Calling All Deer with Dr. Larry Marchinton
Techniques for Calling Deer
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.
“I believe that now hunters are beginning to
understand and effectively use deer calls,” Marchinton
observed. “Whether we’ll ever reach the
level of communication that a duck hunter has when he
calls in a flight of ducks is still speculative. Remember
that deer have bigger brains than ducks and are not
fooled quite as easily.”
Dr. Marchinton is also an avid deer hunter. When asked
if he used deer calls, he answered, “Occasionally.
I play with all the calls to see what kind of results
I’ll get. But the call I utilize most is the tending
grunt. I use my mouth to call deer most of the time
rather than commercial calls. I also use deer calls
in conjunction with rattling. A call that I feel can
be very effective is what I call the straining grunt.
Hunters acquainted with the technique of hunting deer
known as rattling understand that clashing the antlers
simulates two bucks fighting. And from observing bucks
fighting, I know they give off a grunting sound similar
to that made by two linemen when they try to push and
shove each other out of the way to make a hole for the
running back. So I call this grunt the straining grunt,
which is a deep guttural sound that’s somewhere
between a roar and a grunt. Although on several
occasions I’ve called deer in using this call,
I’m sure at other times I’ve run deer off
with it. The key to using this grunt successfully is
to put a strained sound in the call. But a hunter must
realize that this call may scare off any buck except
the most-dominant buck in the area.
“Scientists are learning so much more about calling
deer and using it as a hunting tactic that we’re
just at the point now to be able to ask better questions
to find out what we don’t understand. However,
biologists do know that deer calling is not a surefire
way to always bring in bucks. But since calling is effective
at some times, I do use it when hunting but not always.
The key to successful deer calling is to use the correct
calls, at the right times of the year. For instance,
the most-effective time to use the tending grunt is
during breeding season. In the early part of hunting
season if you want to call in a doe, then common sense
tells you to make some fawn-in-distress calls or contact
calls. If you’re hunting
in an area where the buck and doe ratio is so out of
balance that there aren’t many bucks, and you
want to harvest a doe, then rattle. In regions with
few bucks and numbers of does, the does will respond
to anything that sounds like a buck, especially the
latter part of the season. However, calling in bucks
is extremely difficult when there are many-more bucks
than does. I don’t know if we’ve identified
a call than can be considered to be effective to call
in a buck where there are few bucks in an area. Where
there is a more balanced buck/doe ratio and some older
bucks are in the herd, then rattling becomes a very-effective
way to call in a buck. Or, you can use the tending grunt
in these places – especially after most of the
does have been bred – to call in a buck. Many
of the areas of the nation have deer herds so out of
balance that there are far more does than bucks. So
often the bucks in these regions don’t seem to
respond to any form of calling nearly as well.”
Tomorrow: Rattling Antlers
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