You can't know how productive a call is until you actually spot the deer," Brown says. According to Keck, when bucks are enticed by a cackling call, the deer generally respond in one of two ways. "There are 'crashers,' 'crashers,' and there are 'sneakers'" he explains. "Some bucks will come on the run when they hear cackling—crashing through the woods as they approach your stand. Other bucks will sneak into your stand, and you'll never hear them. They'll just appear in front of you." Although Wayne Carlton, Carl Brown and Rob Keck all agree that cackling to bucks is most effective just before, during and after the breeding season, Carlton uses this method to call bucks in the early bow season even when no scraping or rutting activity is occurring. "Cackling in the early season brings in bucks because the call sounds like more than one deer are in an area," Carlton says. "Because deer are social animals, a buck will want to come and associate with the other deer he hears grunting. If a buck hears more than one deer calling from the same spot, I believe he feels that region is safe to enter." When a buck responds to the cacking grunt call but stops short of bow range, Carlton has a plan: "Turn the call around, and suck in on the tube) art of the call. By reversing the call, I can give a softer and calmer grunt. "Also by putting the call in my left breast pocket with the tube end of the call out, I simply can drop my chin and [use] the tube end of the call. I have my hands free to draw and shoot when the buck comes in closer. Because the sound of the call is muffled, the buck has a more difficult time distinguishing where the sound is coming from and is less likely to spot me in my tree stand." How much more productive for luring bucks is the cackling grunt compared with the traditional call of three, slow grunts every 15 minutes? Rob Keck and Carl Brown estimate that they have doubled, perhaps tripled, the number of bucks they see by using the cackling grunt. Similarly, Carlton says that he calls in more—and bigger—dominant bucks with a cackling grunt. So when it comes to communicating with whitetail deer, this call is proving to be a reliable method of bringing in bucks. As Wayne Carlton says: "If you call excitedly, you excite more deer. You're creating a situation that deer find hard to stay away from."