callin mulies?

[born2hunt]

what call do you guyz use and does it seem to work? how often do you call? do you use a grunt ? doe bleet ? lets hear your thoughts on this and any sucesses

[Big7]

A friend of mine bought me one of those PRIMO can calls one year for Christmas, and we both agreed they were kind of hoky - but....don't knock it till you've tried it|! The deer come runnin!

[guest]

I use a combination of grunts and antler rattling, plus hoof stomps with the antlers and it has worked for me.
they certainly don't respond as well as W/T deer.
good luck
C/T

[BimmerBob]

Are there any web resources where you can hear what it is supposed to be done? I have a deer grunt tube but am not sure exactly how it is supposed to sound. How hard do you blow, how many times, that sort ot thing?

Looking for guidance too. Thanks in advance... Bob

[guest]

Try you tubing Bill Jordans white tail hunts. He does a fair amount of rattling and grunts.

[ianwuzhere]

"a Doe A Deer A Female Deer..." Then The Does Come And The Bucks Shortly After ;)

[CanuckShooter]

We usually just softly call "buck, buck, buck" about once every half hour or so....before you know it there will be a big mulie buck standing there wondering what the he** your doing??:shock:

[huntwriter]

Calling mule deer can work, but not as well a by whitetail deer.

For successful calling the setup, the sounds used and frequency are important.

Set up:
The most common problem is choosing the right set up. Deer tend to approach a calling station from downwind. Often hunters call in more deer than they ever will see, the reason is because the deer has smelled the hunter long before it is seen and left. Not only do deer approach from downwind but they also use cover to their advantage.

The second problem is that most hunters set up to far away from the deer. Unlike elk and turkey, deer do rarely go out of their way to investigate a call.

The perfect set up for a calling station is downwind near a location with thick cover and active trails where deer have to steep in the open and where they can’t see where the call comes from until they are in shooting range. When deer come to calls they fully expect to see another deer and if they can see the location from lets say 300 yards they will hang up and watch. Good set up places are in transition zones and corners, also at either end of a narrow strip of wood leading into bigger blocks of timber.

Calling:
The biggest mistakes made are calling to loud, to often and using the wrong call sequence at the wrong time of the season.

Deer have exceptional hearing and are able to pinpoint exactly where a call comes from. What I tell hunters on my courses and seminars is, “Deer don’t shout they whisper”. Tone your calling down a notch or two.

Deer know what they communicate with each other at what time of the year. A doe-in-estrus call used before any does are in heat is a sure way to alert every deer in earshot that something is very wrong. Aggressive antler rattling when bucks are still in velvet also will give the hunter away as a hoax.

Calling frequency is another concern. Deer are not chatterboxes. Deer talk rarely and quietly. The best calling frequency I have found is two to three soft grunts or bleats and then wait for a half hour before repeating the calls. While you wait use your binoculars to look all around you. The deer that come in to calls come slowly, stopping frequently in cover to observe the path ahead out.

The biggest sin committed by hunters is made with rattling. Most hunters are to aggressive, to loud and rattle to long. Rattling does not work equally well everywhere. During the rut rattling will not work in areas where the doe population greatly outnumbers the buck population. In these areas bucks have no need to fight for the breeding rights. In such areas the buck finds a receptive doe and then moves straight on the next receptive doe. In areas where the doe to buck population is near equal rattling works better because bucks will have to fight for the does.

In the pre-rut try to mimic friendly sparing, soft clicking and grinding of the antlers works best. Make it sound natural by incorporating one or two normal buck grunts and rustle the ground with your feet. A rattling session should not last much over three to four minutes and then should not be repeated for at least another hour. Unless the buck to doe ration is equal I never would advice to aggressive rattling even during the rut. Big bucks too investigate smaller bucks fighting in the hope they can snatch a doe away from a young buck. On the other hand aggressive rattling that mimics monster buck fights are likely to scare all bucks out of an area.

Here is a link (http://www.bowsite.com/bowsite/features/practical_bowhunter/deergrunting/index.cfm) to a chart of what calls work when and the sounds of different calls.

[tikkat3]

good info huntwriter! I see many of the mistakes I have been making now

[Spyder]

I'm new to calling as well just trying it out this year, I have a bleet can and 2 quad grunters one is a tiny handsfree one the other is a larger one with the hose, playing with them in the back yard works with deer around the neighborhood, i sound more like a cryin baby then a fawn in distress but the lil bucks and does came in very fast and very curious so it seemed.
This is where i have been trying to learn the different calls and where to use them. Lots of examples just look at a few give you some idea's i was lost for the most part untill i heard some examples and watched some videos of the deer actually responding.

http://tw.youtube.com/watch?v=YpaKaGtLkHM&feature=related

[Mr. Dean]

I mostly use calls while tramping the bush. If I break a stick accidently, I use an animal call to 'cover' my mistake. I'm not necessarily attempting to call a critter in - just trying to become invisible.

[huntwriter]

I'm new to calling as well just trying it out this year, I have a bleet can and 2 quad grunters one is a tiny handsfree one the other is a larger one with the hose, playing with them in the back yard works with deer around the neighborhood, i sound more like a cryin baby then a fawn in distress but the lil bucks and does came in very fast and very curious so it seemed.
This is where i have been trying to learn the different calls and where to use them. Lots of examples just look at a few give you some idea's i was lost for the most part untill i heard some examples and watched some videos of the deer actually responding.

http://tw.youtube.com/watch?v=YpaKaGtLkHM&feature=related

You have all the basic call that can be very effective if used properly. The bleat-can will only work during the rut and at no other time. Set up is important to make this call work. For best results try it near doe feeding and bedding areas. These are the areas bucks will travel in search of a receptive doe.

Use the doe-in-estrus bleat no more than twice and then stop. Watch all around you with binoculars. A buck reacting to this call usually sneaks in from the downwind side. The buck will be highly alerted and watch out for every movement in anticipation of seeing another, bigger buck, that heard the call too.

Try this, call once or twice with the doe-in-estrus bleat then wait five minutes and start with a gentle antler rattling session and mix a buck grunt or two in. Noting to aggressive, try to sound like to lesser bucks sparing for a doe. This might just be the ticket to lure a big boy in hoping to steal a doe from two teenagers.

The small mouth call is good to lure a buck in for the last few steps to get a shot at it. You can hold the call in your mouth with the rifle shouldered or the bow drawn and ready to shoot.

The grunt call with the tube is perfect to mimic moving deer. Bucks get quickly suspicious when the call keeps coming from the exact same location. It’s unnatural. Here is what I do with a grunt tube. I blow the call once with the tube pointed in the direction where I expect deer to be. The second call I produce with the tube pointed to the side of me, and the last call with the tube pointed behind me. This gives any deer the impression that I am moving around. Remember what I said about deer having directional hearing and that can pinpoint where a sound comes from.

Finally let me give you and others some well meaning advice about videos demonstrating deer calls. These videos are primarily made to SELL deer calls. I am not going to bore with how hunting videos are made. Suffice to say that after a hunt many hours are spent shooting additional footage, in this case, of calling and horn rattling and the hunter sitting in the treestand talking about it. In the studio the footage is cut together to make it look like a continuous hunting sequence.

Most of these videos are taken on managed land where the buck to doe ratio is 1 to 1 or close to that. In other words what you see on the video does not work in most places where the average hunters hunt.

The calls that work best in real life hunting are; Normal doe or buck contact grunts, doe-in estrus bleat and gentle antler ratting. Forget the aggressive buck grunt, the snort and wheeze or tending grunt. Keep it simple, keep it friendly and keep it natural and you should do very well. It works for me and I hunt deer with bow and firearms for longer than I can remember. I also have guided whitetail deer hunting in America and never had a complaint from a client.

One last word about grunting. Keep it natural by moving the sound around as described above and by changing the calling. Deer don’t stand around and go uurrp, uurpp, uurpp. Deer change the sound like, uuurrrp-uurp-----urp-urp.

[huntwriter]

I mostly use calls while tramping the bush. If I break a stick accidently, I use an animal call to 'cover' my mistake. I'm not necessarily attempting to call a critter in - just trying to become invisible.

That's a very good tactic that I use all the time. The woods are full of sounds of animals breaking twigs or trampling around. Making an animal sound such as deer or even a cow where there are cows will but deer at ease. Usually when I step on something noisy I stand absolutely still for about five to ten minutes after I give a short animal sound. Deer will quickly forget that sound provided it is not repeated again with the next step. When hunters walk they also should imitate how animals walk and not like humans in that predictable left-right-left-right. Instead make tow short steps, stand still, take a longer step, stand still, and so on.

[rocksteady]

During the rut, I have used a fawn distress call, imitating a hurt fawn and had does come running mach 3 to see whats up, followed by good bucks...Works especially good in areas of thick cover.....

Even a story in this months North American Hunter Magazine about the technique for Mulies in Mexico...


Give er a try, you have nothing to lose...

[huntwriter]

During the rut, I have used a fawn distress call, imitating a hurt fawn and had does come running mach 3 to see whats up, followed by good bucks...Works especially good in areas of thick cover.....

Even a story in this months North American Hunter Magazine about the technique for Mulies in Mexico...


Give er a try, you have nothing to lose...

Fawn in distress doesn’t work on whitetails. Sure they come running like runaway trains and dash around like mad to distract the predator from the fawn. There is no way to get a clean shot at deer that behave like a madhouse.

I am not that knowledgeable about mule deer as I am about whitetails. So if you say it works well on them I will give it atry. I always try everything ones. In my area I have seen plenty of fawns and coyotes. I’ll let you know next week how well it works on mule deer.:wink:

[rocksteady]

It does work well on mulies.....Trust me on this one....They will run closer rather than running away....

It does work on whiteys also, just depends on the timing of the rut....If mama has kicked out the fawns so she can get lucky with BUcky, she won't come, but if its after the first rut and she is back with her fawns, they may come for a look and any buck within earshot may come too, as he thinks there could be a loose doe available...

[Stone Sheep Steve]

It does work well on mulies.....Trust me on this one....They will run closer rather than running away....

It does work on whiteys also, just depends on the timing of the rut....If mama has kicked out the fawns so she can get lucky with BUcky, she won't come, but if its after the first rut and she is back with her fawns, they may come for a look and any buck within earshot may come too, as he thinks there could be a loose doe available...

I'll second that.
I've called in lots of muley does and a couple of bucks when using a fawn in distress call when calling for yotes. Mulie does will mob a coyote whereas a yote howl puts the fear of God into whities:smile:.

http://s67.photobucket.com/albums/h281/StoneSheep/?action=view&current=Cap0020.flv


While I prefer to rake a bush and grunt when muley hunting, I do sometimes rattle. Actually, I've rattled in waaaaaay more mulies than whitetails........including one really nice non-typical muley( I was already tagged out and the season was closed:sad:). He came in very aggressively and let out a huge snort.

SSS

[huntwriter]

The video shows exactly what I explained earlier about whitetails. Yes fawn in distress calls do work but the doe’s keep running back and forth trying to find the fawn. With that action going on there is no way any hunter can get a clean shot at any of these deer.

While fawn in distress calls will bring in does the bucks stay away. A whitetail buck has nothing to do with fawns and therefore couldn’t care less about a fawn in distress. When the rut kicks in the buck is after does that are in heat not does that still nurse fawns. Once the rut is on I only use doe-in-estrus bleats and if the conditions are right add light antler rattling.

That’s the experience I have gathered in more than 20 years of hunting and guiding for whitetail deer on public and managed land.

I am still going to try a fawn in distress next week on mule deer, maybe if nothing else I can coax a bear in with that call, just so I can say that I tired it on mule deer.

[Chuck]

I've called one mulie with a grunt tube years ago, but I think it was more fluke than anything else, a doe came out of some tight brush into a small clearing that I was watching, and he was close on her tail, so I waited for my chance and then dropped him with one clean shot. The doe just stood there looking at me till I got up and started walking toward them. The only other success I've had is stopping fleeing whitetail with a few grunts so I can get a shot. I think this is more successful with groups of does, but I"ve stopped a few bucks so that they turned to look and then game over.

[hunter1947]

I use a primo hyper hot cow elk call ,I turn it around back wards and suck it in ,I called in one bucks yesterday morning.
It was only a little 2 point so I let them go.