Desert Hunter

Rule of 10. For ease of use and simpler file keeping I picked teams of ten sounds. Using ten well chosen is sufficient for most situations.

This game is rigged even more. Each team of ten has to have two birds, 3 rabbits, fox, a crow, a coaxer and a canine distress or whine. The tenth sound is the "any critter" sound. Any set of ten was filled with the arguably best-available sound. Any group should have a fair chance on any hunt. Requiring 10 in this fashion probably favors libraries with more breadth than depth with one kind of sound, but on the hunt a team would be able to counter more kinds of common action.

Reconciling a couple of thousand data points, these were the best in quality, urgency, cadence, and loop length from this subset of noises.

1 set of ten = 1 day of hunting

Playing just the first 5 distress sounds 3 times each = 15 stands.

This list doesn't rank #1, #2, #3....; rather, it's meant to be a programming guide so any branded caller knows what he's got and what he needs.Three sets of ten each will fill a long weekend, never get boring, and hopefully bring in some critters. Programmed in this strange order, they're easy to find and play. A caller is never more than a few button presses or a few lines on the display away from the sound he might need in a lot of common scenarios.

I tried to build sets from anyone who recorded them and was close to a set of their own. A few odd members were swapped in just because they were too good to leave out. Looking at the results, it didn't matter whether a sound was an MP3 download, proprietary file, CD transfer, or cassette tape rip. The sounds on this page deserve to be here.

Final score for quality sounds: 1st place - Foxpro - 44; 2nd place - Johnny Stewart - 36

JS-Johnny Stewart; TT-Tony Tebbe; MO-Minaska Outdoors; BB-Burnham Bros.; FP-Foxpro; LB-Lohman Bros.; OP-Odd Parts and personal favorites; WT-Wildlife Tech (substituted a Foxpro bird that was far superior to any WT bird)