Using the AI Call Coach to score your practice

The AI Call Coach listens to a call you recorded and tells you how close it is to the real thing — scoring pitch, cadence, realism and tone out of 100, with written tips on what to change. It only works on your own practice recordings, so recording one is always the first step.

1. Record your practice

Open any call, then choose the Practice tab on the call’s screen. Tap record and make the call. Recordings can run up to 20 seconds, which is plenty — the coach scores the quality of the sound, not how long you can hold it.

A few things make a real difference to your score, and to how useful the tips are:

• Get somewhere quiet. Wind, a running truck, or a TV in the background all end up in the recording, and the coach hears them as part of your call.
• Give the phone some room. Holding it right against the call tends to distort and clip the loudest part, which reads as poor tone.
• Record the call on its own. Don’t talk before or after it — leading and trailing speech muddies the cadence score.

You can record as many times as you like. Practice recordings are free for everyone, with or without a subscription.

2. Score it

Under your recording, tap Score my call with AI. You’ll be asked to pick how you want to be judged:

Reference compares your recording against the real animal audio for that call. Use this when you want to know how close you are to the actual sound. It’s only available on calls that include real-animal audio.

Expert rubric scores you against how that call should be made — pitch, cadence, structure — without comparing to a recording. Use this when there’s no reference audio, or when you want feedback on technique rather than similarity.

Scoring takes a few seconds. Your result is saved against that recording, so you can come back later and see it again, and both methods are kept separately — scoring the same recording both ways gives you two results to compare.

3. Read the result

You’ll get a score out of 100 for each of four things:

• Pitch — whether you’re hitting the right notes and range
• Cadence — timing, rhythm, and the shape of the call
• Realism — how convincingly animal-like it sounds
• Tone — the quality and texture of the sound itself

Plus an overall score and coaching tips — the most useful part. The tips name what to change, not just what’s wrong. Record again with one change and score it a second time; watching a single number move is a far better guide than chasing the overall score.

“It says it can’t send the request”

This is the most common problem, and it usually isn’t a bug.

The AI Call Coach is currently a beta feature. That means two things have to be true before scoring will run: you need ElkNut PRO, and your beta request has to be approved by us manually. Until it’s approved, scoring will fail even though the button is there.

We have a full walkthrough of requesting access, with screenshots: Get the AI Call Coach (Beta). The short version is that you request it from Account → Beta Program (or the Coach tab on any call), it shows Pending while we review by hand, and once you’re approved you should fully close ElkNut and reopen it so the app picks up the change.

If scoring still fails after you’ve been approved and restarted the app, tell us — include the call you were scoring and roughly when you tried, and we’ll look at it from our side.

How many scores do I get?

Without a subscription you get 2 scores to try it out. Recording practice audio stays free and unlimited — it’s only the AI scoring that’s capped.

With PRO, scoring is unlimited.

Other things worth knowing

Scoring needs a signal. Practice recording works offline, but the coach sends your audio away to be analysed, so scoring itself needs a connection. Record in the field, score when you’re back.

Your scores are saved. Reopen a recording later, and any scores you’ve already run come back with it — you don’t get charged a second time to see a result you already have.

Only your own recordings can be scored. The coach exists to grade your calling, so there’s nothing to score until you’ve made a recording.

Related

• Get the AI Call Coach (Beta) — requesting access, step by step
• How to sign out and switch accounts
• One-time purchase & subscriptions