A friend of mine and I had discussed which could be heard the farthest, a mouth blown call or electronic call. The other day we decided to test some different calls just to see. We were in touch by cell phone while we were doing this. He was about a half mile from me. I started out by blowing a couple different closed reed distress calls. These were both jackrabbit reed calls. He couldn't hear either one of those calls. Next I tried an open reed distress call. He could hear it. Next I did some coyote howls on 2 different open reed calls and he could hear them but they were not as loud as we had expected they would be at that distance.
Next, using a Foxpro Spitfire electronic call I played a Jackrabbit distress. The Spitfire only has 5 different volume settings. Volume setting 4 doesn't seem overly loud but he could hear it better than the open reed distress call. When I increased the volume to level 5, he could even hear it while talking to me on the phone.
When I played the coyote vocals on the Foxpro they were much louder than coyote howls from the open reed howlers.
The thing with an electronic call is that with the horn speaker, they are very directional. If you set out an electronic caller, turn it on and go out about 200 yards and walk a circle around it you will find that when you are in front of the speaker you can hear it very well but when you are on he back side of the speaker you can barely hear it, if at all.
I use both electronic and mouth blown calls but I mainly use the electronic in open country where I am confident in which direction the coyotes are from me so I can direct the sound towards them.
One thing that works well especially if you are using a decoy is to put the electronic call next to the decoy and turn the volume down low and just let it play while you call with your mouth calls. Once you spot the coyote or fox just stop with your mouth calls and let the electronic call and decoy bring them on in.
