Year-Round Deer Calling Secrets of the Masters
The Truth About Calling with Will Primos
 Editor’s Note: If you want to learn any sport or any technique in any sport, you seek out the professionals who make their living in that sport. The men who create outdoor TV shows, videos and game calls must have the ability to produce those  calls on cue on film. Why can they call deer, and you can't? What do they do that you don't? Here are their secrets. Will Primos, founder of Primos Hunting Calls in Flora, Mississippi, and one of the most-widely-recognized game callers in the nation, stars in and produces "The TRUTH" series of videos.
"One of the biggest problems that most hunters have with deer calling is how to make a deer appear when they're not seeing any deer," Primos explains. "You first have to find a bedding area, usually in thick cover, get your tree stand up as quietly as possible and then begin to call to try and get that deer to come out of the thick cover where you can get a shot. I think the most-effective way to pull a big buck out of thick cover is with an estrous bleat like the type our Great Big Can call makes. I believe those can calls are some of the most-overlooked calls in all of deer hunting. Let me explain why the can call works. When you turn the can over, the bleat it makes is kind of a quivering call, the same kind of sound the doe makes when she's ready to breed.  You can't use a blown mouth call and make that quivering sound like you get from the little bells inside the can as they fall. If you will give that estrous bleat call about three times every 10 minutes, then you need to give two calls, wait about 30 seconds and give a third call. After you've given that call, wait about 5 minutes, and use the grunt call to sound like a buck following a doe.
 “If you're hunting from a tree, shake a limb, and rattle some leaves to sound like a deer walking, moving or running in the leaves. If after that sequence I don't see a buck, I wait about 30 minutes and repeat the same sequence. I'm trying to paint a picture of an estrous doe outside the thicket bleating and a rutting buck coming in to where she is and starting to chase her. Usually if a buck's in the thicket, he'll come to this kind of calling. I've called many bucks that I've never even known have been in thickets with this technique. Another hunting situation that's really frustrating is when you see a buck at about 150 yards and you call to him, but the call seems to have no effect at all. More than likely, the buck hasn't heard your call. But I’ll use another call to stop the buck. If he starts to move toward me, I put that call down, get my can call out and give him little soft bleats to pull him into bow range. I don't think a buck can hear the can call at 150 yards, if the wind's blowing, and he's moving. If I can stop him with another call, get his attention and start him moving my way, I think he can hear the more-subtle and natural bleat made by the can call. If you don't stop a buck, you can't call him in for a shot."
Tomorrow: Add Realism to Your Calling Sequence with Alex Rutledge |
