Today's blog was written by Mike Earp from southern Missouri.  Mike will be helping us out this fall as one of the go-to guys for the Missouri portion of Midwest Whitetail.  In this blog he offers some lessons he learned from one obnoxiously loud grunting buck.  The following are Mike's words:

During the last weekend of the 2007 Missouri rifle season, I had decided to hit one of my hot spots in the Mark Twain National Forest in the southern part of the state where I grew up.  I had found a spot earlier in the year bow hunting that was loaded with good sign.  An over grown clear cut on a ridge top provided great bedding, big mature White Oak timbers that had produced a bumper crop of acorns and a creek that cut along the bottom edge of the ridge.  Plus there were big rubs on every other cedar tree in the creek bottom, and my buddy had a good encounter with a big buck a few weeks earlier. 

I was about 5 hours into my hunt when I heard something I had never heard before.  It was a buck grunting in the over grown clear cut, but they weren’t your normal grunts.  I could hear him chasing a doe, crashing through the thicket and he was definitely fired up.  These grunts lasted at least 8 to 10 seconds and were as low and guttural as he could get them.  And they were non-stop as he chased a doe through the thickest part of the clear cut she could find.  My attempt at grunting was futile, she wanted no part of me and she definitely wanted no part of him.  That carried on for almost 45 minutes before it got dark and I had to leave the woods.  I could still hear him bawling during my walk out. 

Fast forward one week, and I’m back in the same spot but this time with my bow.  I watched the day break with not a cloud in the sky or a whisper of wind, and it was a crisp 16 degree morning.  I had been rattling and doing a series of grunts for about an hour with no results, so I thought back to what I had heard the previous weekend.   I grabbed the grunt tube, and imitated the deep guttural sounds the other buck was making.  I was thinking to myself “well you sound like an idiot up here” when I heard leaves crunching and limbs breaking down in the bottom.  It wasn’t two minutes later this big high tine 8 pointer was standing broadside at 30 yards.  I let the Hoyt introduce itself in a quick manner and the buck piled up 40 yards under the hill. 

I love to learn new things when I’m hunting.  I’m always “studying” deer more than I’m “watching” them from a stand.  I have learned a lot by reading books and magazines, and talking to great hunters in the industry. But I have learned the most important lessons about deer hunting from the deer themselves.  I have been in the woods with my Dad since I was 4 years old and I had never heard a deer be vocal in that manner.  Not on TV, hunting DVD’s or anywhere.  But it must be a deadly sound, because I did the exact same grunt in October of last year with the same results.  A 20 yard shot and a half a mile drag later, I had another Pope and Young in back of the truck.  Plus I had another opportunity at a big buck ruined by a wind shift and a spooky doe that had come in to the grunt as well.

I learned some pretty important lessons that day with my bow.

(1.) There is probably a deeper realm of deer vocalizations than we know, or  
       have even heard. 

(2.) If a deer makes a particular sound, they aren’t just doing it to amuse themselves, it
       must have some meaning behind it. 

(3.) Don’t be afraid to put in some practice and make the same sounds in the tree stand.  A deer could respond out of curiosity and come within range, or they could come in looking for a fight when you hit a nerve.  That growl, roar, grunt, bawl, (whatever you want to call it) that I picked up on during the ‘07 rifle season produced a great public land deer a week later, another one in ‘08, and I’m eager to try and make it a three-peat this fall!