John's Journal...

Make It Happen In a Tree Stand with Will Primos, Eddie Salter, Wayne Carlton and David Hale

Eddie Salter Hunts Aggressively Using a Bleat Call for Success

Click to enlargeEditor’s Note: Until about 20-years ago, you had almost no control over the deer you hunted.Click to enlarge You only could take a stand in an area where your research and scouting had led you to believe a deer might show up and pray the deer would appear. Sitting in a tree stand all day and waiting for a deer to appear was about as exciting as watching maple syrup pour out of a bucket in zero-degree weather. However, today, with the new and exciting deer calls on the market, you have the ability to make a deer come to where you are, cause the deer to hunt you and make bucks show-up that ordinarily may not have walked into your sights.

Eddie Salter, past World Turkey Calling Champion and a Hunter’s Specialties’ Pro Caller and hunter from Evergreen, Alabama, attacks hunting for deer as aggressively as he goes after the wily gobblers in the spring. "I enjoy hunting aggressively," Salter explains. "I like to make things happen. If game won't come to me, I'll go after it. Using the bleat call, I can hunt aggressively for deer just like I do turkey. In the spring of the year, if I go to an area in the woods and call and a turkey doesn't answer, then I continue to move through the woods until I make a turkey gobble. When a turkey gobbles, I hunt that bird. When I'm using the bleat call, I may call from five or 10 different Click to enlargestand sites in one morning. I'll move into an area, usually near thick cover, where I assume does may be bedded-down. I’ll go up a tree, get into my tree stand and call for no more than 5 to 10 minutes. If the does don't come to that bleat call in that time frame, then more than likely they won’t respond. I get out of the tree and move 100- to 200-yards away and then call again. Using this run-and-gun tactic, Click to enlargeI often can call in 10 to 15 does in a morning.

"Another time I use the bleat call is when I've been in the stand for several hours in the morning hunting a buck, and I haven't seen a buck, or maybe I haven't seen any deer at all. Then I usually tell myself, `O.K., Eddie, you haven't seen a buck, but you can bag a doe this morning.' I take out my bleat call and make the call. Oftentimes a doe will come in and present a shot. On many days, I take what would have been an unproductive hunt and produce a deer with my best bleat call."

At the first of the season in the states that permit the harvesting of does, the bleat call can be deadly effective for calling in whitetails. However, as the season progresses, this distress call tends to become less productive. Remember, the fawn bleat is a distress call of a young deer. Generally you will call in primarily does with this call. But because the call causes a spontaneous and urgent reaction which brings the does in quickly when they hear it, you can move from location to location and hunt much quicker from many more regions in a day utilizing this call than you can using other calls. With this tactic, you can make deer come to you.

Tomorrow: Wayne Carlton Makes it Happen in a Tree Stand by Throwing His Call


Check back each day this week for more about "Make It Happen In a Tree Stand with Will Primos, Eddie Salter, Wayne Carlton and David Hale"

Day 1: Will Primos - New and Exciting Deer Calls
Day 2: Eddie Salter Hunts Aggressively Using a Bleat Call for Success
Day 3: Wayne Carlton Makes it Happen in a Tree Stand by Throwing His Call
Day 4: David Hale and Wayne Carlton Go Get Them with a Grunt Call
Day 5: Wildlife Biologist Steve Warner Knows Where and When to Rattle Bucks





 

Entry 536, Day 2