Calling All Deer with Dr. Larry Marchinton
More Kinds of Deer Calls
Editor’s
Note: What is a hunter saying to a deer when the woodsman
blows a call? What calls are the most effective? What
actually is meant by the sound that the hunter is trying
to imitate? Although every hunter and each call manufacturer
has his own notion, at the University of Georgia in
Athens, Georgia, the sounds that whitetail deer make
and what they mean by these sounds have been scrutinized
carefully by a team of scientists that included Dr.
Larry Marchinton, the former head of the University
of Georgia’s Deer Research Project, who’s
now retired. This week Dr. Marchinton shares his research
on deer vocalization.
Mating Calls:
“The grunt call that the hunter most often uses
doesn’t fall in the category of aggressive calls
but comes under the heading of tending or mating calls,”
Marchinton said. “The tending grunt is more drawn
out, and the sound of the grunt actually lasts longer
than the aggressive grunt. The aggressive grunt is shorter
and choppier than the tending grunt. The tending grunt
is the call that the deer voices when he’s tending
a doe. But even if the hunters get these two calls confused,
the grunt still may have the same effect of drawing
in a buck, because a buck may come to the call either
to fight or to mate. The grunt call, whether it is a
tending grunt or an aggressive grunt, may also run off
a subordinate buck. The aggressive grunt almost always
will scare off a subordinate buck. But the tending grunt
may draw a subordinate buck that hopes he may be able
to breed the doe that’s with the other buck. The
phlegm and sniff is a kind of squeaky noise that the
deer makes when he curls his lip up. This call usually
is given by a buck when he first smells estrous urine.
And oftentimes bucks will give this call whether the
urine is estrus or not.”
The Contact Call:
“The contact call is given primarily by does and
fawns of both sexes,” Marchinton commented. “This
too is a type of grunt. But this contact call is longer
than the threatening grunt and not quite as low as the
other grunts but rather a little higher pitched because
it’s made by the does and fawns. The contact call
seems to tell other deer, ‘I’m over here.
Come find me.’ Quite often I’ve heard this
call given by fawns that are separated from their does.”
Scientists have learned that the grunt call in its various
levels of intensity and different tones is used by deer
to communicate many things at different times, which
is perhaps one of the reasons that commercial grunt
calls often tend to be so effective.
Even if you give the wrong grunt call, you still may
lure in the deer. For instance if you mean to give a
tending grunt, but you don’t know the difference
between a tending grunt and an aggressive grunt, and
the sound you give communicates aggression, you still
may call in a buck a that prefers to fight, which is
what makes deer calling so different from other types
of animal calling. If you give the wrong call when you’re
duck or turkey calling, more than likely you’ll
spook the game – but not when calling deer.”
Fawn Calls:
“The mew is a high-pitched call that’s not
as loud as the bleat,” Marchinton explained. “The
mew seems to be a call that the fawn uses to solicit
the attention of a doe. Also a juvenile utilizes the
mew to keep from getting lost or just to be recognized.
The bleat is louder and longer than the mew and much
more intense. The fawns often will use the bleat when
they want to feed. The bleat is quite similar to a contact
call and is often used by the hunter to say to the deer,
‘Hello, I’m over here. Come find me.’
The nursing whine is a sound fawns vocalize when they’re
nursing or when they want to nurse.”
Tomorrow: Techniques for Calling
Deer
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