TALKING DEER

Ron Jolly of Tuskegee, Alabama, has been in the hunting industry for many years. He and his wife, Tes, have been great friends of ours, and we've shared many hunting camps with each other. Jolly produces the hunting videos for Woods Wise Products and has a great new turkey video coming out this spring. But Jolly is not just a "vidiot" sitting in a tree filming other hunters who hunt. Jolly is a master woodsman with plenty of deer-hunting savvy.

While we were hunting, I asked Jolly how many times out of 100 could he call a deer in if he used a grunt call or a bleat call?

"When you don't see the deer, and you're calling blind, you may call in five deer out of 100," Jolly said as he began to grin. "But you don't know when those five times will be. You don't have anything to lose by blowing a grunt call, if you're not seeing a deer because you're not going to spook any deer.

"The good news in the deer-calling industry this year is that Woods Wise has produced a wide range of deer calls that will give many of the deer sounds other than just the standard grunt. With the Woods Wise calls, instead of merely saying hello like most grunt calls do, you can give different calls to say various things to the bucks."

I asked Jolly why deer didn't come in when you could see them and blew your grunt call.

"Most of the time when you see a buck and you grunt to him and he doesn't come in, that buck will be a subordinate buck," Jolly said. "That subordinate buck doesn't want to have any part of a fight with the buck you're sounding like. If the buck ignores you, he has something else on his mind. But if he comes your way, you're a winner.

"I feel like if I can see the deer and call to him, my chances of taking him are increased from 5 out of 100 to about 18 out of 100. By watching the deer, I can tell from his body language what I need to do and say on the grunt call, the bleat call or a contact call to bring that deer in closer. If you can read a deer's body language and try to match your calling to what you believe to be the mood of the deer, you can tremendously increase your chances of taking him.

"For instance, if a buck's coming through the woods aggressively, checking scrapes or working scrapes along a scrape line, you know he's hunting a doe. Therefore, you don't want to grunt to him with an aggressive grunt call. You want to call to him like a doe, using a bleat call or a doe call. If the buck doesn't come to you, the reason may be that he's trailing a doe in estrus and knows that you're not that doe in that location.

"At other times, you can make a buck grunt. If that's the dominant buck in the region, he may want to come right to you to run you out of his area. There's much more to calling deer than simply blowing a grunt call and rattling antlers. I believe that the new Model 140 deer call created by the president of Woods Wise Products, Jerry Peterson, with its audiocassette tape does a really good job of teaching hunters how to call deer. Although the call's not on the market yet and you won't find it in stores this season, you can call (800) 735-8182 and order one. Or, write Woods Wise Products, P.O. Box 681552, Franklin, Tennessee 37068, and get a copy of their catalog with all their calls in it."

While hunting at Heartland Outfitters, Jolly took a really nice buck with his bow. The pictures on this page of the bowhunter are of Ron Jolly and the big buck he took. The other pictures are of other hunters and the bucks they've taken at Heartland. To find out about hunting at Heartland Outfitters write Dr. Robert Russell at 480 South Meadowbrook Road, Springfield, Illinois 62707 or call at (217) 787-0050.

Check back each day this week for more from John's latest hunting trip...

Day One - Robb's Trophy Buck
Day Two - Why So Many Trophy Buck
Day Three - What A Hunt Includes At Heartland
Day Four - Talking Deer
Day Five - The Truth About Odor