When Deer Calls Don’t Work with John E. Phillips
Day 4: Times Deer Calls Don’t Work with Eddie Salter, Harold Knight and Will Primos
Editor’s Note: Some days, a grunt or a bleat may pull a buck within bow or gun range. However, at other times calling may prove futile, or even frighten deer away. Don’t consider deer calls the magic cure-all to put the buck of a lifetime in your crosshairs anytime you use them.
 Sometimes deer calls don’t call deer, including when:
* a buck’s a half-mile upwind of you, with a brisk breeze blowing. More than likely, he won’t hear you, no matter how loudly you blow a grunt or a bleat call. If a buck can’t hear the call, he can’t respond.
* you pick a region with no deer in it during the time you’re calling. Then you’ll have no response from deer. This factor explains why you can go to an area and call for 4 or 5 hours without spotting a deer.
 * you call again to a buck that’s coming to you, which may make the buck stop, look straight at you and leave. A deer call should make a buck hunt you. If the buck reaches a place where he thinks he should see the deer that has called and doesn’t spot that deer or sees you, more than likely he’ll leave. Since deer most-often come to a curiosity call, don’t call to a buck already coming to you.
* you hunt in a place where other hunters have called too much, and the deer have become call-shy. Deer can become call-shy just like turkeys do. Think for a minute. How many times have you heard does bleat or grunt? How often have you heard bucks grunt or snort-wheeze? When have you heard or seen bucks fighting? In some parts of the country, hunters seldom hear or see deer vocalization or buck battles. Unlike teenagers who constantly have their phones in their ears talking to their friends, deer talk very little. Eddie Salter of Evergreen, Alabama, a member of Hunter’s Specialties Pro Hunt Team, agrees as he explains, “If you’re hunting in an area with numbers of does or where several hunters are grunting and rattling, seems like the more calling deer hear, the less likely they are to come to those calls.”
 * “A buck is on a mission to go somewhere or do something and hears a grunt call,” explains Harold Knight of Knight and Hale Game Calls. “He’ll probably go-ahead and do whatever he’s planned to do instead of coming to the call.”
* “You’re hunting in open woods,” Will Primos, the president of Primos Game Calls in Flora, Mississippi, says. “The real secret to deer calling is making sure a buck won’t be able to see from where the call’s coming. I like to take a stand beside a barrier like brush, a thicket or a blown-down tree or on the edge of a creek.  Then if a buck hears my call, he’ll assume the deer that’s made the call is in the creek or behind the thicket. So, he’ll come-on in to see the deer doing the calling.”
Tomorrow: More Times Deer Calls Won’t Work with Gary Sefton, Harold Knight and David Hale
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