I saw the buck moving about 100 yards away from our set up, so I grunt called to him. He came toward us immediately, then saw the decoy. The video begins with him noticing the decoy.
The decoy is set up 25 yards ahead of us. We are on the ground. Notice how he circles around the decoy to confront him head on. He is also posturing with his ears back and fir bristled up to make himself look bigger. What is amazing is how he looks at me several times, with bow in hand, and opts to confront the decoy rather than become nervous about what I was. I drew my bow several times to experiment with how powerful the decoy was. The buck is never more than 20 yards from us in this video, at the closest he got to 10 steps!
While this is a young deer, it can work on old deer also. I killed my buck exactly a week after this episode in the same spot again with the decoy. The buck I killed was a 7.5 year old monarch, however. Fun stuff.
3 comments:
Towards the end there, he knew something wasn't quite right about this situation. He must have saw movement or heard a few sounds from you guys. :)
I actually debated talking to him a bit. I've done that in the wild with young deer and not spooked them. If a deer hasn't had a direct interaction with a human being, I'm guessing their curiosity could keep them around longer than it's healthy for them. By the time they are older and have had a few encounters under their horns, it's all different.
That was too cool as well as most interesting. Probably be a bit gruesome, but would love to see the video of you or Nathan taking one down.
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