Ep. 17: The Mule Deer that Came to Fight and How to Call in Giant Bucks
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As a guide and hunter, I've spent thousands of days in the field. This show is about translating my hard-won experiences into tips and tactics that'll get you closer to your ultimate goal, success in the field. I'm Remy Warren. This is Cutting the Distance. This podcast is presented by Yeti, built for the wild. If I say rattling and calling, what comes to mind?

For most of you, you probably think, tree stand, rut, whitetails. And rightfully so. But what if I told you it's also possible to use those same whitetail 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, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, just to name a few, all 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 rutted up muleys. 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-rut. 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'd 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. It was pretty open, and we would watch him. He's a big four-by-four. Every time a doe would walk in, he's just like, this is my zone. These are my does. Little bucks would go over, try to take a doe. He would run them 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, hmm, it's open here. But what if we create a scenario where this buck can't resist, where he hears 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. We're where we're allowed to hunt. And I start 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 mule deer sheds in the back of my truck, so I just said, well, I'm going to rattle with these. Clack them together as loud as I can, start rattling, just like you would for a whitetail.

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 buck's 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 use the grunt too, just grunting. Sequence of maybe 10 grunts like a buck tending a doe. Just do that. Now he's standing up. 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 going to call him across that fence. And then I pull a little trick out of the old whitetail handbook. Many of you that are whitetail hunters might know the sound, the snort wheeze. That noise gets up Buck. It's like the hair on his swollen neck stands up. And he starts raking the fence post 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, crossed the open, almost half a mile to where we could shoot him.

Now, while you may have thought of calling for whitetails, mule deer 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 mule deer.

I think the first one is if there's just not good visibility. It could be because of weather 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 mule deer, I just want to go over the types of calls. Now, if you're a whitetail hunter, these might be familiar. If you don't know much about whitetail calling, this will work with either species. So I'm just going to 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 tube. What the grunt is, 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 10 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, is they're a little bit softer and it happens a lot when bucks are tending does or when they're squaring up with each other before 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 mule deer and hear, 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 doe 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

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Like I said in the story, the one that happened to get him more pissed off than anything was a snort wheeze. Now, I don't even know if I've heard a mule deer make that noise. I have heard whitetails do it. I've used it while calling whitetails. 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'll get him to come in. I'll just do it with my voice. It's more of a, that really pisses 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 doe in heat. So this will be an estrus 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 doe worth fighting for in that vicinity. And this can help build the illusion that there's deer that that buck that's around needs to investigate. Now rattling, that's the sound you're creating a fighting sound.

Rattling can travel a long 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 deer, 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 deer shed antlers is not ideal when you're packing in somewhere. You know, it 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 deer, 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 deer. So dried out front shoulder blade bones, they're easier to keep in your pack. And you get a mule deer this year, take that front shoulder, make a roast in the crock pot, pull that front shoulder out, save those front shoulder blades, or you might even find them on the ground, whatever, while you're hiking around.

Those are great replacements for big heavy mule deer antlers. For some reason, that sound I found, I've called in a lot of mule deer using that as opposed to carrying around shed antlers. So let's go into the setup. When will this call work? Well, let's understand mule deer 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 tail deer and the habitats that they live in.

So a mule deer 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 deer is 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 a 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. I have a 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. It was a late season, November hunt. We definitely weren't going to be popping out a mule deer doe 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 got to understand that that visual cue of mule deer, the calling is going to 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 going to 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 going to 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 deer rut.

And what I've noticed is there'll 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 going to 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 is missing out on. Now during the rut and especially the pre-rut this works because the deer are cruising, they're looking for does, they're moving around more. So those audio cues of rattling antlers, grunts, estrous sounds are going to possibly pique the interest 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 he'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 in terrain, hills 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 does. 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, it's a great opportunity to try those calling tactics because you can cut them off. He's already looking for a group of deer. He's using his ears to key into that sound of potential rutting action. Just make sure before you start calling, you're in a position to where he can't go and try to sight 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 doe. 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 deer. If you've 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 whitetail tag. Great tactics. All those tactics work with whitetails 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 the trail that you happen to be hunting. So there's a lot of applications for calling it.

I think people often believe that mule deer aren't that vocal, but that's just not my experience. Hunting a lot of different places for them during the rut, I found that they can be as vocal, if not more vocal, than white-tailed 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. You 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 when I drew a good late season tag 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 that'll be a couple weeks. And then I'm not even sure what I'm going to talk about next week yet. But it'll be something seasonal and something good. Until then, keep rattling.

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