Last deer season I spent some time at the watch where at different times (over several years) I came head to head with the Ghost Buck. This deer is more ethereal than solid-state! I swear bullets go right through this monster. He knows it to. This rascal seems to walk right around me with a proud, pompous little grin and he gives me time for a ‘courtesy’ reload when the .308 starts blazing. You can read about some of my encounters with him here.

Anyway, back to the topic of this post about does. While, I was watching the area known as ‘The Pines’, a couple of does (with a fawn in tow) walked out of the bush about 5o yards from me. Helplessly, all I could do was watch them walk all around me with full, standing broad sides.

I did not have a valid anterless deer tag.

As the deer foraged for food, an idea came to my mind. If I could not shoot at them, I could ‘interact’ with them.

I whistled a couple of times. They froze - noses to the air. It looked like they were about to run. At this point I remembered I had my deer call around my neck. I blew it a couple of times with a couple of short grunts. Their body posture seemed to relax a bit. After one more ’snort’, they went back to their search for food. It helped that the wind was in my face. The fawn actually took a few steps closer to my location.

After this I pushed back the elastic to a more mature buck ’setting’ and gave a snort. That got all the attention of all the deer in front of me. It got their scrutiny, but they did not have that “let’s get outta here” look.

Interesting.

Curiously, I moved the elastic up on the ‘reed’ of the call and tried some fawn bleats. This time, only the does seem interested. They still did not run - even though they knew where I was!

Cool.

The deer eventually moved on as a fellow hunter approached as part of a ‘drive’ we were doing.

I probably just got lucky that day. Yet, I was still glad I experimented with my deer call. From now on I will use my grunt call to slow down a deer rather than whistle. It may help me get another shot as the deer may be less alarmed.

That is assuming that my little experiment was the ‘norm’ and not the crafty coaching of ghost buck lurking in the shadows nearby.

He may have spread the word about my shooting.