Walkie Talkies

[ATbuckhunter]

What walkie talkies do you guys use (if you use them) for hunting? We only use them when we're doing deer drives on LI, but the ones we use can be very spotty in the woods. They're a huge asset to have when we're organizing drives,  but it gets annoying when we have a hard time getting in touch with each other

[mowin]

Motorola talk about. Don't remember what model. They have a 30+ mile range and 20 some channels with 120 privacy codes a group can choose from to keep the conversations within your group.  Your not going to get close to 30m in the mountains though. 

They work well.  Yrs ago we had commercial Motorola's that we ordered with programed channels. Like the ones road crews would use. They were expensive, but worked great.  As our group grew, most didn't want to spend almost $200 for a radio, so those got phased out for OTC radios. 

[Dr Juice]

We ditched the walkie talkies since all of us have cell phones. 

[Bolt Action]

I have a set of Cobra that I picked up a few years back. Love 'em. We use them when hiking, kayaking, driving on long trips if we have multiple cars, etc. They're waterproof and they float. Got them on ebay for something like $30 new for a pair with a charging base. The advertised range is something like 80 miles with clear lines of sight, but in the real world they get about 2 miles before they get spotty and cut out. Sometimes I'll be at a neighbors house with one and give the other to my 9 year old son who's home by himself. That way he can contact me if he needs to. He loves it.. I'll be at my neighbor's house watching a game or what not and suddenly it'll cackle with "Red Leader this is Gold Leader, do you copy? Red Leader this is Gold Leader. I need toilet paper Red Leader. Do you copy?" hahaha

[Bucksnbows]

I use Motorolas for our river restoration work between crews, but we just text now in deer camp.  

[Moho81]

Great topic. I’ve tried a few different brands never the top of the line most expensive ones but they always really lacked in range. Sometimes it’s hard to hear a guys that’s only 400-500 yards away through the trees. We don’t use em much anymore besides for deer drives to get organized and to keep everyone informed and safe. 

[ATbuckhunter]

6 hours ago, Dr Juice said:

We ditched the walkie talkies since all of us have cell phones. 

Normally we use phones while bow hunting and stand hunting, but on drives it can be problem to use cell phones. We try to have a minimum of 4 guys for drives so radios are the best option for us

[ATbuckhunter]

59 minutes ago, Moho81 said:

Great topic. I’ve tried a few different brands never the top of the line most expensive ones but they always really lacked in range. Sometimes it’s hard to hear a guys that’s only 400-500 yards away through the trees. We don’t use em much anymore besides for deer drives to get organized and to keep everyone informed and safe. 

That's the problem we're having. We try to have drives that are around that length or more depending. Sometimes the driver/s can only get in contact with the closest guy and that guy has to now relay messages

[Moho81]

22 minutes ago, ATbuckhunter said:

That's the problem we're having. We try to have drives that are around that length or more depending. Sometimes the driver/s can only get in contact with the closest guy and that guy has to now relay messages

What we generally do on the longer drive distances is have a leader of the drivers and a leader of the sitters. The leader of the driver calls the leader of the sitters via cell phone to get the ball rolling then eventually the sitters will start to hear the drivers over the radios once we can hear each other we let everyone know and communication is by radio only at that point. It's not the best but it works and keeps everyone informed. 

I have thought about purchasing a more expensive radio but for the few times a year it's actually needed it just does not seems worth it. 

[ATbuckhunter]

54 minutes ago, Moho81 said:

What we generally do on the longer drive distances is have a leader of the drivers and a leader of the sitters. The leader of the driver calls the leader of the sitters via cell phone to get the ball rolling then eventually the sitters will start to hear the drivers over the radios once we can hear each other we let everyone know and communication is by radio only at that point. It's not the best but it works and keeps everyone informed. 

I have thought about purchasing a more expensive radio but for the few times a year it's actually needed it just does not seems worth it. 

That system can definitely work and is sort of similar to what we do. We don't have leaders of the drives since its normally just one guy doing drives (Usually me since I'm about 20 years younger than most of the guys). Our problem is we don't have enough guys that learn the drives. Its usually just me and the guy who taught me that know the drives and where to put every one. Everyone else either hasn't done it enough to remember the drives, or somehow always got out of doing the drives and never learned them. If we had more guys that were familiar with the drives, we wouldn't have as much of a need for the radios. We do drives about 4 or so days out of the year, so I guess I have to think if its worth the money for the radio.