Western Rivers – Nite Stalker Review
By Doug Kellermann
December 2008
A rule of thumb I have always followed is not to buy a replacement until I sold the original. However, I made an exception with the Western Rivers Nite Stalker. After seeing and handling the Nite Stalker while in Cabela’s, I decided to purchase the unit without selling my Western Rivers Predation.
The initial reasons I purchased the Nite Stalker were:
· Price $500
· Ease of use and fit of the remote in my hand
· Sound name Display on both the base unit and remote
· Lifetime warranty
· Prior positive experience with Western Rivers products
First Impressions
The caller, remote, cables and battery holder all fit in the padded case. At first I was indifferent about the case but have found the case to be very useful. Keeping all the calling equipment together in one place has proven very useful. On my case the top padding kept falling down. A dab of glue on each corner has held the top padding securely in place.
A 9v battery powers the remote and 8 AA batteries power the caller. I have used both regular and rechargeable batteries and have not found any performance differences between the regular and rechargeable batteries. This leads me to believe the Nite Stalker was designed for rechargeable batteries. After comparing regular batteries to rechargeable batteries I have been only using rechargeable batteries without any issues.
The caller comes with 2 GB of storage, which is massive. To put this in perspective I created several 20minute sounds, which use 20 MB each. On the Nite Stalker I am able to store 100 sounds that are 20mb or 20 minutes long. With the automatic loop feature on the Nite Stalker I am now keeping my sounds to 5 minutes/5mb or less which allows me to store 400 sounds. Interestingly I found the Nite Stalker only recognizes 400 sounds. If you put 500 sounds on the Nite Stalker it would only recognize the first 400 sounds.
Use
The first time I used the caller was with my 2 year old daughter who has mastered the use of the remote. We walked about 50 yards from the house and started playing the crow sounds on full volume it was loud. I don’t have any tools for measuring the sound volume but it was a lot louder than the Predation.
The remote fits comfortably in my hand and is easy to use. The display on the remote is backlit in green and shows 7 lines, which are readable by me with out any reading aides (e.g. reading glasses).
The remote has a scroll forward feature which scrolls through 10 sounds at a time. Given the display shows 7 lines at a time the highlighted sound tends to move on the screen, I found this to be interesting but not an issue.
The caller has 2 speakers with one being able to be turned on or off using the remote or directly on the Nite Stalker. My initial distance test was out to 200 yards line of sight on a windy day. My daughter and I where playing with the caller and decided to play the hog distress and crow sounds. We started with the hog distress call and within 2 minutes a group of 5 hogs came running out of thick cedar about 50 yards from the caller. I had always heard that hogs don’t respond to calls, however they clearly responded to the hog distress sound. We immediately turned off the sound and waited for the hogs to leave. I can’t wait to try out the hog sounds when I am actually hunting for hogs.
The Nite Stalker has a display on both the remote and caller. Many times at night while hunting out of the back of our RTV (Kubota’s version of a Mule) I have used only the caller because it also displays the sounds. A feature I found very useful is the ability to select a new sound while playing a sound, without disrupting the sound playing. Two other interesting features are the automatic loop feature, stop/play that replaces the need for a pause or mute. Initially I thought they had left off the mute button and pause button. To pause or mute a sound I press the stop and play to continue the sound. Pressing the play, after pressing stop, continues the sound where it was paused.
The remote has all the same features as the unit except the remote does not have power on/power off capabilities over the caller. When using the power button on the remote it puts the caller in a sleep mode, not power off. Also, if the caller is fully powered off the remote will not power the caller on.
Whenever sounds are added or when sounds are removed the remote needs to be updated with the sound list. To update the remote I just turn on the Nite Stalker, plug in the remote and turn on the remote. The Nite Stalker automatically updates the report.
The Nite Stalker uses the same decoys and cables as the Predation. The decoys use the power from the Nite Stalker and the remote controls the power on/off for the decoy.
The Nite Stalker comes with 400 sounds. Initially I thought I was going to use my purchased sounds and not use the sounds provided with the unit. However after working with the sounds I found that I added most to my list of sounds. Also I like the ability to load the sounds you need. I have created folders that I keep the sounds in and to load them onto the Nite Stalker is as simple as copying the folder on to the Nite Stalker. An interesting unpublished feature is that the Nite Stalker displays the sounds that are in folders. The ability to copy folders on to the Nite Stalker has allowed me to easily copy the folders I need onto the Nite Stalker. This is much easier than copying individual sounds. I have folders for Coyote, Attractor, Raccoon, Turkey, Crow, Hog, Elk and a few others.
I have been using the Nite Stalker for several months in rain, fog, near freezing conditions without any issues. I like the Nite Stalker and have recommended it to friends. In my opinion, it is a well-built easy to use unit.
An area of improvement would be a larger screen that shows10 or more sounds. The current screen works for me but I can see how a larger screen would be easier to read especially at night. A screen size that is 3 inches by 2 inches which would be a huge improvement over the current 1.5 inches by 1 inch and would allow for a larger font and more text on the screen. Another area would be better organization of the sounds.
Advanced Tricks
The 400 sounds are too many for me to use on one outing. I ended up copying the files onto CD so I would always have access to the sounds if I needed them. I also copied the sounds onto my PC’s hard disk.
Next folders were created for each sound type (Coyote Calls, Attractor, Raccoon, Crow, Turkey) then the sounds were copied into the respective folder. Placing the sounds into folders made it very easy to copy the sounds onto the Nite Stalker, the folder needed to be copied.
The Nite Stalker allows folders to be copied onto the drive with the sounds displayed. For example all the sounds in the Coyote Folder are displayed on the Nite Stalker LED.
I have not sold the Predation but have started using it with the Nite Stalker to have 2 sounds playing at the same time. Playing the raccoon fight on the Predation with the squealing bird on the Nite Stalker has produced some great results.
