When Deer Calls Don’t Work with John E. Phillips
Day 5: More Times Deer Calls Don’t Work with Gary Sefton, Harold Knight and David Hale
Editor’s Note: Some days, a grunt or a bleat may pull a buck within bow or gun range. However, at other times calling may prove futile, or even frighten deer away. Don’t consider deer calls the magic cure-all to put the buck of a lifetime in your crosshairs anytime you use them.
Sometimes deer calls don’t call deer, including when:
* “You’ve jumped or spooked a deer,” Gary Sefton, longtime Tennessee deer hunter, explains. “You’re not going to make a deer come back to within gun or bow range using a grunt call then.”
* a grunt call spooks a deer. As Harold Knight of Knight and Hale Game Calls mentions, “A couple of years ago when I was hunting in Illinois, I spotted a big 10-point buck bedded-down and out of bow range. When I grunted to him, he jumped-up and ran-off like I’d shot him in the behind with a slingshot. But, then the next day, I spotted this same buck out of bow range, grunted to him with this same call, and he came straight to me. I don’t understand why the grunt call spooked the deer one day yet called him in on the following day.”
Even though I know deer won’t always answer deer calls, I carry deer calls with me every time I hunt. If I see a buck that’s out of range or in thick cover where I can’t get a shot, I have nothing to lose by calling to that buck and trying to get him into a position where I can take him. If I’ve sat on a stand for awhile in an area I know has deer but haven’t seen them, I have nothing to lose by hoping to prick the curiosity of a buck by my using light grunting, antler tickling and/or soft bleats. Too, when the buck of a lifetime walks in sight but out of range with his back to me, if I can stop him with a deer call and use his curiosity to cause him to come and find the deer making that call, I’ve got one more chance at a buck that I originally will have had no opportunity to take. If I’m bowhunting, and spot a buck that’s out of range, I can throw my call behind my stand by pointing the barrel of my call behind me and grunt lightly when the buck’s not looking my way. I may pull that deer in the 5 or 10 yards I need him to come to get-off the shot. I view deer calls as an insurance policy for deer hunters.
No, deer calls don’t always work. But, if you understand when they don’t work and when and how they can, you won’t go into the woods without them. As David Hale of Knight and Hale Game Calls explains, “The best time to use a deer call is when you see a buck standing alone during the rut. At many other times, deer calling is a hope and a prayer in the dark.”
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