Flextone FLX500 Fox Call

The Flextone FLX500 caller from Wild Game innovations is a new take on the popular market for tools to help draw foxes or vermin, either for photographic purposes or perhaps more importantly to us shooters, vermin control. The FLX has three speakers and a casing that when unlatched with rubber shock cords from the central hub, fold out and allow the unit to be positioned and somewhat focussed directionally toward your hoped direction of quarry approach. The unit requires 10x AA batteries that fit within a detonator-like removable cylinder from the belly of the unit. These provide ample long-lasting power for the three speakers and modest visual display. All control buttons are rubber and reasonably easy to control wearing gloves, alongside a very bright green centre display screen. The case has a generous shoulder strap, as it weighs 2061-grams ready to go. To be fair, large speakers require large magnets and serious battery capacity, whose weight cannot be defeated by magical means.

Remote Control

A remote is supplied with the caller, allowing a 150-yard range from the main unit. You can set things going from the main unit but the remote is more versatile, with a large 60mm display screen and generous button sizes making control very intuitive, you won’t need the instructions. It’s 155mm long and fills your hand but I saw it as no detriment, as the 60mm (diagonal) display screen is far easier to read in any light conditions and can be set with black, white or brown backgrounds and correspondingly obvious primary colours to prevent it illuminating your face in the dark. It won’t decay your own night vision ability, as your pupils close down as much either.

Having nice, well-separated rubberised buttons for individual functions makes control far easier than countless menu ‘tree’ systems and control ‘streams’ with multiple stages. Folding the wings with secondary speakers open and closed allows you to shape your sound and certainly creates a more aimed approach, without using volume alone to fill your landscape, but although you can setup to use either centre or side speakers only, I mostly left all three engaged, as I rarely require the unit to avoid reflections from buildings in my relatively open spaces with little structural interference. Both the remote and main unit have individual battery power indicators, which is a real benefit and I liked the ability to store the remote slotted into its own specific pouch on the carry strap.

Quarry Species Variety

Foxes are realistically the main aim of this unit and although the 100 supplied calls range from bears to wolves, with rabbits and owls etc. along the way, you can add more for up to 500 in total. Rubber shielded ports are sited underneath to accept mini USB plug, 3.5mm audio in jack or SD cards to use the unit for any kind of speaker you desire and it will happily play music should you so desire at BBQs.

With simple ladder-type menu, selecting your desired choice is linear without confusing sub menus. Arranged in species type, you can scroll quickly in well-defined order and easily compare multiple call types in real time if you happen to have a willing ‘client’ loitering to listen to them. Like a car radio, if you hold the `fav1` or `fav2` buttons down, it will automatically assign these to specific calls intended for regular use and I particularly liked the 1-30 volume display function that means you can get all set-up before you spring everything into life, I prefer to increase volume steadily but the mute button is fast to engage.

A Little Crackling

I did find a little bit of interference on occasion and you can notice the odd scratchy crackle here and there. Calls or test samples of higher quality from the SD card played with better clarity, so it’s seemingly down to the quality and file size of what you are willing to add on.

SD cards of 32GB are less than £10 these days. I really liked SD card functionality, as these are really becoming a new currency for information storage and accessibility. The main unit and remote take a few seconds to couple together when updated, so all menus contain the latest additions to your available call options. Playing around with the speaker configuration demonstrated the centre cone to be slightly more distorted aurally, but very powerful and focussed projection in its ‘zone’.

Use of twin side speakers gave a far gentler sound with more sheer volume and a far broader spread of any call used. Flipping between centre/side/all speaker modes gave a significant feel of movement in the location of the caller, but this is somewhat subjective to the opinion of our own human ears, although I don’t think it will do anything to harm the effectiveness of a device for which I somewhat unfortunately found an ‘easy customer to please’ on my second foray using it. Long term battery capacity is yet to be ascertained but will always depend on volume and overall hourly usage but the screens draw little juice and one thing I will say for the FLX is that playing around with the sound and functions never seems to get boring but the versatility and long term adaptability, with ease of control, makes for a great tool in any pest controller’s armoury.

Conclusion

A nice electronic fox call option that’s stands out for its quality feel and ease of operation. It may be a little larger and heavier than alternatives but battery capacity and speaker ability doesn’t come for free. SD card functionality is very quick to use and transfer calls from/to.

Price:

£169.99

Contact:

011556 503 587, www.scottcountry.co.uk