As with most things in life, the more it costs the better quality you get, usually, as goes with electronic calls! Are they better than hand calls, well, depends on who you talk to. With hand calls, you can vary the tone, which will give you a unique sound from the next guy, where as when you turn on the e caller, the sound it makes is the sound you get, until you change tapes. When you see the critter coming to the call, with hand calls you can call when needed, change the pitch or volume easily, harder to do with the e-calls. With e-calls, you can put the speaker out away from your position, allowing you to get away with a little, and I stress the "LITTLE" movement when you may need to move to get in postion for the shot. When using hand calls, if the critter has visual contact with you while you are calling, it will be watching you very closely, so getting away with movement can be tricky. Hand calls weigh next to nothing, if you do alot of walking, the e-calls get heavy after awhile in comparison. Hand calls won't run out of battery power, ever! Some hand calls, mostly the closed reed calls, can and will freeze up in really cold weather.E-calls can also be used to call other game such as crows, snow geese, etc., I get more satisfaction out of using hand calls to call the critters in, it's you the hunter doing the calling, and not a recording. As stated by Edward, cottontail distress is very popular, jack rabbit distress works well too, baby coyote or fox distress, and woodpecker works well sometimes too. Good Luck! They can be lots of fun to call in, but can be aggrevating sometimes too!!