The Blacktail Coach Podcast
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The Blacktail Coach Podcast
How Deer Talk With Their Nose, Eyes, And Ears To Rank, Breed, And Survive
Bucks broadcast more than tracks. They paint the woods with scent from orbital, forehead, tarsal, metatarsal, and interdigital glands—messages about identity, rank, breeding readiness, danger, and direction of travel. We break down how to read that code, why blacktail scrapes differ from whitetail, and how to separate fleeting “dominance rubs” from dependable, year-over-year rub lines that actually put deer in front of you.
We share hard-won tactics for finding annual rub lines along edges, overgrown skid roads, alders, and viny maples, including how to read rub sides to infer bedding and travel direction. You’ll learn how tarsal staining correlates with testosterone and age class, why metatarsal scent helps blacktail and mule deer synchronize escape, and how interdigital glands quietly mark trails and “hot zones” after a spook—one reason careful entries and exits matter as much as stand choice. We also dig into mature buck behavior: how three-plus year-olds favor thicker cover, stage until dark, and avoid the obvious paths that does and young bucks use.
Body language and sound round out the picture. Relaxed ears and tail twitches, pinned ears and raised hackles, lowered heads and squared shoulders—each cue tells you when to draw or wait. On the audio side, we compare doe and buck grunts, when a fawn distress call helps or hurts, and the precise moments a snort wheeze flips a switch in a lone rutting buck. Expect practical, field-ready advice: how wind carries estrus scent across a valley, why clearcuts glow with night rubs that waste daylight sits, and what a doe’s “blow” actually means for your next hour in the stand.
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Welcome back to the Blackdale Coach Podcast. I'm Aaron. And I'm Dave. Okay, this week we're talking about deer communication and how they communicate with their nose, their eyes, and their ears, mostly with each other.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:And so with the nose. And we can talk about urine, doanesterus, because we use those scents, but those are because they're containing some glandular secretions as well. And they're communicating something like with the tarsal glands, is the bucks.
SPEAKER_00:Yep.
SPEAKER_01:So first talking about the orbital glands. So these are the ones that are in front of the eyes. Yes. And I didn't realize that they had those, and then they have forehead glands. And those are communicating two separate intentions, yes. Yeah, two different intentions.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So the orbital gland, many of us that are deer hunters, been deer hunting for a while or whatnot, or have any kind of whitetail background, understand that bucks use them in scrapes. Whitetail do a lot of scrapes, and so there's always what we call a licking branch that is above the scrape where they will take and they will secrete stuff out of their orbital gland and onto that licking branch.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Where the forehead glands are different. Those are used for like rubs. And it each is communicating something different to the deer.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Orbital gland and black tail do scrapes, they just don't do them as often as white tail. I have seen black tail do scrapes, but again, it's not very often. And I don't know why that is. In all my readings that I've never come across as to why black tail don't do it as much as whitetail. I know that we've got plenty of opportunity out here with all the trees that we have for doing scrapes. Scrapes and doing the licking branch and all that. But yeah, I don't see him do it as much, but I have seen them do it.
SPEAKER_01:With mine, and I didn't realize that I was walking by a scrape on my set. So I don't know when it was actually made. Now, are those primarily rutting or yeah, they're made during they're made during the rut.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. And just like whitetail, a lot of the scrapes that are made by black tail, they don't always come back to, you know. But most of them are a one or a two-time thing, and then they're abandoned, you know. Or they just downsize to, okay, I'm gonna use this one, and I have a high traffic of does coming through because the dough come along and she'll pee in that scrape, or another buck will pee in that scrape, and then he'll take and use a licking branch to leave some fluid out of the orbital gland on that licking branch. And it can be to identify, it can be to challenge, it can be to mark territory. There's a whole plethora of things that they go through as far as the way they communicate with that particular thing, you as far as scrapes and licking branches and whatnot with the orbital gland.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But I don't know that I've ever seen Blacktail use a scrape consistently.
SPEAKER_01:Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00:As much as I see them using rub a rub line consistently.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. And I've have I found well, one of my sets I never found anything that was, I would call well, just any rubs at all. Uh-huh. I did find, and we'll actually get into talking the difference in rubs. There were some rubs somewhat close to my riverside set, but I did have a rub line, my hilltop set, uh-huh, and I created a rub line at my halfway set, both along that scotch broom, and we've talked about that. But also this year I noticed that they started doing a rub line up just off my set, 20 yards off my set, on that main trail heading up the hillside by by where I was hunting. And that was a first seeing any rubs up in there. That was an area that they that would necessarily more of a travel corridor.
SPEAKER_00:Right, right. And not that they wouldn't do it along a travel corridor because they But they're mostly interested where there's a lot of doe interaction, yeah, you know, where the does are traveling as well, not just the box. Like when I look for a rub line, I want an annual rub line. I don't want a seasonal one where it's coming, oh, this season they did it over here, and then the following season they did it somewhere else. An annual is one where they'll come back year after year after year. And you'll walk into it, and there's no doubt when you see one, because there's 30 to 40 rubs, you know, yeah, in that rub line, because it's multiple years of them coming back and you can tell and utilizing that. Yes.
SPEAKER_01:Like uh, this is an old rub is that looks like a rub from last season.
SPEAKER_00:This one looks like it's like three years old, you know.
SPEAKER_01:And you can tell which ones are fresh, right?
SPEAKER_00:Right. And that's ideally a great setup because those bucks are coming back year after year after year, which means the doughs are traveling through there to mark those rubs.
SPEAKER_01:Now they're doing the rubs, and the and you've talked about the difference between annual and dominance rubs, not rub lines, because dominance rubs are more spotty.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:And so actually just explain those real quick.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so an annual rub line, like I just said, is a rub line that has come back season after season after season. The bucks continue to use it. And there are there are characteristics of it in the sense that you can tell what the main travel way of a certain buck is because they're gonna rub it on the side that they're coming from. So it'll be the side of the tree that they approach first, and then they walk past it. So you can look at that annual rub line and say, Oh, the bedding area must be back this way because they keep coming from this direction, heading that direction. So you learn how to read that rub line in that sense. But a dominance rub, so guys, those I'll be doing a seminar, and guys will come up to me. Well, you know, I've been hunting clear cuts and everything, and I see all these rubs out in the clear cuts, and it's like, well, there's gotta be bucks here, you know. And a lot of them, what what guys fail to realize is a lot of those rubs are done at night. Yeah. Because big bucks don't very seldom, I don't, they typically don't want to be out in a clear cut. That doesn't mean you can't kill a big buck out in a clear cut. I'm just saying, typically speaking, they don't like to be out in a clear cut. So when you start seeing a lot of rubs out in a clear cut, most of the time it is done at night. And what happens is during the rut phase, what happens is the does go out to these clear cuts at night and they feed. Well, the bucks come out at night too and they feed. And that's when they're out in the clear cuts, is at night. And what happens is a buck may have a dough locked down, or he may encounter another buck, and he's either trying to establish his dominance over that buck that he sees, or he's simply being territorial saying, I'm over here, you're over there. So, what he'll do in a dominant response of seeing another buck, whether he's got a dough locked down, or if he's just trying to establish territory, he looks over, he sees the other buck. Out of a show of dominance, he does a rub. Okay. And then in response, the buck that he is trying to establish boundaries with will in turn do a rub.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And so now we've got two rubs out in the middle of this clear cut, and they look fresh. And honestly, there's a lot of does out there, so these bucks are out moving around at night. So you may get anywhere 12, 15 rubs in a clear cut. You're thinking, oh my gosh, this is nuts. These bucks are in here all the time. And you can spend days and days and days sitting on that clear cut and not see the buck that makes that rub because he's coming out at night.
SPEAKER_01:Those are the forehead gland.
SPEAKER_00:And the thing is, they don't come back to those rubs. No, those rubs are simply made again as a display of dominance toward another buck that they've encountered, and it's not a breeding type scenario. Whereas when we see a rub line, we see a breeding type scenario. These bucks go through and they leave, not they don't just do a rub, they do a rub, they pee on their tarsal glands, and then they'll rub the orbital gland and sometimes a forehead gland on that rub to not only let the other bucks know who they are and where they are in the ranking of dominant to least dominant, but they also do it because the does will walk through those rub lines, and the does, just by nature, want to be bred by the dominant buck and the one right underneath them.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:For the preservation of the species, you know, survival of the fittest, so to speak. And so they are going through and they're leaving their scent on those rubs as well. And the annual rub line is what you're looking for. And I've never found one in a clear cut, I've always found them in the heavy brush, like we talk about it in the seminars and in the classes and everything, where we have two habitats coming together and we got an edge. There's a certain habitat that these bucks look for to do these rub lines. And when you find it, there's no doubt about it. It's just obvious.
SPEAKER_01:And a lot of those, well, skitter roads.
SPEAKER_00:Overgrown skitter roads are great.
SPEAKER_01:Alders or viny maples. And so as I was looking this stuff up ahead of time, it was territory, identity, and social ranking, is what they convey through this. And then but they're rubbing, is it just their orbital or just their forehead? Or is it both?
SPEAKER_00:It's both.
SPEAKER_01:It's both during the rub.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So if it's a dominance rub, then it's probably gonna be more forehead on it. Yeah. You know, for the identification and and territory, territory, that kind of stuff, you know. And then I think more and orbital too, but I mean, for me, uh my opinion is the orbital is more for the mating or breeding side of it. It it also identifies it and establishes territory, but it also is like saying, okay, this because of what we've talked about in the past as far as black tail living that living the entirety of their lives inside of 51 acres, those deer have smelled everybody there, everyone inside of that 51 acres. So when he leaves that scent from the gland on there, he is identifying himself, and then he's establishing I'm the dominant buck, or I'm this ranking. And those again, those does come through there, and they can smell where that dominant buck has been, and that's where they leave their scent because they want to get bred by that dominant buck.
SPEAKER_01:The following, and one of the guys in coaching had a really good video of a buck coming and leaving a rub, and then a while later, the doe coming in and licking the rub. Yeah, and then the buck coming back in, leaving another rub, or it was a different buck. I can't remember if it was two different bucks on that one particular rub, and then another doe coming in, or that same doe coming in, and again, kind of checking who came by, right, who left this.
SPEAKER_00:And a lot of that occurs in the early part of the first rut. Because at a certain point, the does are tired of being chased, so they start hiding from the bucks because they're tired of being pestered, you know. And then when the dominant buck finds them, he's the one who locks them down. The dominant and the one right underneath him, they lock down that doe and they kind of keep her from everybody.
SPEAKER_01:I saw I was also while I was researching this that they can convey health of the buck through those glands. Right. And I imagine it's they're checking that out to see who's healthy or if is that dominant buck healthy still, or if there's something wrong. But I did for the Patreon guys, I did a video showing the difference between because on one of my sets I have dominance rubs, and it's out in it's not a clear cut, but it's a jack fur patch that's really wide open, like four to six foot jackfur.
SPEAKER_00:Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_01:So real small stuff that they wouldn't necessarily not a bedding area.
SPEAKER_00:Right, right.
SPEAKER_01:But showed rubs in there, and then I showed on one of my sets an annual rub line down the viny maples and the alders down the middle of it.
SPEAKER_00:Right. There's you know, hunting techniques, ambushing and or sitting groundblinder tree stand, that annual rub line is going to be much more productive than the clear cut. And I say that in regards to you'll catch the smaller bucks out there. And if you're happy with that, great.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But if you're wanting something larger, then yeah, that annual rub line is what you're looking for. And again, like I said, once you find it, it's been so established over the seasons, over the years, that you just know. I mean, it's nothing to have 20, 30, and it may only be two bucks working that rub line.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. But yeah, there can be it's every tree or every other tree. Yeah. Or it's 10 in a row, they skip a couple and then it's another 10 in a row or something. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I like it when you can find one and it's like every size of tree. So you know you've got big bucks, small bucks, medium bucks, all using that rub line.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You know, that makes things more exciting.
SPEAKER_01:So jumping into let's talk about there's the tarsal glands and metatarsal glands. Uh-huh. And one of the things that when I was researching this, is they said that for the metatarsal glands, that for white tail, those are kind of a vestigial organ.
SPEAKER_00:Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_01:That they have them, but they don't use them so much.
SPEAKER_00:And that's the metatarsal.
SPEAKER_01:Metatarsal.
SPEAKER_00:Which is on the outside of the leg, not on the inside.
SPEAKER_01:And that, but for black tail and for mule deer, that they're still they actively use those for it's kind of a warning system and a high alert, and it's for a synchronized escape. So basically, if a deer, I guess, uh, are smelling secretions from this gland and they're running off towards the east, that tells all the other deer, run towards the east because that was the safer direction.
SPEAKER_00:You gotta think of it like a mister, you know. All of a sudden they start smelling that, and that's all I need to know.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You know, it goes back to what we've said on previous episodes that deer are not reliant on their eyes or ears as much as they are reliant on their nose. Yeah. That is their first line of defense. And so, yeah, the metatarsal is a totally different application in comparison to the tarsal glands. Tarsal glands, it's a total breeding scenario where they pee on the tarsal gland. And what's funny is you see them in the summer, and that tarsal gland is typically it's the hair is bushier, so it's it like stands out, but it's the same color as the rest of the coat. As we get into the breeding season, that urine will stain those tarsal glands dark, yeah, either black or dark, dark brown.
SPEAKER_01:You know what one of the things that I don't know how accurate this was, because it as I'm looking all this stuff up, it talks about dominance, it shares the testosterone levels of the bucks. So the darker the stain, the higher the testosterone level.
SPEAKER_00:Right, right. So the younger bucks typically don't get as dark as your older bucks get as far as their tarsal glands, which I kind of correlate with, okay, they're doing more of the breeding than the younger bucks are.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. It's interesting because I had never thought about looking at that for helping for age or understanding the dominance. And I know there's more to who the dominant or the secondary buck is that's not related necessarily to age. Because I've had a mature buck, four and a half-year-old, where he wasn't the dominant buck in that area. Right. There were two others that dwarfed him, maybe not body-wise, but just the rack and everything else. And now it'd be interesting to go back because I think I have good enough pictures of two of them where I could actually look at those tarsal glands in that area just to see how dark they are and see if there's any kind of comparison.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And it can be deceiving in the sense that at a certain age, it will like when a buck gets to be eight and a half, nine years old, nine and a half years old, they're almost impossible to kill. Because they lose interest in the rut.
SPEAKER_01:Well, their testosterone probably drops off like that's exactly right.
SPEAKER_00:So if you look at their, if you look at their tarsal glands, they're not gonna be as dark as a buck that's hitting his prime, five and a half, six and a half years old, seven and a half years old.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So, you know, that's why aging is more a skeletal thing than it is stuff like this. Because as they get older, they just lose interest, you know, and we all see it on TV. We watch the hunting shows, and you see that bull out in the meadow, and it's September, and you're watching, and the guy is throwing everything but the kitchen sink at him, and the bull is just out there feeding. He's got no cows, doesn't care about anything. Well, it's because he's reached an age where the rut isn't what drives him anymore. We start tapering off. It's the same with guys.
SPEAKER_01:He's heading up for the ladies, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Your drive lessons and that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_01:You put up with her long enough. It's just time to move on.
SPEAKER_00:You know, what is the commercial that they have?
SPEAKER_01:Your T levels like medication commercial?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, with flutie on there.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah, whatever, neutrodenics. Yeah, neugenics, that's what it is.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so they're not passing out nugenics anywhere out there in the field. So, you know, these deer, once they lose interest, it's all a downhill slide.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But it makes them almost impossible to kill because they don't slip up.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:There's nothing that's making them stupid.
SPEAKER_01:Well, those situations you just want to be hanging up by the food source.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah. Or the bed, the core area, that bedroom. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So orbital glands, tarsal, metatarsal, forehead gland. We talked about all those. Last one, and I didn't actually know about these until I started researching the interdigital glands. Uh-huh. So the gl there's a gland in between their hooves. Yep. That and this, so this is interesting because it it's communicating to other deer that their direction of travel, their identity, who's traveling, and it's marking trails that they're using. Right. And so I've kind of wondered why, or, and maybe it's not necessarily a product that like Teenks or Conquest or you know, that companies that make Doan Estris or or these gland products or synthetic versions of them, that seems like that would be a handy or a good product to create. And maybe that's communicated by some of the when we do drags.
SPEAKER_00:Right, right. And I kind of look at it for me personally, the way I look at the interdigital is simply this. When they're marking trails, a lot of times they're marking escape routes.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So they've been spooked, and next time you get a deer, just look in between the hooves. There's a slit right in there. It's really obvious. And that gland, I mean, as soon as they get all tensed up, and it just they've been startled. And all of a sudden they're just, you've seen a deer, they just lock up. It's like, oh, okay, what's good? And the head snaps up and they start looking.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:They are seconds away from starting to pump out out of that interdigital gland, that warning, okay, because it's there's the relaxing that comes out of there, as well as okay, high alert.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And then they do, they mark trails as far as escape routes. And so when they come into a set, if you've buggered that that buck or a doe or or a smaller buck or any deer while you were in stand or in blind, they're gonna leave a marker there that is going to make it so that even though you have a bedding pheromone out, it will still not allow that deer to relax. They will come in on pins and needles.
SPEAKER_01:Well, and a deer wouldn't be able to tell that when the bedding pheromone was put out. And right.
SPEAKER_00:Well, they can they can tell how old it is.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_00:You know, once they've been buggered on a set, it's really hard to get them to relax after that.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:That's why I tell guys, you've got to mind your entries and your exits. You're hunting from the time you get out of the pickup to the time you get back. You have to be in stealth mode. To think that the only time you need to be quiet or sneaky or invisible last 30 yards, it's not. It's not. It's from the time you get out of that pickup, you just go into hunt mode and you need to stay that way until you get back. Because these animals communicate not by sight. You know, there's grunting and all that. Yeah, they do do that, but it's more about sense that they put out, and hence the reason that we've based our whole system on that.
SPEAKER_01:And that's the first thing that they're gonna get into.
SPEAKER_00:That's exactly right.
SPEAKER_01:So you've mentioned that the big bucks don't take the same trails as the does and the small bucks. Right. Now, is that something where a big buck they're walking along? Okay, that's a trail that little bucks are using or does are using. I don't necessarily want to take that right now.
SPEAKER_00:But yes and no. I mean, I think instinctively it when they reach a certain age, it's usually about a three-point. They start wanting and desiring cover more than the does and the smaller bucks.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Now, I don't know if that's got anything to do with the scent that's being laid out or anything like that. There's just something about it, when they hit that age marker, they all of a sudden want to stick to the thicker cover. They start using that thicker cover. By the time they hit four and a half, it's like they've been doing it for a lifetime. Yeah. They've just become masters overnight of just staying in that thicker cover and utilizing that all the way up till they break out into the clear cut at night. They'll stage in that stuff until they feel 100% assured that they are safe and it's okay to go out.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. So we've talked about the glands and all of that with the eyes. So rubs and scrapes, we've covered a lot of that, but with body positions and positioning, but they're picking up on the rub, I would say, rubs and scrapes long before they see them. They can smell, they're they're gonna smell them, right, right, and then they come in and see that's the exact spot where they might need to check in.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And I think that a popular misconception is that buck has to be within so many feet to see if that doe is in standing estrus. And the reality is he can be hundreds of yards away.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And if the wind is right, he'll pick up on it. He knows she's in standing estrus, he knows where she's at within 12 feet. And yeah, I mean, their nose is absolutely incredible. It's better than a bear. We just don't give them the do that they deserve. So when we see a buck or we see a field or or a clear cut and there's does out there, and we must think, well, obviously, there's no bucks around because it's the rud and there's nothing out there chasing her.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That's not it at all. They just have crossed downwind, whether it's a hundred yards, two hundred yards, and they can tell, oh, nope, she's fine. She's not in standing esterist. I don't need to pay any attention to her. Yeah. I need to make ground and cover ground and find that one that is.
SPEAKER_01:They're looking for the right one. Yeah. So thinking about their eyes, now when they're for Whitehill, it's I would say when they're herded up or a little bit more, because they're more likely to be several as opposed to just a couple or a few. But it can happen, black tail, because they can be there can be a few of them, but just deer in general, their body positions or you know, their ears or the way that they're standing or something. They are communicating all the time. So if a deer looks at another deer, if if that deer is relaxed, what is that deer looking like?
SPEAKER_00:Ears are forward or just twitching.
SPEAKER_01:And you know, they're talking about tail wagging, too.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, the tail twitches and everything just out of relaxation and stuff. When a deer gets to be on high alert, you're gonna notice that tail either go up halfway or with white tail, it'll go up straight up, and they call that, you know, that flag. The head is just kind of you can tell it's just relaxed. The ears are just they're moving, but they're not rigid at all and stuff. Whereas when they get angry, for lack of a better term, or territorial, even with doughs, you'll see the hair on the ridgeline of their back start to stand up.
SPEAKER_01:Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00:It'll bristle up, and the ears will pin back. Just like a horse when it gets when it's about to buck, they pin their ears back, and it's their way of communicating, hey, this is I I don't like this. This is not acceptable to me.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And especially bucks will notice right away when they get upset or they feel territorial or challenged, the ears pin back, the hair bristles up, and you'll notice that their head, it doesn't sit, it doesn't come up all the way, it's kind of straight out from the shoulders to just below it a little bit, and it's like he's eyeing that other buck and kind of sizing him up as to how this is all gonna go down. You know what I mean? That that they're never straight up. No, you know, it's gonna be down and it's gonna be almost like a lurking kind of, I guess for a lack of a better description.
SPEAKER_01:Well, leading with the rat, the antlers.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, and they'll approach, so like a deer, like a doe, if a doe is there and stuff, he'll typically approach. Well, he could do either. He'll either approach from the front and go nose to nose, or if it's the rut, he'll approach from behind and sniff. With bucks, typically, especially during the rut, it's from the rear.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Because they're wanting to stay out of the way of weapons, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01:Exactly.
SPEAKER_00:And so it's like, okay, a better chance to react if he has to take a while to turn around and that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Okay. So let's get into the last thing, talking about ears and and how they're communicating through sound. Uh-huh. So just real quick grunting.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so popular misconception is that only bucks grunt, which could be fur couldn't be further from the truth. My son and I just came back from Kansas, and uh, you know, when you have does that have yearlings or fawns, and they're by themselves, you can hear that doe grunting to that yearling or fawn. She's communicating to that yearling and fawn through grunts, as well as stomping and other forms of communication that they do. But she does grunt, and it's a lower, softer grunt than bucks do. Obviously, bucks, especially whitetail, they get into that roar where they're really grunting hard and whatnot. Black tail tend to grunt softer anyway, they just do. So usually when you hear a black tail grunting, he's close. He's close.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I did, I would say my first year I heard grunting as I'm up in my ladder stand, down in the bedding area, core area behind me, which was down a little bit of a ridge, and I could hear grunting, but I had my game ears on that were amplifying sound, right? And it sounded a lot like a frog croak, but different, more guttural, right? Not as crackly, I would say.
SPEAKER_00:And a little bit longer.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and not like a frog will croak, croak, uh-huh, croak. And it's that rhythm where they'll just kind of let it out and then you don't hear anything else.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:You might hear another one a little bit.
SPEAKER_00:I've actually heard them snort wheeze more than I hear them grunt.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. And so, well, let's before we move on to the other ones, so stomping. What are they communicating when they're stomping?
SPEAKER_00:So stomping communicates a lot. They're either talking to their fawns or their yearlings, and it's, hey, pay attention.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:I'm over here. If it's somebody else's fawns or yearlings, it's you stay over there. They'll combine that with their little head bob, doze wheel, to try and get you to move. If they're looking at you, if they've spotted you, it's their way, hey, what are you? Show yourself.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:And then they'll do this head bob thing. They'll put their head down, hold it there for a second, like they were going to go down and eat, and then pop it right back up, trying to catch you while you're moving. And so, yeah, it's more of whenever they're stomping, and whether it's combined with the head bob or whatnot, it's pay attention. Something's up here. Pay attention. Lock on to what I'm talking about right now. So it's a high alert kind of thing.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. So doe bleeds.
SPEAKER_00:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01:Is that like grunting?
SPEAKER_00:It's a doe's way of helping her being located. Not just obviously during the rut, she can do it to call for other bucks. Hey, I'm in standing estrus. I'm receptive right now, but nobody has found me. And they want to get bread. Again, that's just nature's way, the continuance of the species. And so they want to get bread. So they will bleat, for lack of a better term, loneliness andor the need for companionship, as far as we're in the rutting phase of the year, and so now I need to be bred. It can also help them be located if they're communicating to their fawns and or yearlings.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. So fawn and distress or a fawn, because it's just a real high-pitched kind of a whine. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Now, do they only communicate like when they're in distress, or is it a here's where I'm at, come find me.
SPEAKER_00:Typically, when when a fawn does a distress call, yeah, you're gonna get a lot of smaller bucks and does running into that because that fawn is in need of help. It is in jeopardy, it doesn't cry for any reason, for the most part, not to give up its position, you know. Okay. So typically when a fawn is in distress, when they're doing that fawn in distress, it's a predator that has probably lashed hold of it and it's trying to get away and it's calling to, you know, hey, help, help, kind of thing.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:So yeah, and it's a call that a lot of guys use in September to bring in, and you'll get a lot of spikes and fork and horns coming into that.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. And I did out in your backyard one night in I think it was in August, I'd had a call, and you can adjust it where it sounds you can either do a grunt or doe bleed or a fawn just by moving the little rubber band on it and stuff. But I called in a doe by doing the fawn in distress.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:But by doing that, you can also, you've told me you can blow out the area as far as then they think there's a predator and they won't come around after a while.
SPEAKER_00:As with any call, you can educate the animals that you're hunting with that. If you overcall or if you've been busted on that call, uh they remember that, and every call is distinct to them. To us, it all sounds like the same thing. Well, that's just another fawn in distress. Well, they know exactly what fawn it is.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You know what I mean? And that fawn is calling to the deer herd, not just to its mother. It's calling to the deer herd saying, Hey, I'm in trouble. If a buck comes in or a doe comes in and you don't get the shot or you let it walk or whatever, and they are able to spot you and see you, they're gonna correlate that call every time they hear it with humans.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. So the last one, snort wheeze.
SPEAKER_00:My favorite. Okay, absolutely my favorite.
SPEAKER_01:What are they communicating with us?
SPEAKER_00:So a snort wheeze is definitely a challenge. It is a dominant response, it is a killer for bucks, so long as the buck does not have a doe. If the buck has a doe, she's gonna turn and go the other way. And she's gonna take the buck that you're trying to get to come in to go with her. To go with her. You know, she's been chased already, she's got a buck on her tail. Why would she want to go toward another buck?
SPEAKER_01:Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00:It's detrimental to your hunt if you do it then. But if you can see that buck, if you can visually lay eyes on that buck and he is by himself, and you're in any part of that rut phase, and you do a snort, 99% of the time it's gonna pull him in. Now, what happens is he'll either turn on a dime and come straight in, or he'll look over at you, show like he's not interested, disappear out of your vision, and he'll circle around to get the wind in his favor, and he'll pop out right next to you. I don't have countless times that's happened to me.
SPEAKER_01:So both does this work with white tail, black tail, yes, for both of them. Everything?
SPEAKER_00:Yep.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:I and Snortwhee's is awesome because you can just do it with your mouth. You know, it but you know when they hear it, because they're gonna just all of a sudden they're gonna lock up, the head is gonna go up, and they're gonna look your direction and they're gonna stare your direction. Because what you're communicating to him is I have a hot dough over here, stay away. Okay, and then he's gonna look at you and he's trying to find you, he's trying to find the dough.
SPEAKER_01:Especially if he's the dominant buck.
SPEAKER_00:Especially if he's a dominant buck. And then you just and uh like I said, he'll either turn and come straight in, or if he's a little nervous, he'll disappear out of your sight, he'll go right into the bushes, but he's circling around you. So even if they look like they're walking away, get ready because within the next 15 minutes, he's probably gonna pop out right next to you somewhere. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Is there a kind of a blowing noise that they make for that signals danger?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and though you'll hear them do it a lot. Small bucks will do it as well. Big bucks don't tend to.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:But yeah, you'll hear a doe blow. It's that and that's a warning. Now I will say this. It's gotten overrated in the sense that every time somebody goes and they sits in a stand and they hear a doe blow, they think, oh, my hunt's over. It is not.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:It's not even close. Because you're not the only predator out there. They've got bobcats out there, they've got coyotes out there. Deer startle deer. Elk, they don't like being around elk. Elk will startle deer and they'll blow. Again, we just came back from Kansas and I sat there and I watched this deer, this doe, blow. We had a coyote go by, and she stood there and she was blowing at the coyote, and the other deer, there were three other deer, and they just they didn't even lift their heads. They just kept feeding on the clover and stuff that were around them. They didn't even care.
SPEAKER_01:You know, it's like that's just Karen. She's out of control with her complaining about this and that.
SPEAKER_00:She's part of the HOA. But no, until that doe takes off, until she greyhounds out of there, it's like everybody's just like, okay, all right, let us know when it gets serious. Uh-huh. And so I think that we overread that in the sense that, oh, we hear a doe blow, oh, the hunt's over.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:I've been blown out, and now there's no chance. That's not the case at all. So that's been my experience.
SPEAKER_01:All righty. Well, thanks everybody for listening to us. If you could go and leave a comment, leave a like, heart, subscribe, follow, all those things that you need to do on your platform that would really help. It helps push us out through algorithms and whatnot. And if you want more content, exclusive content, feel free to join our Patreon community. Check our affiliates down below if you need to buy any products, and we will talk to you all next week.
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