Grunt tubes and other calls can draw in bucks that wouldn’t otherwise walk past your stand, but can you call too much trying to get one within range?
Absolutely — even during peak rut activity.
Strategic, well-spaced series of grunts or bleats can fool mature bucks. But constant calling just doesn’t sound natural, and even an amped-up rutting buck will know something is off. You can get away with more frequent vocalization when bucks are cruising, but it’s still easy to overdo it.
Probably an even bigger issue than the overcalling itself is poor timing of those calls. If a buck can see your decoy or is close enough that he can tell there isn’t another deer where the calls are coming from, you’ll put him on high alert — and likely watch him walk out of your life forever.
Deer have an amazing ability to sense where a sound is coming from, so don’t continue to call when a buck is making a beeline for your stand. If he veers of course, you can cautiously hit the call one more time. But be careful.
Calling when deer are within close range — whether you know they’re there or not — also risks them spotting your movements. So while it’s great to employ a calling strategy, doing it right is critical to success.
You can be more aggressive with your calling during the rut, but sometimes hunting just demands quiet patience. And when Mr. November does walk by, you better be ready.
Just getting to be the right time to call. I will only call to a buck that is over 50 yds. away if I can see him. And just loud enough for him to hear me, one grunt to get his attention and one for him to get a direction. If I know he is closer, I will only call if I KNOW he can’t see me. Again only two grunts. I have a relative on my wifes side that sounds like a traffic jam (constant honking). Now rattling is a different story. Saw nice one doggin a few does this evening. Maybe tomorrow.
I know a few hunters who sound like traffic jams too! It’s definitely possible to do more harm than good
TBB,
After decades of interacting with deer in a hunting and personal situation (we have several deer who are comfortable enough to approach to within touching distance) I “speak deer” pretty good and can say – they do talk but not much and only when necessary. Then mostly in soft bleats and quiet grunts that humans can’t hear much beyond 20 feet but deer can easily hear at 3 or 4 times that distance. Most hunters yell and scream with their calls driving away deer that are habitually soft spoken. Most of deer communication is with signals and body language rather than vocal.
Rattling bucks is fun but it only works where the deer population is balanced. If there is a high percentage of does then the available bucks are in demand and don’t (won’t) need to fight for a date. For the same reason, rattlling always works best in the second rut (December) when there are less does available.
Deer are curious about (subtle) sounds though. I’ve had them come to the sound of a handsaw when I was cutting lumber for a treestand.
One (dirty) “trick” that I used to use was to set out a small portable radio, tuned off-station to make a quiet static hissing sound. The deer would sneak in to see what the unusual sound was and with their attention on the radio it was pretty easy to draw and shoot. It only worked once though, if you missed word would get around quick that radios were dangerous 😉
We have another resident deer, a button-buck fawn (Bucky’22 – yeah we name our deer) showed up all alone mid summer. Good that there is no deer hunting in the immediate area as Bucky has no fear of guns, he came over yesterday (30 feet away) to watch me as I was tuning my airgun. That makes 6 residents… a big doe with two fawns; a young doe with one fawn and Bucky. It’ nice to interact with them!
Hank
Radio static is a new one to me! Interesting!