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THE MAJESTIC NINE-POINT BUCK STOOD 20 |
yards from me, looking left to right, his ears raised and cupped, scanning like radar dishes set to pinpoint the sound that had brought him crashing through the surrounding cedars. A few moments earlier my hunting guide Chris Yoeman, of Rapid City, South Dakota, had made a series of cackling sounds on his grunt tube. The buck responded instantly. Yeoman, who is also a turkey guide, had already discovered what a host of hunters are just now finding out—cackling to deer works.
The exciting art of calling whitetail deer is evolving much like turkey calling already has. Twenty years ago the |
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traditional method of calling turkeys was to cluck three times, yelp three times and then not call again for 30 to 40 minutes. |
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As the rut reaches its peak, bucks
talk aggressively. When
calling, hunters should do the same. |
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The cackle call wasn't well-known then, and few people used the call to excite gobblers and bring them within gun range. But then a less hidebound breed of turkey hunters began experimenting and learned that cutting, cackling and other "tough talk" could increase the number of turkeys they lured in and also could bring the birds in faster. It wasn't long before their methods caught on throughout the turkey woods. Today some of the nation's best turkey callers are successfully applying the same thinking to deer hunting. Now, the cackling grunt is causing deer hunters to rethink the way they call and is prompting a new wave of interest in deer calling strategies.
"The cackling grunt is a way to call deer much like cackling and cutting calls [for] gobblers. This particular call is much faster than the usual grunt call, has more excitement in the call and simulates the deer's movement," says Wayne Carlton of Montrose , Colorado , president of Carlton Calls. "Most deer hunters call bucks with three slow, rather long grunts, wait 15 minutes and then give the same series of grunts again," Carlton explains. "But if a buck walks through the area where you're calling and he doesn't hear you grunt, you won't be able to call him in to where you're waiting. By calling more, you increase the odds of more bucks hearing [you] and coming to your calls. From watching bucks and does, I've noticed when they're really excited, they grunt almost continuously." |
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