I do somewhat agree with you. What I said in my original post about living in a technology crazed/dependent world is true IMO. People cannot live without their cell phones and data packages. I use and depend on mine as well so I'm not one to talk. The first thing people do when they're interested in something is to look it up on the internet. They will get inundated with info about ecallers. When it comes to the new generation, unless they've had a mentor that used hand calls they will probably never even use one. That's not to say it will destroy the past, but I think most treat it as vintage anymore, which is a shame. Nothing like blowing a handcall and seeing a coyote racing in.
I think a lot of us grew up hunting way before "good" ecallers were available. When I started hunting we only used hand calls. I used to tune the voices to get them sounding more like I wanted. I had high pitched ones, gravelly sounding ones and a few howlers. We're talking 80's an 90's, way before the internet or cell phones were around. In a way it's kind of cool to have come up during that era - pre internet/cell phone. We've seen/lived and experienced the way we used to do it before internet, vs the way everyone does it now. I think it gives a pretty good perspective to what actually works better (some stuff definitely) and what is just different. Do I think ecallers have obsoleted handcalls? No way. But, there is no denying how effective ecallers are. A lot of good comments already about the positives and they're all true. For a solo hunter, which I did a lot of, they are WAY WAY better. It's like having a really good calling partner that lets you do all the shooting. I remember way back when, shotgun hunting an area with groves of joshua trees. Thick stuff, not a lot of visibility. We'd walk into the wind and setup usually standing inside a grove of trees. Handcalls didn't work too great because stuff would be on you before you saw them, usually running away. I made up a cassette (stewart cottontail) with 2 minutes of silence at the beginning so I could get back to my stand. Put it in my ghetto blaster and set it 20 yards in front of us. I remember thinking at the time how awesome it would be to have something remote controlled. Lol. Now look at us.
