Talk to the Tines

The founder of Flextone Game Calls shares some big buck stories and shows there’s more to calling whitetails than making a few grunts

Tom Wiley is the founder of Flextone Game Calls. For well over a decade, Wiley has designed and engineered Flextone calls for waterfowl, deer, turkey, elk and other game. It’s safe to say he never enters the woods, fields or waterways without a game call or two attached to a lanyard around his neck.

If you’ve ever blown a Flextone call, you know their realistic sounds are outstanding. But sounding great doesn’t mean you’ll automatically draw in a deer. Calling to deer is an art form. Wiley has mastered that part of the equation too.

Food, Fight or Friendship

When it comes to calling whitetails, Wiley employs this rationale: “If you’re blowing a deer call, you must give that deer a reason to come toward your location.”

According to Wiley, there are only three reasons for a deer to react to any call: food, fight or friendship. The first is self explanatory. The second is clear as well—deer have pecking orders and want to establish dominance. The third, friendship, most often means breeding, but it could also represent grouping up (especially in pre- and post-rut periods).

Every sound that Wiley makes from his deer stand has one of these three motives in mind. These reasons change throughout the season as the pre-rut period moves to full-rut and then to post-rut. And Wiley always tries to communicate at least two of these reasons when calling to any given deer. He believes doing so will greatly increase the chances of that deer answering his calls.

Play-By-Play Example

Last fall Wiley was hunting the Heartland Lodge in Pike County, Illinois. He was armed with a 12-gauge TC Encore, Nikon Slug Hunter scope, and his new Flextone Buck Collector deer call. Here’s a play-by-play on how he talked in a huge buck that measured 170 inches (gross green score).

“My guide, Ben Everage, was not happy with me. Opening day was on a Friday, and I couldn’t stay out all day like he wanted me to because I had to work part of the day. So he couldn’t put me in the prime spot he wanted to place me,” Wiley explained.

Instead the guide put Wiley in a spot that was not ideal. The stand overlooked an old overgrown food plot with scattered patches of alfalfa and fescue. Beyond the food plot was a fence that bordered a huge CRP field on the neighbor’s property. The guide had been seeing deer in the old food plot and on the neighbor’s property, but there was a catch: The lodge did not have permission to trespass to recover a deer.

"Whatever you do, don’t shoot a deer on that land,” warned the guide. “And if you shoot one in our old food plot, be sure to anchor it there. We may not be able to go over to the neighbor’s property.”

Thirty minutes into the opening morning hunt, Wiley saw the 10-point monster enter the neighbor’s CRP field. Then he saw a smaller 8-pointer on the other end of the same field. At first, the 10-point brute was walking toward Wiley: “I didn’t call to the big buck because he was walking towards me. I just let things happen naturally. But then the 10-pointer saw the 8-pointer and decided he wanted a fight. He changed course, angled away from me and focused his direction on the 8-pointer.” Wiley needed to react.

“The buck was focused on a fight and I needed to change his mind,” Wiley describes. “Because I had a shotgun in one hand (and I was in slight panic mode), I couldn’t control the volume on the Buck Collector call. I sounded off a super loud estrus bleat. I immediately thought I screwed up and called too loud. I typically just want to call just loud enough for a deer to hear it. If a call is too loud and unnatural, it could spook a deer.”

“I tried to cover up my mistake by giving three buck social grunts,” Wiley says. “It was the rut, so I know the big boy wanted to breed, but I knew he was also in the mood to fight. You always want to double the reasons for a buck to come to your location over any other. Well, the call did its job. It changed the buck’s mind. The buck slammed on his breaks, forgot about fighting the smaller buck, and turned back to come back my direction and check out what was going on. I took my eyes off him for a few seconds to hang up the deer call, and by the time I looked back up the buck had jumped the fence and was trotting directly to me and was already in my shooting lane!

“I raised my gun and let out a bleat with my voice to stop the buck,” Wiley says. “He paused, but he was blocked with thick brush. I needed him to step out. That probably lasted three minutes, but it felt like 30 minutes. When he finally did step out, he was on the move but I took the shot. The hit was a little far back, catching just one lung. He spun around and ran back toward the neighbor’s place, where he came from. He paused for a moment facing dead away from me. I aimed one more shot at the back of his tailbone, hit him at the base of his tail and anchored him dead. He dropped only three yards from the fence. I got lucky.”

Change Their Mind

That 170-class whitetail was a prime example of how Wiley’s strategy of always giving a buck more than one reason to come to your calls can work wonders. Here’s another case study.

“I was on stand and a buck was walking across the ridge from my right to left at about 100 yards,” Wiley says. “I blew three social grunts of a young buck. The buck stopped and looked at my direction, then kept walking his same course. I blew three more social grunts a few steps later. The buck stopped and looked, but he ignored me again—he just kept going the same route. I blew three more social grunts, and the buck stopped and looked a third time.”

“But this time,” Wiley continued, “I watched him carefully. When he turned his head to walk again, I sounded off an estrus bleat with the Flextone call. That doubled his reasons to react to my call. He knew another buck was there (fight), and he now thought a doe was there (friendship). It was too much for the buck to resist. He immediately turned and walked to within five yards of my treestand.”

When it comes to calling deer, Wiley follows these simple rules:

1. Always mix in two types of calling. If your first type of call isn’t working, try something else. Give that buck something that will double the reasons for him to come investigate.
2. Do not blow the call while a deer is looking toward you. If you do, you might get pinpointed.
3. Timing matters. Watch the deer’s body language. The second he turns his head, and while he is making a decision, blow your call. If he has already made a decision and is back on track, you might be too late to change his mind no matter what you do.

A Season of Reasons

 Through any typical deer hunting season, Wiley tries to communicate multiple reasons for deer to respond to his calling:

The Early Season

“Early bow season is usually the toughest time of the year to call bucks because they are not in ‘crazy rut’ mode. Luckily this is also one of the best times to catch a buck out feeding while his defenses are still down, because he hasn’t been pressured all summer,” Wiley says. “That does not mean that I don’t call at all during this time of the year. But it does mean that I don’t get very aggressive with my calling.”

Wiley generally sticks with social doe grunts in the early season. “All deer are conditioned to respond to the maternal grunt of a doe. This conditioning begins when fawns are born. It is how a doe keeps track of her fawns. It simply means ‘I am over here, stay close.’” As deer mature, they will continue to respond to this type of call, although the meaning may change from mother calling to girlfriend beckoning.

If Wiley’s goal is to call a doe, he sticks to doe grunts. But if a buck is his goal, he may use the social grunt of a buck to draw his target in. It is a buck’s nature to be in a bachelor group during this time of year. “During the early season, I usually hunt near food and I just make a simple series of social grunts,” Wiley says. “These social grunts are interpreted as: ‘I am a deer and I am over here and I am eating dinner.’ These sounds give a deer a couple of reasons to respond: One, the maternal response, and two, the deer doesn’t want to miss out on all the grub. In this situation, the social grunt of either a doe or a young buck will work.”

The Rut Weeks

During both the pre-rut period (two to three weeks prior to the peak of the rut) and the peak itself, a lot of hunters typically use calls like rattling and grunting to appeal to a buck’s natural dominance and territorial reactions (fight). Wiley believes this ‘let’s fight’ strategy can work, but he would rather stick to his plan of wanting to give deer more than one reason to react to his calls.

“During both pre-rut and full-on rut, I imitate peak-of-the-rut breeding,” Wiley said. “I produce the sounds of a tending buck hot on the trail of an estrus doe that is about to ‘stand’ for the buck. These sounds are buck grunts and doe estrus bleats. If a buck hears these calls, he’ll want to compete with the buck that is trying to steal one of the local does, and he’ll want to breed the doe that has come into estrus.”

Why does Wiley use peak-of-the-rut calls during the pre-rut? He thinks the desire for a buck to breed is much more powerful than his desire to fight. “A buck might not be in the mood for a fight, but he is always ready for breeding,” Wiley explains. “During pre-rut, bucks are just itching for a doe to come into estrus and be ready to breed. A couple weeks early? He won’t care. He’ll still come running.”

The Post Rut

During the post-rut period (the month or so following the peak), Wiley follows a similar approach—imitating breeding sounds of does and bucks—but with a few tweaks. “In the post-rut phase, I am not calling like an adult estrus doe. Instead, I imitate a young doe or doe fawn coming into estrus. Young does usually breed last,” Wiley explains. “However, most of my deer-hunting experience is in the South, where we often get to hunt a secondary rut that occurs in late January. Some of the first year does may not have been mature enough to breed during the primary rut, but are now available.”

Mixed Messages

Today’s whitetail is no pushover for calling. You have to take your deer calling to the next level by giving that whitetail more than one reason to alter its course and approach your position. Food, fighting and friendship are all good reasons for deer to come to your setup. But for a better chance of success, give a buck a mix of those messages in your calling sequence.

Sidebar:

Flextone Buck Collector

Flextone Game Calls teamed up with Michael Waddell and the Bone Collector Brotherhood to create an innovative, flexible, “whole-herd-in-one” deer call. The Buck Collector produces all known vocalizations (including a snort-wheeze) by simply squeezing the labeled buttons while you blow. Contact Flextone Game Calls at (877) 993-4868, or go to www.flextonegamecalls.com.