The first time I had a go with a grunt tube, I coaxed a spike to within bow range. Exalted, I recalled the events back at camp, and lo and behold, one of my friends using the same call had a spike charge his ground position later that evening. A few weeks later I had a New Brunswick 12-pointer leave a doe and charge to within fifty yards of my crouched position--easy rifle range--after calling to him in similar fashion. I passed on that 125-class buck, but I decided that a grunt tube would accompany me into the deer woods from that point on.

Indeed, I soon realized that with a little practice a good variable-tone grunt tube can be made to sound like a fawn looking for its dame, a fawn in distress, a yearling doe, an adult doe and a doe in heat. It can also imitate a yearling buck, a mature buck, a monster buck, a buck tending a hot doe and even a frustrated buck about to breed a doe. All are proven deer calls.

Each fall knowledgeable hunters imitating these deer vocalizations tag thousands of whitetail deer. Yet sometimes big bucks give these same good hunters the slip precisely because these very calls are used. You see, if you spend enough time in the deer woods, you'll eventually be confronted with a situation where the old standbys are not effective. Sometime producing basic whitetail calls may even be detrimental to your pursuit of a racked buck.

In these situations, you'll want to know how and when to use the following four specialized calls.

Trophy Buck Tending Grunt

Take the tending grunts of a 31⁄2-year-old or older buck. Deep and guttural, they reflect the sexual urgency of a mature buck. This vocalization certainly stirs the imagination and sells a lot of grunt tubes. Unfortunately, when used in heavily hunted regions, this call will often scare away yearling and 21⁄2-year-old bucks. As a result, many knowledgeable hunters often refrain from using the tending grunts of a trophy buck when hunting such areas.

A few season's back while bowhunting in Kansas I watched as a mature 10- or 12-pointer came down and stood silently on the far side of the river. The goal was for me to shoot a good buck on film, and this 140-class buck would have been perfect, but I would have had to move from my ground blind to get a shot, and to do so would have put me out of the camera's eye. I had to somehow call the buck over to my side of the river--he was not interested in any of my renditions. I finally elected to try a series of deep, guttural grunts, and, as you might have guessed, the buck responded by scurrying up the far bank and out of range.

There may have been other factors at play, such as the presence of an estrous doe or even another buck that I couldn't see. He may have even grown suspicious from my earlier calls, but the fact remains that those deep, guttural grunts triggered an immediate escape response. Why? I didn't know it then, but the surrounding farmland held even bigger deer, including at least two 190-class behemoths. Though that 12-pointer was big by my standards, there were even larger deer in the neighborhood that probably at one time or another kicked that 12-pointer's butt, and he had thus responded accordingly.

Therein lies the rub. When hunting wilderness regions where wide-racked bucks die of old age without ever seeing or smelling a human being, the tending grunts of a mature buck do indeed attract trophy bucks in part because there are simply more older-age-class bucks present in the population. If that 12-pointer on the opposite side of the river had been one of the monsters the area is noted for, he might have charged across the river looking for a fight instead of fleeing to parts unknown.

Today, when I'm trophy hunting in wilderness areas like New Brunswick, New York's famed Adirondack Mountains or even the lightly hunted prairie regions out West, one of my strategies is to blind call during the pre-rut, when bucks are still highly territorial. I do this by periodically emitting a series of evenly spaced, staccato-like mature buck tending grunts. Sure, a younger grunt or even a doe-in-heat bleat might bring a big-racked buck out of his daytime bedding area to investigate, but the deep vocalizations of another big buck is more likely to succeed. Who cares if it frightens younger deer? When I'm hunting in big buck country, I'm willing to go home empty handed.

Buck Clicking

Here's another specialized call that can be more effective than a standard vocalization. When a buck is in the company of an estrous doe near the very peak of her cycle, he will often make a clicking noise just moments prior to copulation. It sounds much like someone dragging their thumbnail across the teeth of a plastic comb, one tooth at a time. You can change the cadence of the clicking, and you can increase or decrease the duration of each episode, but each individual click is separate and distinct.

According to Adirondack deer hunter Dave Oathout, creator of Legend Lures and the first to publicly recognize buck clicking as a form of whitetail communication, a buck vocalizes his maturity and the fact that he is sexually experienced to the opposite sex just prior to mating. He does this by inhaling air to create a four- or five-second series of loud, evenly spaced clicks.

When the rut is in full swing, this clicking will signify to a passing mature buck that a hot doe is somewhere nearby and that mating is about to take place. Use a moderately toned or high-pitched series of clicking, and a mature buck just might believe that a younger, less experienced buck is about to breed and rush in to take over the breeding rites. A buck decoy with a small to medium rack might just help you complete the ruse.

A doe-in-heat bleat or the tending grunts of a yearling buck might also work, as might a fawn bleat, but the clicking of a young buck adds a sense of urgency to the equation. Enough sometimes to cause a trophy buck to throw normal caution to the wind.

Snort-Wheeze

The third type of specialized call every hunter should learn is the snort-wheeze, made by a buck while exhaling air through his nose in a very specific cadence. Once you hear it, you won't forget it.

The snort-wheeze occurs when two bucks of similar status suddenly encounter each other, especially around a food source, and serves as a warning to the intruder buck to back off, or there will be a fight. The second time the snort-wheeze occurs is when a buck tending a hot doe is suddenly confronted by another buck trying to "horn" in on the action. Again, it serves as a warning. Finally, you'll hear a buck make a loud snort-wheeze when a hot doe refuses to stand still long enough to allow breeding to take place. The buck is undoubtedly warning the doe to stand still, or else.

The snort-wheeze seems to work best during the peak of the rut, when mature bucks are tending does. Your rendition of a snort-wheeze, either alone or added to a tending buck grunt or an estrous doe bleat, may be all it takes to pull a mature buck away from a hot doe.

Another use for the snort-wheeze occurs when a buck suddenly hangs up out of range. "If I rattle or grunt in a buck that suddenly hangs up out of range," says Mark Drury, founder of M.A.D. calls, "and I think I have a chance of killing him, then what I do next depends on the mood of the buck. I read his body language, paying particular attention to his ears and the hair on his body. If, for example, his hair is slicked down and the buck seems disinterested, I might very well leave him alone. There's no use educating a buck or making him call shy if I think the odds are low he will respond to further calling.

"If, however, his hair is bristled and standing on end, and the buck's ears are laid back, then he may very well be in a dominant mood, all fired up and ready for some action. Now, if this buck is a wide-racked mature specimen, I'll try a snort-wheeze. I expect him to respond by bristling up and start circling downwind of my treestand.

"However, my favorite strategy for a buck that's hanging up," says Drury, "is to paint an audio picture of a multiple deer situation. For example, imagine an estrous doe is walking down a trail. She's in heat, so she will be bleating. Behind her there will be a buck in steady pursuit. A tending grunt will mimic his presence, but he's also all rutted up so he'll also be clicking. Suddenly, a second buck enters the scene and challenges the tending buck with a resounding snort-wheeze. You can finish off the audio ruse with a rattling sequence."

Growl At 'Em

I may have very well saved the best for last. Yet another whitetail vocalization has been "discovered" and caught on tape. We've probably all heard it at one time or another but failed to recognize its significance. Bucks have been caught actually growling at each other or at an estrous doe. That's right, growling. As with other deer vocalizations, you have to listen for it to hear it. But, like the tending grunts of a mature buck, buck clicking and the snort-wheeze, it's a memorable sound not easily mistaken for any other.

The Buck Growl is a unique and exciting new call developed by the Drury brothers. "It's a very emotional call," says Mark Drury, "and represents the fact that there's estrous in the air. It is beyond a grunt, however. It's a loud, loud bawling grunt sound made by a mature buck that is impatiently waiting for a doe that he has been tending to finally stand and breed. When a buck hears another 'buck' growl, he's coming to your tree.

"We know that growling works by its lonesome," adds Drury. "But it also works in conjunction with other vocalizations, especially tending buck grunts, the snort-wheeze or even rattling. Used with these other techniques, an imitation buck growl can give the impression that there are several bucks dogging a hot doe, as they so often do during the chase phase."

These four specialization calls work best only under certain conditions. But they won't work at all if you keep them tucked inside your shirt or stuffed in your fanny pack. The next time you have a buck almost in range, try one of these special vocalizations, either alone or in some combination, and see what happens. You might just bag the buck of a lifetime.