How to Call in Early Season Bucks

Deer are social, vocal critters. They don’t hold long conversations, but they do talk all year long. This is something savvy deer hunters try to capitalize on, and it can work really well in the early season. You just need to know what to say.

I’ve only seen a handful of five-round, championship buck fights while on stand. Not a single one happened in November. Most of those battles happened in October, often earlier in the month than you’d expect. But a few of them happened in September. The wildest sparked up between two young Minnesota deer that threw down all around my stand and ended when one buck knocked the other ass-over-apple-cart down a hill.

While you might get lucky and rattle up a big one in the early season by making it sound like there’s a two-deer war raging near you, a better bet is to use a softer touch. September and early October are transition times in the deer woods, which means bucks either get sick of one another or they meet newbies in their neighborhood.

This can result in a brawl, but mostly fizzles out after a light shoving match. If you want to rattle in a deer weeks before the rut, go soft. Imagine two bucks meeting up in a beanfield in the evening or bumping into one another on their way back to bed in the early morning. They often test each other out but won’t go into berserker mode. If you’ve done your scouting homework and are confident you’re around bucks, give them something to think about through light rattling. It doesn’t always work, but when it does, they often wander in and pose up.

Maybe the most effective way to talk an early-season buck into bow range is through grunting. This is not the time for a long string of tending grunts. This is contact grunt time, where you can see your target buck. Leave the blind calling for November.

If you lay eyes on a buck, especially one that doesn’t seem to be in a hurry, give him a sharp grunt. Try to make it only as loud as it needs to be for him to hear it, and then watch his reaction. If he doesn’t pick his head up, turn up the volume slightly.

When he finally picks his head up, shut up. Wait for him to show you something. Often, they’ll go right back to what they were doing. If he does, give him the same grunt. Lather, rinse, and repeat this until he either starts to walk away or starts to come in. If he starts to walk in, shut up. Don’t call anymore. He’ll get there.

If he walks away, don’t get desperate. Either it just wasn’t meant to be, or he’s going to come in later. This happens often enough that you should pay close attention to where he walks off. He might just be circling downwind.

The amount of bucks I’ve snort-wheezed into range during September and early October is much higher than the bucks I’ve snort-wheezed in during November. This goes against conventional wisdom, but I think conventional wisdom around snort-wheezing is often Grade-A bullshit.

This is not just a mature buck call, and it’s not just a rut thing. It’s a challenge call, sure. But deer challenge each other often, especially throughout the fall leading up to the pre-rut. My best luck at snort-wheezing at early-season bucks happened when a few things lined up. The first is that it seems to work better on loner bucks, even scrappers. I don’t know why, that’s just how it has gone for me.

Snort wheezing also seems to work best when a buck can’t quickly survey the scene and deduce there is no other deer there. Open-ish woods, where you spot a buck working his way through, seems to be an ideal setup. Field-edge bucks can be snort-wheezed in too, but they are more likely to look around and then leave.

The key thing here is to not only understand how this call can work but when you should use it. Honestly, that’s the key to talking in early-season bucks with grunt tubes and rattle bags, too.

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