What deer call should i use

After this article, you will know almost every sound a deer can make, and learn how to use them. This will lead to more harvests and help you become a better hunter. The grunt is the most popular deer call there is.

It is also one of the most used by deer and therefore by hunters. The grunt can be a very simple and useful call. You use a grunt call in two main situations. This is what you think of when you think of a grunt. This is a series of notes that are not necessarily aggressive. Both bucks and does use this grunt, although their tones are very different. It is just a normal grunt used to get the attention of other deer, and it does so nicely.

A trailing grunt is a grunt that a buck uses when he is chasing a doe in estrus. It is a fast series of soft muffled grunts that make the buck sound like he is out of breath. The trailing grunt is normally a rhythmic call and can be in rhythm with the steps he takes. This is the bucks way of asking the doe to stop and breed. This type of grunt is especially useful when the rut is in full swing and during the secondary rut.

This is an aggressive deer call that bucks use when they have a doe pinned or cornered and the buck wants to mate. It asserts their dominance, frustration, and lets everyone in the area know what he is after. This is a deep guttural call that is made of long drawn out notes.

Typically this comes after a trailing grunt and has a snort wheeze mixed in somewhere. You will be lucky if you ever get to hear this deer call. This call should be seldom used, but it makes the list because so many hunters love to talk about it.

This is a loud, aggressive grunt which is normally made when dominant bucks are extremely excited or angry. If you did want to incorporate it, try adding it in around one of your tending or trailing grunt calls. The snort wheeze is an aggressive deer call, if you are calling to a buck and he is not really paying you much attention, try the snort wheeze.

This will definitely pique his interest. The snort wheeze is normally used at the end of a grunt sequence and really irritates bucks. It is pretty much a slap in the face from afar, enough to piss off a mature buck and send him your way for a fight. While it can be the perfect call at times, use it sparingly. Bucks in general do not use this sound often. You should use this call as a last resort. During the pre-rut and before bucks will spar to find out where they sit on the totem pole. These encounters are more likely soft altercations where bucks butt heads and spar lightly.

As the peak of the rut comes in, bucks aggressively challenge each other with more intense clashes for breeding rights to does. The p ost-rut has little fighting between bucks , but rattling still comes in to play as those few remaining does are finally coming into heat and are contested for by established bucks. Rattling can be accomplished with real antlers, synthetic antlers, rattle bags , or other rattling systems. Nothing beats a real set of antlers when it comes to realistic sound , but the Bone Collector Bag-O-Bone comes close.

This rattling system is light weight , portable , and can be adjusted to generate any rattling variation you may need while deer hunting from a stand or on the ground in the rut. Start with only a few tines in the rubber bag, and add more to increase the volume and intensity as the rut progresses. As described above, rattling is not all about creating an all-out brawl in the woods. Keep your deer calling rattling strategy related to the phases of the rut. Too much rattling can be unnatural and sounding too intense can reduce your chan ces of bringing in less dominant but still shooter bucks.

Try rattling with a f ew short rattles when a dominant buck is in the area. If he is in the right mood, he will react and come running to show his dominance. During the peak rut, ratchet up the rattling to represent intense fighting of two bucks. This deer calling can carry well past your immediate hunting area. Many times , bucks will respond immediately if you hit it right , but sometimes it can take time for a buck to move in to check out the call.

Rattle for several sequences mixed with other deer calls like grunts , and sit and wait for this calling strategy to pay off.

Deer calls such as the bleat mimics the vocalization of does and fawns. Does bleat throughout the year, but particularly during the rut when being sought out by bucks. Fawns will also make this sound to communicate with their mothers. Bleats from fawns are at a higher pitch than those from a mature doe. Bleat calls like the Doe Bleat from Bone Collector are effective when combined with grunt calls for deer. The two combined sounds will trigger mature bucks to think that a hot doe is being pursued by a rival buck looking to take one of his does.

Other does may respond and bring in trailing bucks that otherwise would not come into range on their own. For those lucky enough to hear a buck snort wheeze in the field , they know it is one of the calls reserved for big bucks. The snort wheeze is a dominance call.

Mature bucks use this sound to intimidate subordinate bucks. First, a lesson in d eer calling : use the snort wheeze only when the time is right. Bucks — even mature, big bruisers — do not make this noise often. However, using the snort wheeze can e ither produce a ticked off, rut- ready buck or send him the other way. The snort wheeze deer call will not work all the time and should not be your first choice among your deer calls, but it certainly has its place at the right time and with the right buck during the rut.

The Challenger call by Bone Collector is a grunt tube and snort wheeze combination to give you the ultimate edge. Deer calling is not all that different from turkey calling. Outside of the basic sounds deer make, there are variations and situational sounds, just like turkeys, that can mean the difference from calling one in or having one spook.

Grunt calls can range from a number of different sounds depending on the buck, the situation , and season. Social grunts are calls bucks use to communicate to others in the herd. A social grunt can be use d throughout the year , but usually is most effective during the rut. Does also produce a grunt, called a doe grunt, which is used in social settings around other does and fawns.

A doe grunt is very similar to a social buck grunt except it is at a higher tone i. Another variation of the grunt is the trailing grunt. Fawns will also be vocal when they are separated from their mothers, and imitating a lost fawn with a can call is another way to entice does into bow range.

When targeting does, he gives one or two half-turns on a Bleat-in-Heat can call initially to simulate a mother doe entering a food source. He may follow that with three or four half-turns on a Bleat-in-Heat II to imitate the fawn bleats described above. For buck calls, he likes to use the Brawler grunt tube. In the turkey world, these kinds of calls can be compared to a purr. As the pre-rut progresses, bachelor groups become a thing of the past. Feeding takes a backseat to establishing dominance, and buck rubs and scrapes start popping up across the landscape.

Brad Farris, of Primos, also likes to use a combination of calls during the pre-rut. His go-to calls during this phase are the Primos Buck Roar grunt tube and the Original Can bleat call.

He suggests that hunters should use grunts sparingly early in the pre-rut, and then get more aggressive as time goes on. Farris likes rattling too, especially in the pre-rut, because bucks are still sorting out their pecking order.

Young bucks may merely be sparing, but for mature bucks, these pre-rut battles will determine breeding rights.