Which do you prefer?

Why?

Both have advantages. Using an e-caller is easier in some ways. Sounds are there, determine volume, and push a button. The varmint usually responds. Mouth calls require some practice. Like anything else the more you practice the better you can become. Mouth calls do give an infinite number of variations, seldom blow the same exact call, easy to carry, and it is fun to have done it yourself. Sort of like catching a trout on a fly you tied your self.

It is simpler and much less expensive to start with a mouth call and if you add an e-caller you can practice duplicating calls. For a good open reed call I would suggest Crit'R Call, for a closed reed a Buck Gardner (the one with the squeaker built in), and the FoxPro Skyote is an easy to blow howler. Really the choices are endless. For an e-caller any FoxPro fitting the budget would work fine.

I hunt a lot of tight cover, high sage, Russian olive groves, thick Palo Verde and just plain forests. an e-caller with a remote gives me many more opportunities as the predator is focused on the caller and not me, we're talking feet sometimes let alone yards.

In open country a hand call works just fine if I have a good stand, if I have to sit more in the open dealing with a hand call is just too much movement for me and I break out a e-caller with a remote and get the sound away from me.

I have e-callers(M-1 Bandit) that fits in a pocket that is almost always with me.

If hunting alone an ecaller with remote. If I have a partner a hand call. I think I call more with a hand call than with an ecaller. Problem is that with a hand call in the heavy timber and brushy creek bottoms I hunt they have you pinpointed and nailed down before I can ever get a glimpse of the critter.

E caller with moving decoy, or have used a feather tied to a stick to create movement. Coyote will be looking at the movement where the sound is coming from. Have had them run right up to the caller and decoy, before they knew what was about to hit them. Have several hand calls in my pack on standby, but really only used them when caller malfunctions or batteries give out. Using hand calls is an art.

Both....depends on the set-up and response....

Hand caller for me. I can put 'feeling' into my calls, kind of like " hey, I'm dying over here. Hurry up". That, I believe, can set me apart from an electronic call.

Foxpro makes very good callers. It seems like everyone and his brother have one, and for good reason: they work.

However, precisely because of their popularity, they may not be as effective in the later season, on heavily hunted grounds.

A new coyote hunter may not select his stand properly and coyotes come to the call but they smell him. If this happens more than once to the same coyote, I would suspect the coyote to learn from that and either be very cautious coming in, or not coming in at all (to the Foxpro sound).

Even worse is if the new guy with the Foxpro takes a shot and misses. That coyote just earned a Phd. for that sound.

electronic 99% of the time these days. Killed lots of coyotes before the ecall was born, but the fact is the ecall can do what I can't with hand calls, by a long shot. And when hunting solo, the ecall is like having a partner doing the calling and me sitting in the prime spot to get the shot.

I've been calling critters since 1963, Arizona to the Yukon, and agree with the trend of answers already posted. It is not so much which is better as it is which to use in a given situation. An electronic call won't make a good hunter out of a poor one. I have at least one open reed call around my neck all of the time when hiking or hunting for anything. An open reed call can make a wide variety of sounds to call most anything in North America, though my all time favorite call is a closed reed Weems in jackrabbit distress voice. That Weems has called well over 20 species of critters from grizzlies to pine martens and coyotes as well. Hand calls work.

I bow hunted a lot in tight cover using a hand call and it forces you to learn how to take advantage of animal tendencies as they approach a call sound.

For me, an electronic call really comes into its own for big cats. They are obsessive about seeing the source of the sound while staying hidden, so an electronic set away from me has them looking at the call rather than at me. Like TRnco said, an electronic call lets you set up a solo calling stand with the advantages of a two man ambush.

Most new callers focus on the sound. IMO precise sound is the least critical of several factors in calling, if the call sound is anywhere close.

I use a FoxPro almost exclusively. I do keep a hand call with me at all times, and do sometimes use it. But, the ecall just works better for me. I usually hunt alone, and it's easier for me to run the ecall, and use a decoy. I will say this though, the surge in coyote hunting popularity and the availability and lower pricing of the ecalls, have led to smarter coyotes. If you call one in using a FoxPro, you'd better kill it, or else you've educated that one.

I've had zero luck with electronic calls other than for crows.

They don't behave real well in -30 weather either.

I kinda grew to despise them.




Travis

Mouth call as I howl 75% of the time.

Open areas calls are OK.

Tight areas they tend to get me busted because they call the critters in too close.

Cold is an issue as stated, but it's easier seeing something flank you when they go to a call vs. come straight at you if you are calling.

Spot

Neither do my fingers.

You have every flea-bitten critter educated down there yet?
Might come down to Big Sandy for a while to do some work and see some country.

LouisB: I have and use both types - have done so for many decades.
On the "cooler" days here in Montana my "mouth calls" become a pain to use due to "freeze up" - and that seems to always occur at the most inopportune times!
And then you have to thaw them out in your armpit.
I have never had an electronic call malfunction in the cold.
I recommend getting and using both.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy