Western Rivers Stalker 360 Varmint Call

by Tom Claycomb III

I met Ben Smith with GSM Outdoors a couple of years ago at the SHOT Show and he demo’d his line of gear to me. One item that I was particularly interested in was his Stalker 360 Varmint Call. This year I saw him again and before long I was testing one out.

If you’ve read many of my articles you know that I love varmint hunting and hunt them in multiple states. The 360 has some unique features. To begin with, it comes in a nice carrying case with a shoulder strap. That may not sound like a big deal but if you’ve tried one of the other many options on the market you’ll know how it’s semi hard to carry them out in the field. Plus, it’s easy to lose some of the pieces. With the Stalker’s 360 carrying case it’s easy to keep all the pieces together.

The speakers rotate 180 degrees so you’re able to cover 360 degrees. As you know from calling with other callers you have to point them in the direction that you want to call. With this one I can rotate which way I want to sound to blow with the push of a button.

Many calls only come with a limited amount of prerecorded sounds, so they nickel and dime you to death by forcing you to buy more sounds. The Stalker comes with 400 calls. Granted, some of them I don’t think that you’ll ever use. For instance, a tiger, monkey and so forth but even if you weed those out, I think you’ll still have all the sounds you’ll need. But you can go online and buy more.

The only issue with having 400 different calls is that it takes a while to scroll through them all to get to your desired sound. This is rectified by being able to have a screen and store your favorite calls. So if you’re going coyote and crow hunting, download all of those sounds to your favorite selection.

I just got my call and am playing with it and learning. I was in Texas last weekend on a coyote, crow and coon hunt. We called in the day time as well as at night. One thing if you’re calling at night, every time that you change calls the screen on the call will light up. It is a greenish color so I don’t think that it would spook your game but if you’re worried I’d suggest folding over a piece of cardboard over the screen to cover it.

One big benefit of using an electronic call is being able to set it out a ways from you so the animals will come in focusing on the call and not you. Then of course you’ll want to use scent cover and an attractant lure as well. I use a lot of Tink’s products.

I also use decoys. They hear noise and come in expecting to see something. I like using Montana Decoys since they’re light and easy to carry. I also like using an attractant decoy like a Cass Creek Waggler. Varmints like to see movement. Western Rivers also makes a decoy that attaches to the caller.

One other unique feature of this call are the speakers. As stated above you can use your remote to rotate them in the desired direction. To save the life of your batteries you can only operate one speaker at a time with the push of a button.

I think that I’m really going to like this call. For more info, visit www.western-rivers.com.