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Midwest Bucks is the driving force behind my addiction to bow hunting, but not far behind is getting up close and personal with gobbling thunder chickens in spring.

The Right Call

On November 8th of 2014, I was fortunate enough to take my largest whitetail to date.  He was a large framed twenty-inch wide nine point with some IMG_2150cool character.  I was hunting over a cut cornfield that neighbored a wooly ditch surrounded by CRP.  I was hidden well, eighteen feet in the air comfortably sitting in my Twisted Timber Treestand.   The afternoon was slow after my late start getting in the tree, but finally around 4:00pm I begin to see some does make their way into the field.

After glancing behind me I caught movement, and then a flash of antlers.  Instantly without seeing the deer, I just knew it was shooter.  I have always found it amazing how just a quick glance of a tine, or main beam can let you know so much about an animal.  The buck was following a doe, but had stopped to work a scrape.

Soon after he had finished I hit him with a few soft grunts to check his interest level.  I honestly was not expecting much since he was with a doe.  As expected after acknowledging that he heard the grunt he lowered his head again and began nudging the doe.  Knowing that I needed to be more IMG_2145aggressive I snort wheezed at the big buck.  Instantly his head shot up, and his ears pinned back and he began scanning my direction to find the intruding buck that had come to pick a fight on his ground. After a few more well timed snort-wheezes he committed to the base of my tree.  The only problem was that as I tried to self-film there was no way I could get a shot so he bounded out of my life.

There was about fifteen minutes of light left when I decided to see if I could rattle him back in; sure enough, shortly after a quick rattling sequence I saw him coming to the cut corn to see his would be enemy.  After coming into the corn and not seeing anything I again snort wheezed two more times, finally causing him to commit to closing the distance to twenty-eight yards.  That is where I was able to send an arrow crashing through both lungs.

As I stated earlier, the evening ended with me sitting with my largest whitetail that I had taken posing for pictures.   I believe that I was able to kill IMG_2157that buck because I used the right call.  This hunt was so fun because I was deer hunting like I do turkey hunting.   I would call, and then he would in some way react, and based on his response and body language it let me know how to make the next call.

This is an important tip for any hunter out there.  I believe that calling whitetails works, if you allow the whitetail to dictate which call he will respond to.  The buck in the story, did not respond to a grunt, he was an aggressive buck that did not want to share territory with another.  I knew that snort-wheezes and rattling antlers were the way to go.

So this year, when we are back in the whitetail woods try this : let the deer teach you how to call.

 

Thanks for reading.IMG_2160

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