I just blind called a small spike in on Saturday. In Mass I hunt all public. This weekend I was in NY on private. The spike came in behind me and I wasn't able to get an arrow off. I like to hunt thicker cover, and the edges of thicker cover and vegetative transitions. Calling works better when the deer can't see very far because of the cover. Two years ago I called a 7pt up a hill for 70-80 yds. I killed him at 12yds. They are very good at locating the sound. I've heard several deer make vocalizations, mostly bucks trailing grunting. I killed my first saddle buck after I heard him grunting as he came in to a doe that I had hanging around my stand. In this instance I didn't call at all. The vocalizations I've heard are mostly very subtle. Some were quite loud but I prefer to keep it subtle. When I blind call I use higher pitched young buck grunt, it keeps from scaring off any younger bucks and does. For blind calling I like to think about a deer being just over the next ridge. I'll make subtle contact grunts, which are short in duration, and usually two to three grunt sequences. The response to this type of calling is exploratory. The deer come in looking to make contact with another deer. Once they get to you they are looking and they are alert. If you don't have good cover around you they'll come until they can use their other senses to figure out whats what. I've had them circle me down wind and I've had them hang up because they could see and didn't need to come closer. I've had the best luck setting up with some terrain feature that would make it difficult to catch me from down wind,( I'll hunt the down hill side of a bench, or I'll back up to a vegetative transition that will expose them to the more open timber if they try to sneak behind me). I rarely snort wheeze, it's aggressive and unless bucks are willing to fight for the right it doesn't seem to work well. I do call as part of a social scenario such as this; an immature buck contact grunts 2 to 3 subtle contact grunts, moments later (10-15 seconds a doe bleats back a short bleat), I'll wait 2 or 3 minutes looking 360 degrees, then I'll bleat a slightly longer doe bleat, not quite an estrous bleat, then I'll follow that up with a short contact grunt followed by a longer trailing grunt. I'll do some thing like that every 30 minutes or so. If it's super quiet in the woods I keep it to just a few contact grunts every 30 or 40 minutes. I think the two biggest things to being successful is keep it to a volume that a deer can hear from a hundred or so yards, if your buddy can hear you in the next stand it's to loud, and calling frequency. Deer are not singing as they walk through the woods, nor are they trying to talk to every deer in the woods.
If you can see the deer a short low volume contact grunt to start, watch for a response, if no response then a little louder but reasonable, if they don't seem to respond I'll use a long trailing grunt of 2 seconds, then a doe bleat pointed away from the buck. Some times no matter what you do they don't respond. It's not a miracle tool. But I won't in desperation start to blow crazy sequences because all that does is confirm to them that they made the right decision not to make contact. In every scenario I mentioned I've killed bucks calling them in. I've said it before I'll never go in to hunt without my trusty grunt tube and a doe bleat call.
