BY T O D D A M E N R U D and fawn decoys” to attract does or fawns. Some hunters feel that they shouldn’t use calls, scent, or certain other tactics until just before the rut. In reality, early season can be the easiest time to draw a response to each. You just need to know which smells, sounds or decoy postures they favor during that time and how to set them up, so they draw a response and the encounter ends in your favor. Calling whitetails can sometimes be easy during early season. Whitetails are social animals, and the bucks want to mingle with other bucks to see where they will eventually end up in the breeding hierarchy, and doe/fawn family groups want to get to know the other doe/fawn family groups after the solitude they experienced during birthing and the fawns’ first few weeks. Soft, social calls typically will work best during early season. During this time, it is better to use buck vocalizations to draw in bucks and doe or fawn com-
munications to draw a response from them. It’s still a secret to some, but rattling will work during early season. It’s not like rattling during the third week of October - you should imitate “two brothers in a friendly arm-wrestling match,” not in a “knock-down, drag-out fight.” Just “tickle” your antlers together. As soon as bucks lose their velvet, they start sparring with one another, but during this time of year, they’re responding to be social, not aggressive – they’re sparring, not fighting. To help sell the ruse, rather than hard-hitting vocalizations, use soft, social buck calls. For scent utilization, this obviously is applicable only to “deer smells” (scents that actually come from deer, like urine, glandular lures or musk type smells); this is not the case for curiosity smells or food lures. When it comes to mature bucks, they may or may not be social with other bucks. Sometimes older
Mature bucks will begin to mark territory earlier than young bucks. This is why mock scrapes can work well as early as September. (Photo Credit: Dennis W. Donohue)
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