Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game "Rattling" for Mule Deer?

Anyone out there try this? I've used it on whitetails and it really works great. I've shot several deer this way.

I have tried it for mule deer and it has worked (sort of) around the peak of the rut. By "sort of", I mean that animals will stop and look for the source, and sometimes will wander in the direction of the noise. The response is certainly nothing like you get in, say, south Texas.

I believe that rattling works best when deer populations are fairly dense, and our mule deer populations out here run about 2-4 per square mile. Distributions are clumped during most of the hunting seasons, with males and females in same sex groups.

Since our mule deer rut well after the last legal hunt, I have only tried it a few times out of curiousity.

I've heard rattling, grunting, etc. isn't as effective with mule deer as it is with whitetails because mule deer are more dependent on their vision than hearing, due to often living in open country. Can anyone in the know vouch for that?

In S.TX. they literally come to you, especially the younger ones. If you wait a little youll eventually see the bigger ones approach usually well within 300yds.

In B.C. I've tried rattling during the Mule Deer rut a number of times.

I have had bull Moose come in, Whitetail Deer bucks, and Mule Deer does come in - but never a Mulie buck.

I experimented with grunting mule deer in NW Wyoming when I was guiding there. I had gotten fairly good at grunting up whitetails in South Dakota, so one fall I took my grunt tubes to the high country. Several times I snuck into small bands of mixed bucks and does. The rut was just getting started, so the bucks were sparring and following does around fleering. Every single time I blew the grunt tube every deer in sight bolted. And I don't mean maybe or just a little bit. There was no "lift the head and look, then run" to it -- it was flat-out, instant leave-the-country bolting without a backward glance.

Never tried rattling, so I can't speak to that.

Dennis

A waste of time.

I've done it a bit for muley's on one ranch in particular. It has a lot of buck brush on it and I've found it to get them to perk up and look around more so than actually really come my way. Although I did have a few youngsters come in for a look see.

I also found as others have I'm sure that lightly working a yote call will provoke them in a like manner.

Dober

Huh, I didn't expect that. That's very interesting though, thanks.

I think you are right.

"Rattling" works for moose in Alaska - said moose have very similar habitat/habits as white-tail - at least in densely forested country. I suspect it would not work as well for the more-open country Taiga moose (Eastern Canada), which go from cow to cow, rather than getting it on with clumps of cows, like where I live.

In my 36 years of mulie hunting I've never had any luck rattling or grunting up a good buck. I can tell you, however, that "calling" mule deer is very effective. I've used anything from a dying rabbit varmint call, to the mule deer fawn in distress or doe call from ELK, inc out of Montana. I've used calls successfully numerous times (not grunting).

Yes, on the bleeting calls. I know they can bring in and entire herd of mule deer during winter months. I was doing some work where we were recording herd composition, and could bring in whole herds from about 3/4 mile out to count, does, fawns, yearling does, and bucks. I've never wanted to risk using them during hunting season though.

Last fall my brother and I had an interesting experience. He was doing a drive towards me, or "pushing bush" as we call it here, and I had a antlerless mule deer licence. He was moving through a section of native prairie, mostly grassland with small bluffs of aspen and chokecherry/saskatoon berries here and there. While working towards my stand, he would enter each piece of bush, and whack a few trees with a branch to flush the deer out. He had three different mature mule deer bucks come investigate the noise. They were not spooked, and came within 50 yards each time. The weren't stupid, none stayed around after they got his scent. Seemed like very odd behaviour. We read later in one of Valerius Geist's books that rutting buck mule deer make territorial claims and announce a willingness to fight by wandering about and whacking trees with their antlers. Seems like he must have been unwittingly imitating that behaviour. Because we were not hunting bucks, we got to observe more than we would have otherwise. I think we learned something. I'm going to try it next time I have a buck tag and the rut is on.

The wife and I have had similar experiences while sneaking around on photo runs during the rut. I was once about 20 ft above and 20 yards away from a nice buck that was pestering a few does. I slipped in some snow and crashed into some sage on the way down thinking I would clear the country. The buck came charging out, stopped at about 5 yards when he figured out I was no competition, and went back to the does. Those big boys are really mental midgets during that time of year.

1minute said "Those big boys are really mental midgets during that time of year".

Which is exactly why most, if not all rifle seasons are held before/after the rut. Sonora, MX and a few of the Indian reservations (Jicarilla) would be an exception.

Warrior,
There are no mule deer in So. Texas! what you been drinking?

I have never been able to rattle up mule deer other than by accident, and they were does just curious about the noise....What I have done is hunt coyotes and varmints at night with a wounded rabbit call and Mule deer bucks come to it out of curosity all the time, at least in WEST Texas on the other side of the Pecos River...

I was guiding a hunter on our West texas ranch for mule deer and a nice 5x5 jumped up and we stepped off and he shot the buck, at the shot another buck came out from behind a rock and procedes to maul the dead buck all over hell and creation..When he finally stopped and stood there panting I shot him and he fell on top of the other buck...My hunter, the son of the ranch owner from whom I leased the ranch must have took a hundred pictures, he was just amazed at the circumstances, so was I for that matter. He was a long haired hippie kid and I didn't really take to him right off, but he turned out to be one heck of a good kid, you just can't judge a book by its cover...

It works. I've tried it. During the peak of the rut we've had several very nice bucks come in to rattling. We like to keep it to ourselves around here, however. Kind of a secret.

Hey dfe, wanna give away the area? I'd love to have a big guy come in when I'm rattling.

We've tried rattling - before, during and after the rut, all in situations where we could watch the deer. Responses have been from being ignored to a couple of little guys coming for a look see. We've never had a big buck respond in a positive way to our rattling. If we're close they mostly come to full attention for a few seconds and try to identify the source before going back to feeding or bolting from the area. I've probably had as much luck with a really loud whistle...like you use to stop a running jackrabbit.