During the first week of deer season a sportsman friend who was traveling north of Limestone spotted a deer feeding near the woods at the back corner of a field. He parked his truck and began to stalk the buck.
Contributed photo/Bill Graves The author used a bleat call to bring this big doe up close and personal.
With just another step to go before he could raise the rifle, the deer’s head came up quickly, the tail flagged. The sport stepped to the edge of the field, raised his rifle and made a loud bleating sound. The fleeing buck not only stopped and turned to look, but actually took a couple of steps back toward the fast thinking hunter. One shot, one buck.
Whitetail bucks are very alert, cautious and wily game animals, but curiosity can often be their downfall. During the last half of the season the rut often dulls a buck’s otherwise acute senses. Over the years, deer hunters have groaned, grunted, bleated, blatted and whistled to stop a buck. Many sportsmen rattle antlers to attract whitetails as well as using calls.
Wildlife researchers at the University of Georgia published a paper in 1988 verifying that they had identified and recorded 400 different vocalizations of whitetail deer.
Deer call manufacturers have been busy since this revelation, and as a result a wide range of deer calls are now available. The trick is to learn the language. One sound will lure a buck to your stand, while another variation will chase him away. Tone, level and inflection are all important.
Novice hunters may have problems implementing the hand held mouth operated calls without substantial practice; this is where automatic calls come into the picture. There are squeeze calls, rattle calls and inversion box calls that simply need to be turned over 180 degrees to emit a perfect sound. How quickly or slowly these units are inverted controls how long and loud each single call is emitted. These hand operated calls are less likely to alert nearby deer to the hunter position than mouth operated calls that must be raised up to the mouth. Deer callers need to remember the KISS acronym (keep it simple stupid).
All deer bleat, but fawns make the sound more frequently, especially when communicating with does. When a buck hears the bleating, he will often think a group of deer are nearby and that means several females. Perhaps one of them will be in heat, so the buck will investigate. If a deer decoy is being used in conjunction with the call, the effectiveness increases substantially. A bleat call is particularly productive when rattling.
A dominant buck call is a very deep, resonant grunt. Using a dominant grunt call will often bring another mature buck running, ready to fight.
When a buck is with a doe in estrus, that buck, known as the tending buck, will issue a tending grunt. This particular sound is a deep grunt that lasts for a minute or longer, warning other males to stay clear.
Bucks nearly always investigate tending grunts, and with the proper use of doe scent, a buck will almost walk in on a well-hidden hunter.
There are dozens of other deer vocalizations that can benefit an outdoorsman, but these are three of the most popular and simplest to master. A hunter’s success may increase if he learns to talk to the animals.
