Thanks DSE, I guess at the price of the 2 I could get both the HiMD with the non-lav mic and the Iriver w/ the giant squid and see which one works best for my needs. I've just heard some samples on the enet of lavs and condensers and I thought the ambience sound gathering capabilities of the condensers sounded better keep in mind none of these mics were over 100 bucks and very small. But most of the lav samples were done in a room with someone talking right in them with no other sounds around them so there really wasn't any ambience to capture. I also like the thought of not having to wire up the hunter just put the recorder on a belt an roll. I also check out the Edirol R-09 and it looked pretty good but alittle too nice and pricey for what I need it for. I can just see the hunter droping it on a rock or something. As far as "the mic in condom in a fishtank" I have now officially heard of everything.

Thanks,
Joe

I'd look at binaural mics, often used for concert recordings. They mount on your head like earphones, and have an uncanny environmental ambience.
Or a one point stereo mic, carefully positioned (taped to a backpack?).
If you use a lav, the placement will be very important. You won't want it in the traditional upper chest area - you'll just get a lot of heavy breathing. It also must be in a very secure position that won't get pulled off or brushed against. I'd look at taping it to a hat or back pack, and experiment carefully befrore putting it in the field.

I'd also keep looking at the zoom H4. I'm considering one myself, and it has some very strong advantages. It's about $250 from the discount brokers. It has XLR phantom power mic inputs, which is a biggie for preserving quality and using better mics. Going ultra hi bandwidth uncompressed into any of these cheap recorders is probably useless anyway without a seperate, better mic preamp, but having the balanced input I'm sure helps with this weak link in the chain. Driving it with an external battery would be pretty cheap and easy if that was important to you. The built-in mics might even work well for you if positioned appropriately.

Thanks for the info Sean. After looking around and doing some more research I think I might go with an iriver 799 because of the size. They are tiny compaired to other recorders. With the Giant Squid power box mic. I'll test this set up and if I don't like it then I'll keep looking until I find the one that works best for me.

thanks
Joe

Joe, if you get the iriver, you don't need a powered mic. Darren of Giant Squid makes a mic specially for the iriver, which needs some wiring changes to allow for mono recording (giving you longer record time).

Check herein the box labelled "Iriver Omni Mono Microphone":

http://www.giant-squid-audio-lab.com/gs/gs-mono1.htm

Get the right angled plug for the ifp-899, or the normal straight plug for the ifp-799 (because of the differing input placements on the units). There's a whole bunch of ifp-899s for sale on Ebay right now.

Cheers,
Vito