In November of 2016, my dad introduced me to one of his friends that had recently won the World Coyote Calling Championship. I had the opportunity to pick his brain about coyote equipment and he told me that the Lucky Duck Revolution E-Caller was the best electronic call he’d ever heard. The next day I did some research and found that my local Cabela’s had one in stock. I called and Cabela’s held it for me until I could drive the hour to go pick it up.
I got to play with the Lucky Duck Revolution over Thanksgiving, in the dark with night vision, and called two coyotes in to my in-laws neighborhood with houses, dogs, and people. They came right in. A week or two later I used it in the daylight to call in coyotes that were killing a local rancher’s sheep.
I had numerous other successes with the caller including winning the Idaho State Coyote Calling Championship in January. My hunting partner and I called in six coyotes on our first stand, three on our second, and two on our third.
Idaho got blasted with snow and cold weather in January and we ended up hiking miles on snowshoes in below zero weather to make our three stands because you couldn’t get off the roads with a vehicle and the contest rules didn’t allow using anything with tracks, like a snowmobile.
The coyotes weren’t hungry because the snow was deep and where we were they were killing deer. We had to get within about a half a mile of the coyotes in order to get them to come. I’ve only experienced a handful of things that are more exciting than watching six coyotes charging towards me at full speed with teeth barred.
I’ve owned other electronic callers for years, having bought my first one in college, and I’ve had decent success. However, none of my other callers sounded as good, got coyotes as excited, or gave me as much success as I’ve already had with this one in just a couple of months.
The brains behind the Lucky Duck Revolution E-Call belong to Rick Paillet AKA “Verminator” who is an extremely knowledgeable predator caller with years of professional experience. The sounds on the Lucky Duck Revolution are proprietary and can’t be used on any other caller. They are also not available anywhere else.
The sounds are what make this call special. You may get more refined features and a better remote with other brands but when it comes right down to it, the sounds are what call the predators and this has the best sounds. It comes preloaded with 100 sounds and it will play other file types including .wav and .mp3. It will hold up to 2000 sounds. The sounds are stored on an SD card and the card can easily be removed and updated on your computer.
The Lucky Duck Revolution has some great features. One them is that it stores a decoy in the handle. Many other callers charge you another hundred dollars for the decoy. The decoy is included and it has two speeds controlled by the remote control. It takes all of 15 seconds to pull the decoy out and put it in the caller. The decoy helped draw the coyotes attention to the call instead of putting it on me, which gave me more time to be ready to shoot.
The caller has a motorized rotating base so that the direction of the call sound can be rotated and controlled with the remote. Rotating the base allows you to give the illusion of movement or to point the call in a different direction without having to get up and move the call. The Revolution comes with a short folding tripod but can be attached to any tripod.
The revolution has an HD video camera in the unit. I could live without the feature but there has been some pretty cool video taken of coyotes almost on top of the unit and some people will love the feature.
My original Revolution that I bought at Cabela’s had an issue with the speaker amp. When the temperature got down about -10 it would cut out. I called and Rick immediately sent me out a new one. The newer one has worked perfectly down to -25. Only a few of the first few released had this issue with the amp. I’m happy to report that Lucky Duck’s customer service was fantastic.
I bought the rechargeable battery pack and I think it’s money well spent. It will easily last an entire day of calling. In fact, I’ve gone several days and just charged it because I felt like I should and not because it was dead. You charge the battery by plugging the cable into the call. You don’t’ need to remove the batteries.
The caller itself is made from plastic. It weighs 4.64 lbs including the battery pack, remote, decoy, and steel tripod. It’s not waterproof but I have used it on snow and while it was snowing and have had no problems.
The highest volume on the Revolution is acceptably loud. It’s crystal clear on the highest volume and doesn’t distort. I’ve had coyotes howl back from as far away as two miles and maybe further. I know how far they were because I walked out to them.
The remote is supposed to work to 300 feet. I haven’t measured because I don’t put the call that far away from me but have no reason to believe it wouldn’t work that far. The “favorite sounds” presets are easy to set and there are four of them down the right side of the remote. You simply hold them down for a couple seconds and they set to whatever sound the unit is on… super easy. The right side also has the aux button and F5 changes the amp power settings.
The left side of the remote has the power button and the buttons that control the decoy and the base rotation. In the middle, you have the lcd screen and the buttons that navigate the menu of sounds. Also, in the middle are the buttons that control the volume, and the camera.
My only complaints with the Lucky Duck Revolution have to do with the remote. The buttons are hard to navigate when wearing thick gloves. I was using it in -25 weather which required gloves. Also, the buttons on the sides can get depressed when wearing gloves by just holding the unit in your hand. In the dark, the screen is too bright. It works great in daylight but there’s no way to turn down the brightness for use in the dark. Also, I’d like to see glow in the dark paint on the buttons as they are impossible to see in the dark. If you don’t hunt in the dark or in miserably cold conditions then these aren’t really issues.
UPDATE: I’ve just been informed that a new remote will be available soon with updated features. The update will take care of all the things I didn’t like and will be available to those of us who have already bought a unit.
The good news is that if you break or lose your remote, the hunt doesn’t have to end. The main unit can still be manually operated with the buttons on the side.
Once again, there are units available on the market with more features and better remote. If those features are important to you then buy those units. To me, the most important feature an electronic predator call possesses are it’s sounds and the quality of the sound coming from the speaker. The Lucky Duck Revolution has both great sounds and a quality amp and speaker that make a winning combination.
If this call were stolen/lost and I could replace it with any call on the market, I’d buy this one again.
You can purchase the Lucky Duck Revolution E-Caller HERE at Cabela’s