00:00:01 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired2Hunt Foundations Podcast, your guide to the fundamentals of better deer hunting. Presented by First Light, creating proven, versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle, or blind. First Light, go farther, stay longer. And now, your host, Tony Peterson. 00:00:19 Speaker 2: Hey everyone, welcome to the Wired2Hunt Foundations Podcast, which is brought to you by First Light. I'm your host, Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about rattling, grunting, bleeding, and snort-wheezing during the rut. When it comes to turkey hunting, spring and fall, I'm more of a more is more. 00:00:39 Speaker 3: Guy when it comes to calling. 00:00:41 Speaker 2: I love saying a lot to turkeys, and I honestly don't think you can over call if you know what you're doing. 00:00:45 Speaker 3: But when it comes to deer, I'm not so vocal. 00:00:47 Speaker 2: I don't love making audio contact with bucks until it's the right situation. But when it is, it can be almost unfair to them. Knowing the difference is important, and it's what I'm going to talk about right now. I think there is a world of animal communication that we can't possibly begin to understand. 00:01:09 Speaker 3: Think about vervet monkeys, for example. 00:01:11 Speaker 2: These little primates have different alarm calls that they use when they see eagles or leopards or snakes. So when one of them sounds a specific alarm, say the eagle alarm, other monkeys will instantly look up to the sky. If they sound the snake alarm, they'll look toward the ground. Chimpanzees produce a variety of different calls too, some of which are tied to food sources. They will vary the frequency and tone of their grunts to signal different types of food and even the quality of the foods they find. Chimps also use contact calls to help individuals maintain some cohesion in their groups when they're out in thick vegetation or they have some distance between one another. They often seem to coordinate movements by calling to one another, which if you think about it is pretty freaking cool. Primates of all stripes use a variety of vocalizations, but what's interesting is that they also use a hell of a lot of inflections. Now, you know, kind of a half-assed, there's a leopard around type of warning won't get the group's attention quite like one that is full of obvious excitement. Think about how humans communicate and how much tone and inflection can change the meaning of words. Language isn't just a static way to communicate some information. It's a way to influence others to do things and react. Whether that's, you know, get the hell out of somewhere or purely for entertainment. Now think about deers. Have you ever heard a buck grunting as he, you know, kind of cruised along searching for does? It's pretty cool, but it almost sounds involuntary, like a dog whining, you know, maybe a lab whining in a duck blind. Like someone talking to themself, you know, as he walks down the sidewalk. The words are there and they might convey something, but in the overall context of the situation, it seems like they're almost meaningless. Now imagine a buck standing in the timber who sees a different buck or maybe a sexy doe in a field and and he grunts directly at that other deer, that call is going to sound different because it has some inflection to it. It has intention to it. I guess maybe another way to look at this is a light sparring session between two bucks versus a full-blown buck brawl. You can mimic either with a set of rattling antlers, but you're definitely not conveying the same message. There is nothing more exciting than trying to call in a buck. I truly believe that. It's so rare and so surprising and so dang exciting. It's also much easier to call and get either no response or a negative response than it is to get a positive one. There's also sort of a hierarchy to calling that should be understood. And the lowest tier there is a doe bleat. I've killed a lot of young bucks with a doe bleat and have never killed a big buck with one. But I also don't doe bleat two big bucks hardly ever. So that's probably why. A doe bleat or a plaintive little fawn bleat is the safest call you can make. It's non-threatening to all bucks, and is a call that doe groups make to one another fairly often. If you see a little buck any time of the season that you want to kill, or any buck in any phase of the rut, this is the easiest call to test the waters with. Now, you can make these with commercial calls, or you can simply use your voice and go, meee. 00:04:15 Speaker 3: That's it. 00:04:16 Speaker 2: When I was younger, I bleated like that to every little buck I saw, and a lot of them came in. I've had some does come into it too, but not very many. And I will say this, if you do run into a doe that has either lost her fawns or a fawn that has lost its mama, a bleat is almost like cheating. When I was in college, I ran into a doe that I can only assume had just lost her fawn because I bleated at a little buck while I was sitting on the ground and a doe that I didn't know was up the bluff from me came running in full tilt and I actually had to recoil after I drew because I thought she was going to go full linebacker on me. It was one of the wildest responses to calling I've ever had. and it didn't work out very well for her. If you want to test a buck's, or I guess any deer's, willingness to come into your calling, a doe bleat can be a good first move. Doe bleats can also really help you sell a calling sequence. The buck I killed in northern Wisconsin last year took a lot of bleats and a lot of grunts and a lot of snort wheezes to come in. And honestly, after using our Dave Smith doe decoy the last few seasons, I'm kind of wondering if I don't mostly just need to use it and some bleats to talk bucks in. Now either way, Out where the wild rut chases happen, a common scenario is when fawns will get separated from mom by bucks. Doe groups that are separated often get back together by bleeding, and you can bet your favorite bow that bucks know that dynamic well. 00:05:38 Speaker 3: And you also have grunting, which to me is somewhat kind of a mystery. 00:05:43 Speaker 2: I don't have a ton of love for grunting, if I'm being honest, and that is entirely from my personal experience. I know a lot of people who live by grunt calls, and their results tell me I'm missing something. And don't get me wrong, I've killed some bucks by grunting at them. But what has never worked very well for me is the tending grunt. You know the one that you see all of the TV guys use like crazy, but you never actually see real bucks do? I think I've heard more actual buck roars than I have tending grunts. And believe me when I say this, I have not heard very many buck roars in person. Grunting is a higher risk proposition. but can definitely work. Now, a lot of hunters use it to blind call. And in a lot of situations, I'm sure that causes no harm. I don't feel like I'm in those situations very often, though. And I'd much rather call to deer I can see so I can tell if I'm doing it correctly. Now, if I see a buck out of range who doesn't look like he's going to come in and it's rut time, I'll give him a grunt. If he doesn't immediately start to walk away or look a little wiggy, I'll wait for him to put his head down or look away, and I'll grunt again. We play this game until he's sick of me or he comes in. I don't try to make it sound like a chase is happening in front of me, in this situation at least, because when deer chase, they make a lot of extra noise. I just feel like a buck that hears obvious tending grunts, but none of the other associated sounds is one that might have a little warning signal go off in his brain. I did kill a buck one time in Minnesota by doing some blind tending grunts because I had to break a branch off my tree to be able to shoot, and it actually worked out super well. Now, I've tried to repeat that performance about 10,000 times since then, and it hasn't worked. 00:07:19 Speaker 3: So take that for what you will. 00:07:21 Speaker 2: Grunt all you want, but maybe think about the tone of your grunt, the inflection you're putting into your calling sequences, and the fact that if you do get a response, he's most likely going to come in downwind. Now we have a contradiction that I want to talk about here, which is how I feel about snort wheezing versus pretty much everyone else I talk to or hear from. I don't believe for a second that snort wheezing is only a dominant buck call. I've seen way too many scrappers come into it to believe that. I don't believe it's only a rut call either because I've called in bucks in September and October and November with it. I do believe it is a higher risk call, but a higher reward call. But I wouldn't honestly say in my personal experience, it's any riskier than grunting at a buck. I snort wheeze with my mouth and it sounds like this. 00:08:18 Speaker 3: That's it. I use it a lot. 00:08:21 Speaker 2: And when I look at the racks in my trophy room, I can definitively say that snort wheezing has helped me kill more big bucks than bleeding, grunting, and rattling have combined. That's probably because I believe in it. But I also believe it's the easiest call to talk a deer into committing with. I have never had a buck come in from one snort wheeze. It has taken anywhere from probably five to dozens and dozens. But a buck that doesn't get boogery by the second or third one is a deer that will often eventually come in. I've had multiple times where I've watched bucks go from seeming very natural and relaxed and uninterested to suddenly bristling up, turning sideways like a moose that's about to fight, and coming in. 00:09:04 Speaker 3: I have to say this too. 00:09:05 Speaker 2: I've had plenty of bucks just nope right on out when I snort wheezed at them as well. 00:09:10 Speaker 3: It's a crapshoot. 00:09:12 Speaker 2: But it's my highest confidence call, so I use it a lot. I think it's probably the least understood vocalization with deer, to be honest. I think that it's a challenge call, sure, but that it doesn't quite signal what we think it does. To me, it almost seems like a taunting, you want to go type of call that once repeated enough will spark something in bucks that they can't ignore. So I guess it is a challenge call, but maybe not the way we think. Nature is violent and deer are part of nature. They may look all passive and Bambi-like, but they have weapons on their foreheads for a reason. If you have a loner buck cruising out of range and he is not going to come in, give him a snort wheeze provided he won't be able to tell instantly that there isn't actually a deer where he hears the sound coming from. If he doesn't freak out, keep him coming. If he starts looking around and licking his nose, grab your bow. 00:10:02 Speaker 3: If he keeps going on his way, let him go. I don't know how to put it any other way, I guess. 00:10:07 Speaker 2: Of course, I'm talking about calling here, and I need to talk about rattling. I have almost no confidence in rattling. I used to do it quite a bit when I was younger, and one time, I had a buck walk right up to my tree, and when I killed that little eight-pointer, I thought I had the. 00:10:24 Speaker 3: Whole thing figured out. Boy, was I wrong. 00:10:27 Speaker 2: I almost never get any type of reaction out of rattling, but it's also the call that I use blindly the most, and I don't really use it very often. I do try to sell the whole ruse when I'm rattling by breaking branches and making some real noise, but thus far, it's something that is fun to do, but mostly very unproductive. I haven't seen a noticeable difference between, I don't know, a rattling bag and actual antlers, but some hunters swear by the real thing. 00:10:52 Speaker 3: Who knows? 00:10:53 Speaker 2: I do know that when I hear other hunters rattle, which happens more than I'd like when I'm hunting public, I can almost instantly always tell that it's not real deer. A real buck fight contains a whole soundscape that is wild. I once watched two bucks fight in a valley in Minnesota, and it sounded like two bull moose going at it. They broke every branch in the valley, and honestly, the sounds of their bodies moving around in that timber was as much a part of the whole thing as the sound of their antlers clacking and grinding together was. I also had two very good bucks fight in a river behind my stand in North Dakota one time, and I still think it was the loudest thing I've heard game animals do besides. 00:11:30 Speaker 3: Maybe elk bugling. 00:11:33 Speaker 2: The splashing in the rocks clanking during that fight was just amazing, and to this day it's the one encounter I wish I had on film more than any others that I've had. So here's where we get to the part that I think matters the most about calling to deer. 00:11:45 Speaker 3: You have to learn what works for you. 00:11:48 Speaker 2: Now, if you're in southern Texas, for example, and you rattle in the mesquite all day long, you might believe that rattling is the answer to all of your deer hunting woes because of the response rate. But being in an area with tons of bucks per square mile that just seem to like to scrap is a far cry from trying to rattle all day long on public land in Pennsylvania, you know, for example. 00:12:07 Speaker 3: Can that work? Sure. 00:12:09 Speaker 2: But what are your success rates really going to be like? That's what I want to get into to wrap this episode up. The things I do, I do because they've worked for me. It's part confidence, but also part reality to the places that I'm hunting. The doe decoys I use in northern Wisconsin might not move the needle in higher density areas. But where there are very few deer, if I can get a buck to lay eyes on my fake doe, he's very likely to come in. All this stuff's situational. I have buddies who hunt land close to land that I hunt. But their situation is different, and their calling response rate is way better. I think that deer that live on pressured ground hear a lot of calling, and they aren't nearly as likely to respond positively as deer on unpressured ground. I know that's not anything revolutionary, but think about how often we listen to someone call on social media or on some kind of video we're watching, and we try to emulate that sound in our home woods. We might barely be hunting on the same planet, metaphorically speaking. So why would our deer react the same way their deer do? 00:13:08 Speaker 3: They might. But what do the deer actually tell you? That's the most important part. 00:13:13 Speaker 2: I think back to my seminar speaking days when I had someone ask me if I ever used deer scents. I said not much because I just haven't had that much luck with them. And as soon as I said that, a guy in the crowd raised his hand and then told a story about how he killed a giant buck that walked right up to the scent wick he had under his stand. I asked him how many times that's worked, and he said, well, just that one time. and then he admitted that he does it every single season without much luck. Now, is there any harm in trying something like that? Maybe not, but there can certainly be harm attached to calling to the wrong deer. I think most bucks on public land, or, you know, in places with a lot of hunters, they're more likely to run away from rattling than run toward it, just as I think that a lot of them would be pretty skeptical to hear a whole bunch of grunts coming from a thicket with no other noise associated with it. I could also be wrong here. But I also believe the reason that I have had pretty good success nortweezing is just because most people don't do it very often. 00:14:11 Speaker 3: Everybody groans. Everybody rattles. But what are the deer telling you? How do they respond? 00:14:18 Speaker 2: And if it's using a call like that that other people aren't using and you get a good response rate out of it, you just keep going. Now, if you have a pretty good response rate from rattling during morning sits in the pre-rut, then you don't need to listen to what I'm saying about rattling because you have your answer. The deer have answered it for you. But that's different from trying some type of calling because it's supposed to work now. I don't think I could stress that enough, but I'll try. If you're calling because it's supposed to work and it mostly doesn't, or always doesn't, then the deer are telling you that it's the wrong thing to do. If you think you have your timing right and the conditions are decent and you still get no positive feedback from them, pay attention. This is no different from blind calling to whoever might be around to hear it on, say, I don't know. 00:15:02 Speaker 3: A field edge. 00:15:03 Speaker 2: Versus getting into the thick stuff and calling to a buck, you can see that it's 75 yards away making a rub. This is stuff I talked about last week. The response rate will likely be much higher from one. 00:15:14 Speaker 3: Scenario over another. 00:15:15 Speaker 2: And if you want to call in bucks, you might have to facilitate that scenario in which calling has a much higher chance of working instead of using it as a band-aid on a sit where the odds are just lower for a variety of reasons. Now, I don't want to discourage anyone from trying different calls because that's how you learn. 00:15:32 Speaker 3: But do yourself a favor. 00:15:33 Speaker 2: And actually try to learn from your attempts. Figure out what works and when, and then try to expand on that. That's honestly one of the coolest things about deer hunting, and the opportunity to go really deep on this stuff is right now for a hell of a lot of us, because the rut is fully and truly about to kick off. So think about that as you head into the woods, and think about coming back next week, because I'm going to talk about why the rut is actually really spotty, and why even if it should be happening everywhere, the best action is usually isolated to highly specific spots. 00:16:04 Speaker 3: That's it for this episode. 00:16:05 Speaker 2: I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast. Thank you so much for listening and for all your support. I know you're probably already checked out Jordan's Blood Trails podcast, but if you haven't, go check that out. He does such a good job with that. We have an entire podcast network. We have awesome films dropping almost weekly. Tons of articles going up at themeateater.com. You know, how-to stuff, conservation news. If you need hunting and fishing information or entertainment, TheMeteor.com has you covered. 00:16:34 Speaker 3: Thanks again for all your support.