Ep. 17: The Mule Deer that Came to Fight and How to Call in Giant Bucks

same white tail tactics to call in mule deer. Right now, It's that time of year, the magical time many deer hunters have been waiting for, when big bucks start to come out of the woodwork to chase hot does states like Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Nevada, eras own in New Mexico, Utah, just to name a few, I'll have a few seasons that dip into the rut. So this week I want to share a success story of calling mule deer. While it's often overlooked, calling can be a great tactic to consider.

I want to go over the best setups to call and rattle run it up Muley's. Have you ever had a deer that just taunts you? I have now. A few years back, my buddy Art had a special deer tag in Montana. He was looking for a certain size buck and they were starting to pre run. The bucks were cruising, but there's one buck hanging out down on this piece of private that was pretty close to where

we could hunt, right on the border. Every day we drive up looking for a deer and see nothing as good as this buck that was just hanging out in this one spot. Now does would keep cruising around, but this buck just owned this block of turf is pretty open, and we would watch him. Is big four by four. Every time a dough would walk in, He's just like, this is my zone. These are my does. Little bucks would go over try to take a dough, he would run him off. There's one pine tree that he would

sit next to. He would rake it up. All the brush around was tore up. It was just like he was living there. This was his domain and he was never going to leave, even though he was pretty close to a place that we could hunt. We kept hoping, man, maybe that buck will make a mistake and move, and just never did. Day in day out that buck was safe, or at least he thought he was safe. A few years earlier, I was guiding a guy in Montana. He actually drew the super tag, which is just like you

put in for a lottery. Draw a tag and you can hunt anywhere in the state. Now, the week that he happened to be hunting was just fogged out, And when there's no visibility, hunting for mule deer is nearly impossible, especially when you're looking for a big, mature buck. We had gotten into a place and I could hear buck grunting as he was walking through the fog. I couldn't even see it. Well. I always carry a grunt tube.

Later in the season, I gave him a few grunts, and that buck came in to point blank range, and that hunter shot that buck. Having that knowledge, I thought, it's open here. But what if we create a scenario where this buck can't resist where he here's the action but can't quite see it. I think we'll be able to call him off and call him to us. We go around, we get the wind right or where we're allowed to hunt, and I started throwing out a few grunts.

Now he's a good distance away from us, and there's a fence in between. So for this to actually work, we have to get that buck fired up. We have to make him believe that there's some action that he absolutely cannot miss out on. But he's a long ways away too, and I'm not even sure he'll hear a grunt. I had two big meal their sheds in the back of my truck, so he said, well, I'm gonna rattle with these. Clack them together as loud as I can.

Start rattling, just like he would for a white tail, making it sound like fighting action, scraping up the dirt. Give it a few minutes. Peek up over the rise and I can see the bucks bedded. His ears are at attention and he's focused our direction. Well, I know he's listening. Now, what's the next play? So I used the grunt too, just grunting sequence of maybe ten grunts, like a buck tending a dough. Do that. Now he's

standing up all right. Back to the rattling. At this point, he's starting to move our direction, but hits the fence. It's like, man, there's no way we're gonna calm across that fence. And then I pull a little trick out of the old white Tailhandbook. Many of you that are white tail hunters might know the sound the snort wease. That noise gets up buck. It's like the hair on his swollen neck stands up and he starts raking the fence posts that he's standing in front of, jumps the

fence and starts coming in. I can now at this point hear him grunting. We're in the open, but we've got a rise. He disappears behind the rise. I give him a few more grunts. The buck pops up, Art gets the rifle ready, and boom that buck that had been taunting us all week, that wouldn't leave. We just called him in across the open almost half a mile to where we could shoot him. Now, well, you may have thought of calling for white tails, Neil, there are

more of a spot and stock game. The reason is because they live in more open country, so you kind of have to understand the deer's behavior before you know whether the calling will work or not. So what I first wanted to talk about is the times where calling might be necessary for meal deer. I think the first one is if there's just not good visibility. It could be because of whether or even just an area where

there's a lot of thick cover. Another option, like the one in that story, is just where that deer's living, somewhere I can't hunt, but I can possibly call him off of private to a place where I can hunt. Now, there's a lot of checkerboarded places to hunt across the west where there's that one boundary and that deer happens to like that one side. But maybe calling him over might be a good option to try if he's not

cruising and moving as much as you'd like. Before we talk about the tactics to calling meal, dear, I just want to go over the types of calls. Now, if you're a white tail hunter, these might be familiar. If you don't know much about white tail calling, this will work with either species. So I'm just gonna break down what the sounds mean before we go into the type of illusion that I want to create with the calls.

So the first one, you have your grunt to what the grunt is that's the noise that a buck makes. But there's two types of communication. So there's just your standard grunt, and this is the way that bucks get other bucks attention. It's louder, it's stronger, and there might just be a couple in succession. It's not done a lot, It's maybe done every ten minutes or so. Now, I've been really fortunate to get to hunt areas with a lot of mule deer during the rut, and I hear

a lot of vocalization coming from mule deer. One that I hear all the time is earlier pre rut or when they're circling each other, a lot of successive grunts. What that generally is there a little bit softer, and it happens a lot when bucks are tending goes or when they're squaring up with each other before where they fight. These are done in rapid succession and often while moving. So there's been a lot of times where I've been sitting there glassing for meldering here and it's like almost

every few steps is his bucks moving through. He's more trying to talk to does at that point or just communicate. Maybe he's moving with a dough or he's following a buck before they square up, so you'll hear that one more. It's more successive, and it's while they're moving. Also, that sound when it's a lot of grunts in a row might trick another buck into thinking a buck in his area has a dough that he's tending at that moment.

Like I said in the story, the one that happened to get him more piste off than anything was a snort whase. Now, I don't even know if I've heard a mule dear make that noise. I have heard white tails do it. I've used it while calling white tails. But that's essentially like a very aggressive challenge call. So it's different than a grunt. It's more of a sound like a sharp, fast exhale of air, and the noise is actually making a direct challenge to another buck, and

that's something that really affects more dominant bucks. A smaller buck might run away at that challenge, whereas a real dominant buck that believes he owns the area that will get him to come in. I'll just do it with my voice. It's more of a that really pisces off dominant bucks. It's that direct challenge sound that they just don't like. Now, there's also other calls that the does make. One in particular is a higher pitched, drawn out bleat made by a doing heat. So this will be an

estraus bleat. Now it's really rare to actually hear that sound. I've heard it a few times. But what it does is it informs a buck that there's a dough we're fighting for in that vicinity, and this can help build the illusion that there's dear that that buck that's around needs to investigate. Now, rattling, that's the sound you're creating, a fighting sound. Rat lin can travel along ways and

also makes it sound like there's bucks there. There might be something else going on, there's a reason that those bucks are fighting. When I rattle for mule here, I prefer to use a heavy set of antlers. I've tried a lot of different antlers, but that big, heavy clacking

sound seems to be the best one to draw them in. Now, carrying around a big set of mule their shed antlers is not ideal when you're packing in somewhere you know might not even find the right situation to call over the course of a week, so you don't want to have to carry a set of antlers around the entire time. Another thing that I found that works well for mule here, what I do is the front shoulder. I'll use two

front shoulder blades. For some reason, that noise sounds a little bit deeper and tends to work really well for calling mule. Theres so dried out front shoulder blade bones, they're easier to keep in your pack. Man. You get a mule here this year, take that front shoulder and make a roast in the crock. Pop, pull that front shoulder out, Save those front shoulder blades or you might even find them on the ground whatever while they're hiking around.

Those are great replacements for big heavy meal deer anilers. For some reason that sound I found, I've called in a lot of mule there using that as opposed to carrying around shed anilers. So let's go into the setup. When will this call work? Well, let's understand mule dear behavior, the type of terrain that they live in, and why they might be susceptible to being tricked. So the first thing is mule deer think about their design compared to a white tailed deer and the habitats that they live in.

So a mule there has big ears for listening, but he also uses his vision a lot, and the reason is because they tend to live in more open country, so unlike a white tailed deer that lives in thicker terrain, more timbered forests. They travel more trails consistently. A mule, there's more of a wanderer, so they use their ears and eyes for more location, especially when it comes to the rut. They travel larger distances when they find other deer.

A lot of times they're using their ears. They're using their eyes to locate females during the rut or during that pre rut phase. And it's that open country, so that's really good if you're calling, they can hear it from ways away, but it can also be problematic because they're going to use their eyes to try to investigate and see if what that sound that's being made while calling is actually real, or if it's a deer or other things being so visual. During archery seasons, I have

successfully used mule deer decoys. Um I have Montana decoy that has worked really well in combination with the calling. However, if it's a rifle season, I strongly urge you not to be packing a decoy around. That hunt in Montana was a rifle season, was a late season November hunt. We definitely weren't gonna be popping out a mule dear dough decoy in that particular instance, But if you're in

some open country, that decoy might work pretty well. I've used it down in Arizona on the over the counter archery tags late in combination with calling and decoying in and it's worked really well on desert mule deer. So that's just something to think about. But you gott under stand that that visual queue of mule deer, the calling is gonna work better in places where they can't see as far. Now, think about times you might need to use calling. Well, it's probably gonna be to draw the buck.

If you're on an archery hunt, draw the buck in a little bit extra distance from wherever he's at so you can get within bow range, or draw him out of cover to somewhere that you can see him so you can shoot with a rifle. So you're gonna use it in those scenarios where it works and where the deer should be living. I rarely blind call to mule deer, but it can be done a lot of times. I'm

using it to draw them in closer. So my strategy for calling mule deer just really comes from observations that I've made while watching real dear rut, and what I've noticed is there will be this what I call a buck magnet, a group of action where bucks are chasing each other, does are all intermixed, bucks are fighting, and then you'll see these other cruising deer coming in from all directions, taking the time to watch and observe that. I took mental notes and said, that's what I want

to create, what I'm gonna call a buck magnet. That buck that we called off private property, we had created that exact illusion, the illusion that there's a group of deer having rutting interactions that another deer's missing out on. Now during the rut and especially the pre rut, this works because the deer cruising they're looking for does, they're moving around. More so, those audio cues of rattling antlers, grunts, estras, sounds are gonna possibly pique the interests of deer traveling

and moving by. Now, if you're bow hunting, once you have the deer spotted, the key first before you start calling is to get the wind right, because you do not want to spook the deer. Once I set up my call, I want to get as close as possible but I want to be in a spot where they can't get visual idea of where I'm at until they're

within range. So what I would do is call from just below a ridge to where you'd have to walk over the ridge and be in range to see what's going on, not where he can go to a ridge nearby and look into my direction. So the whole thing would be, especially if you're trying it with a bow to bring him in closer, would be to get to a point where you can call him to where he would come to look and you can get a shot. So think of natural breaks and terrain heels or stalking

to a bush that's close. I have tried calling to multiple deer. I feel like single bucks are the bucks that are most susceptible to this tactic. If you have a buck that's already tending does, I don't think that i've actually successfully called that buck off of dose. So the timing has to be right. The best time would be that pre rut or even post rut, when bucks might be still cruising or moving around checking different groups of does. So the timing has a lot to do

with your success on calling in a buck. Now, if you've identified a single buck you're hunting open country is a great oppertun tunity to try those calling tactics because you can cut him off. He's already looking for a group of deer. He's using his ears. Two key into that sound of potential running action. Just make sure before you start calling you're in a position to where he can't go and try to site you before coming in. So the setup is really the crux of the operation.

And then using all those sounds, the rattling, the grunting like a buck's tending a dough. And if it's a dominant buck you've seen the buck, try that snort wheeze as well, because that's a really aggressive call that should get him fired up to come in. Hopefully, if you've got a late season tag, you might think about bringing some calls trying to call a mule there. If you never even thought about it before, I hope that kind of changes your thought process a little bit. Maybe you've

got a late season white tail tag. Great tactics. All those tactics work with white tails as well, especially if you're stationary, because it can draw some deer in that might be cruising further away out of sight or off a trail that you happen to be hunting, so there's

a lot of applications for calling. I think people often believe that mule there aren't that vocal, but that's just not my experience hunting a lot of different places for him during the rut, I found that they can be as vocal, if not more vocal, than white tail deer. So it's definitely a cool tactic to try. If you end up getting out getting some calling in, let me know how it goes. Hopefully we'll see more people with grunt tubes walking around the mule deer woods this year.

Sponstock is always a great option for mule deer, but in some scenarios calling might be more effective to get that buck within range. I know we're coming up on the beginning of December, a lot of seasons are closing, but some are opening. We start looking at the Southwest and other places. Great tactic to try down there. I've used it a lot on some of those late archery hunts in Arizona, and I've even used it in New Mexico and I drew a good late season tagged down there.

So there's a lot of places these tactics can still be used. We got some cool stuff coming up. I think we'll do like a little Christmas special in a couple of weeks. If you've got any success this past season, you know it's time to start thinking about sharing that sharing that success in the form of a wild game Christmas Party. So I'll be a couple of weeks and then I'm not even sure what I'm gonna talk about next week yet, but it will be something seasonal and

something good. Until then, keep rattling h