• The SH Membership has gone live. Only SH Members have access to post in the classifieds. All members can view the classifieds. Starting in 2020 only SH Members will be admitted to the annual hunting contest. Current members will need to follow these steps to upgrade: 1. Click on your username 2. Click on Account upgrades 3. Choose SH Member and purchase.
  • We've been working hard the past few weeks to come up with some big changes to our vendor policies to meet the changing needs of our community. Please see the new vendor rules here: Vendor Access Area Rules

First decoy buck

Root

Well-Known Member
Joined
Dec 4, 2016
Messages
620
To start this out, this deer although not my biggest is by far my favorite. This is going back a few years long before I even knew what a saddle was.

Roughly 300 yards behind my house I have a 12' tall roofless box stand. I put it up to have a place to sit with others (new hunters mostly) while hunting, and to have someplace I could pop into on a short hunt after work.

Moving on... I bought a decoy and I had tried it with several different tactics to get a feel for what I could and couldn't do. Talking to a good friend of mine I told him about it and he wanted to come over and do a sit with me to see what crazy things I was coming up with. (He's an avid hunter too but didn't come to hunt himself.) We get the decoy set up around noon and climb up into the stand. (I'll post a picture of what it looks like in front of the stand.) Once in the stand he starts asking me why I have sticks all over the floor and I tell him he'll have to wait and see. I've done some odd tactics before just to give them a try. Using a grunt call typically results in fleeing deer around me.

A few does come out in the distance and cut through the bottom corner. The rut was getting into full swing so I was hoping we'd get lucky. Around 4pm 300 yards out I can see a deer's back walking slowly towards the pine trees on the left and I wisper to him "that's a buck break a stick" he thinks I'm crazy and breaks a stick. The deer picks is head up and it was in fact a buck. When it looks over it is staring at the decoy and takes off into the pines. I gave it few minutes and handed him my grunt call so he could do a few soft tending grunts. Soon as he hits the call the buck pokes his head out of the brush line by the pines to my left. He stands there now 70 yards away hair bristled up and turns back into the trees and starts working over a sapling. A few minutes later I flip my doe in heat can over and he bursts back into full site and starts walking in a circle towards the decoy. Once he clears the brush/goldenrod line in front of the stand he starts the head down sideways walk. Knowing I only have a second to make a move before he charges I quickly stand up and send an arrow. He spins and runs to the bottom corner and into the pine trees. I knew it was a good hit but I didn't get full pass through with my old golden eagle compound. With the arrow still in him tracking him took over 6 hours to go 300 yards. We found him off a single spot of blood on a single pine needle.

How it all unfolded, and to have my friend with me through it all is what makes it my favorite hunt.

What I was testing before was using natural sounds to get a deers attention on the decoy without spooking them. I ended up getting another buck during rifle season off the decoy that year maybe some day I'll post that one up. Over all I rarely if ever use a decoy anymore. I've found through all the scenarios a decoy is an all it tactic. 95% of the time deer with come in and hold up 100-200 yards out and eventually leave when it doesn't move or respond to them. Does with fawns sometimes come in around 50 yards to a doe decoy and usually stomp a few times blow the something isn't right horn and run away.


0914101514.jpg IMG_20121109_224953.jpg
Not the greatest pictures. The wife wasn't happy about getting woken up! IMG_20121109_224826.jpg
 
Good for you!!!!! Cool story. I've had very minimal success with decoys but it fun.
 
Very neat. Keep thinking of getting a decoy...... Congrats on your buck!

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk
 
awesome. I just sold a pair of decoys. They were fun to use, a PIA to carry.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk
 
I have had some luck with Montana decoys and they are easy to pack. Cool story
 
Last edited:
Nice buck, great story. I read a story in outdoor life or maybe field and stream about a southern hunter who had booked a semi guided trip for an Alberta giant. He hired a native American guide who assured him he could rattle in a big boy. The hunter, toting a rifle and his guide stopped @ 200 yds or so from a dense tricked where bucks were suspected to be bedding. Prior to starting what was described as an intense rattling sequence the guide placed a large fallen branch against a tree. Without warning, the guide kicked and snapped the branch as he simultaneously started crashing the horns. The hunter did shoot a large buck that responded moments later. When asked, the guide in his wisdom, told the Hunter that he first needed to get the bucks attention turned towards them. Once the buck suspected something obviously made that noise he could draw him out simulating two worthy bucks in a dust up over a doe. Similar story, common sense? Maybe, but not always.
 
That's a pretty neat story.
From my box stand I can see roughly 400 yards with my binoculars. For the last seven years I've been watching deer behavior out in their brushed up bedding and taking notes. So far the best call that I've ever witnessed would be the sound of deer running through brush and weeds. The longer the chase happens in the bedding the more and more bucks show up from different directions. At first I figured they would be following the scent from the doe on her travels from before the chase started, but after watching it I'm convinced many come in for the noise. Three years ago I watched seven bucks try to steal a doe away from the dominant buck as he tried to keep her in a patch of brown brush. That lasted over two hours before they took off out of sight. I hunted him almost exclusively since. Rumor is he's still alive. But I'm moving on, he's smarter than me and beds where I can't go.

Around here we get a lot of pressure. Gun season sounds like a war zone. Most calls, scents and decoys don't work. I'm lucky to have the huge bedding area that no one hunts right behind my property. But even it during gun season turns into a waste land that you'll be lucky to spot a deer in. So when the mood strikes me I do some odd things to shake it up a bit. IMG_20121123_172530.jpg
This ten point I also got off a decoy during gun season. I hadn't seen a deer of any kind in over a week. On another property I hunt I saw a scrape had been opened up over night so I figured a small second rut might be kicking off. The next afternoon I headed out to my box stand again and set the decoy up. I knew with all the deer drives and pressure the chances were small to pull something close enough for a shot if I even saw one. So I sat there waiting for a few hours and nothing was happening. With nothing happening there's nothing to loose. So I left my gun in the stand grabbed by rattling antlers and went behind my stand and broke sticks raked the weeds with the antlers and ran around for about five minutes. Ran back to the stand and I just got to the top of my ladder when I saw a flash 250ish yards out. I took a knee and saw this buck stop behind brush scanning for what made the noise. He spotted the decoy and started a downwind circle which landed him crossing a shooting lane 150 yards out which is where I dropped him. This stuff rarely works, but when there is nothing else going on and the season is getting late I'll take a chance. I wouldn't do it at a prime location, but where my box is, is at best a secondary spot.
 
Back
Top