am looking into gettting an electronic game caller and I keep hearing that wildlife technology is the best. We just looked at the Phantom yesterday. Anyone have any REAL advise and experiences with either."

I've used and hunted over both callers. They both have good and bad points with any caller. As far as the Wildlife Technologies being the best, that's purely subject to personal opinion. While the library of actual animal sounds is immense with the WT, and it has one of the nicest remotes on the market, I think being a good hunter is more important than having a WT caller.

The Phantom is a good caller and is really taking the market by storm but I'm not that big of a fan. I hunted with a friend who used one a few times while pursuing livestock killing coyotes this summer and I didn't like it much.

The CD models aren't my cup of tea at all. The CD's scratch easily obligating you to burn numerous copies to use, and CD players as a whole are fragile enough that they don't stand up to field use well. I had one, I used it, I didn't like it.

If you really want to go electronic than the old standby; Johnny Stewart 512 is truly hard to beat. There are a couple other good tape callers on the market, the JS-512 has probably killed more predators than any other made though. The FoxPro is also an extremely nice caller and there are no tapes to contend with, as well as having a nice remote.

I personally think hand calls will be your best option though. They're easier to have complete control over to tailor your sounds to responding predators. You can easily manipulate sounds with an open reed caller to suit what you're calling, whereas an electronic means you're flipping through a remote to change sounds, etc.

"Was just wondering if any of you have been successful in calling bear or cats?"

When calling bears, I personally think you're best bet is to spot a bear prior to attempting to call. Calling fresh sign can be productive, but I truly think you're better to spot a bear first. While this is completely subject to debate, many bear hunters have observed bears, than played a distress sound, only to have some bears run, some bears respond, etc.

A prominent Montana bear outfitter conducted an informal study of this on observed bears and if I recall correctly only 35% of bears spotted responded to calls, while the other 65% were either uninterested or ran from the call. The most productive of the dozens of sounds used were bear vocalizations.

I've found bears most receptive to calls while travelling. When they're feeding they seem to have a rather one-track mind. If they're feeding, why would they walk half a mile to eat a fawn? Most don't seem to care. When they're traveling they seem to be in a better frame of mind to be interdicted.

Once I've spotted a bear, have the wind in my favor and am set up to call, I prefer soft elk calf or fawn distress sounds. You're not calling coyotes so there needs to be a separate approach. The reason spot-and-call is most productive is because you can watch the bear as you call. If the black speck you're calling to doesn't care about the fawn distress cries you're giving him, you can change sounds. More volume is not the answer. The bear can hear you. You can play with rabbit distress, lip squeaks, etc, and see what happens. When he starts responding, shut up, and only occassionally call using the sound that got him to respond. Each bear is an individual and one may hear a scream and come barreling in, while the next will lose interest if you don't provide rather constant sound. Yes, rather constant sound isn't the most realistic thing in the world, but realism in this case can be counterproductive.

That's an abridged synopsis of bear calling. Maybe it'll help?

Calling cats, whether lions or bobcats is a completely different game in and of itself.

Bearhunter · Oct 7, 2003

LL: What do you mean "does anyone have any REAL advise or expriences with either", I hope you werent suggesting that the response I gave was a wash. I was trying to get the post going and thought I would put in a little scenario that would start the post off. Not everyone is an expert.