Strange deer lures will work to call in deer, especially in January and February when hunters have to think outside the box to take deer. Although an apple tree never had grown in the Alabama swamps where I grew up hunting for big bucks, I watched one year as a hunter from New York loaded his pocket with apples when I hunted in the swamps near Aliceville, Alabama.
He told me, “I’m not eating these apples. I’ll cut them up and put them out to attract deer”. I laughed and told him, “You’ll probably run off every deer in the county if you put out those apples, since they’ve never smelled them.” But when we arrived at the lodge for lunch, the apple man had taken a 250-pound buck with a neck swollen-up to twice its normal size and 8-1/2-inch-long tines. He told me, “I put those apples downwind of my stand, and the buck came in with his nose in the air, smelling `em. I waited until he’d eaten two apple pieces before I shot him,” he said.
Weird Method #1 – Building A Fire In The Snow
If snow falls during January in Alabama, consider building a fire when hunting for big bucks. Reason dictates that deer will run from fire and view fire as an enemy. However, the Cree Indians of Manitoba, Canada, have built fires to stay warm while hunting and to lure deer and moose to within bow range for years. I first saw this concept used while hunting in Manitoba’s Interlake Wilderness Area.
A guide recommended this tactic to hunters who hadn’t filled their tags. Very negative about the idea at first, they tried it and returned to camp with a big whitetail. One hunter reported that the buck stared at the flickering fire that he partially could see behind the ground blind, and his brother took the 200+ inch buck.
Weird Method #2 – Attracting Deer With Peanut Butter
Many deer attractants and deer food contain roasted peanuts and peanut flavoring, but real peanut butter lures in deer too. Buy inexpensive jars of peanut butter with plastic lids that you can unscrew.
Remove the paper/plastic covering on the jars’ tops. Put roofing nails through the lids to nail them into non-commercial trees about four or more feet off the ground.
Cut the bottoms of the plastic peanut butter jars off with a knife. Screw the jars to the lids. The deer can stick its tongue or nose in the jar to reach the peanut butter, and the plastic jar shields the peanut butter from rain and weather. (Be sure to have the landowner’s permission to put nails in trees on the property).
Weird Method #3 – Using Chainsaws And Combines
In an area with daily logging during deer season, deer are accustomed to hearing chainsaws and eating small limbs, branches and other woody vegetation from the fallen trees. Hunters in these places have noticed that when the deer hear chainsaws, they’ll come there, knowing that trees and tender branches will drop, resulting in plenty for them to eat.
In the Midwest, where farmers use combines to harvest soybeans and corn, if someone cranks-up a combine and pulls it out in a field, deer often come on the run out of thick cover. Once again the deer in those regions have learned that a piece of machinery running means there will be plenty of food spilled on the ground for the deer to eat.
Weird Method #4 – Making The Fawn-in-Distress Call
Outdoorsmen have learned that the fawn-in-distress call can be one of the most-successful deer calls used to bring in deer. When a doe thinks a predator is trying to kill her young fawn, she’ll come running to rescue it. To call in an adult doe, you can use other calls like a rabbit squealer or any other type of predator call that sounds like a young animal’s bawling and screaming. If you need to harvest does off your property to keep your herd in balance, use these fawn-in-distress or rabbit-in-distress calls.
Weird Method #5 – Pottying At The Tree Where You Hunt
“All mammal urine breaks down to ammonia, and deer will come to the smell of ammonia to investigate. Even real deer urine breaks down into ammonia, regardless of what type of preservative you put in it,” said Dr. Grant Woods, widely-renowned deer researcher. “Ammonia has a very-stout smell. It’s light and molecular in weight too, which means it will drift easily on the wind. When deer smell ammonia, they’ll come to check-out that smell.”
“Try to use ammonia that doesn’t contain any pine scent or any other masking smell. Most researchers who, when hunting for big bucks, relieve themselves while they are still in a tree, make sure they leave urine on the tree trunk and the tree limbs. Then as that urine breaks down to ammonia, its smell will be carried out into the woods and attract deer,” he said.
Weird Method #6 – Taking Does
Many deer hunters and biologists think there’s no more effective way to call in a buck than to shoot a doe first. Some estimate that up to 25 percent of the time that a hunter harvests a doe before he takes a buck, mature bucks will come to investigate.
Be sure not to leave any human scent when going to your tree stand. Then don’t get out of your tree stand immediately after you’ve shot the doe. The bucks seem to be drawn in by the smell of a dead doe, even if she’s not in heat.
Weird Method #7 – Luring With A Tree Stand
Other hunters swear that putting up tree stands can lure in deer when hunting for big bucks. For example, when your tree stand bangs against a tree, you’re breaking limbs and shaking leaves. You’re often grunting and moaning from the exertion of putting up the stand too. From a distance, you may sound like a buck fight to a deer.
Weird Method #8 – Painting Your Tree Stand Ladder White
A friend of mine used white paint leftover from painting a room at his home to paint his wooden tree stand. Two days later, he returned to that stand and harvested a nice buck that was staring at the white ladder and cautiously walking to it. A wildlife biologist told him, “White-tailed deer are very curious, and anything that’s different in their environment will attract their attention.”
Weird Method #9 – Using A Telephone Pole
One of my son-in-law’s friends had a nice buck coming from a different direction every day in an agricultural field to feed. His friend used an auger to create a hole big and deep enough to set-up a telephone pole with a camouflaged blind high on it. He waited two weeks, climbed up the pole and took that buck with his bow.
Weird Method #10 – Flagging
Western hunters lure in antelope by flagging, and some deer hunters say this tactic lures in deer too, especially if the deer are out of range. If a herd of deer is at the other end of a field from you, try to identify the lead doe. Make sure she’s not looking your way when you flag her. Stick your hand out from the side of a bale of hay where you’re hiding. Move your hand up and down quickly a couple of times to get the doe’s attention, before pulling your hand back behind the bale of hay. She may think she’s seen a deer’s tail out of her peripheral vision, or that action may even spook her. But you may be able to call deer to within 25 yards of you with this method.
Weird Method #11 – Utilizing Estrus Or Buck Urine
“Straight estrous urine that hasn’t been through the doe’s vent has little or no effect on buck deer. Apparently, only after the urine passes through the bacteria in the doe’s vent does it have the attractive ability to lure in bucks during the rut,” Dr. Grant Woods said.
Also, tell a buck a story with buck urine that he’ll believe. Be as scent-free as possible. Get close to the area where you think the buck’s bedding or holding during daylight hours. Pour buck urine along the edge of a deer trail to allow the scent to be carried by the wind into the area where you think the buck’s living during the daytime. Every day, go to the same trail, and pour out the same buck lure at the same time. At night, that buck holding in the cover often will go to the place where you’ve poured out the buck urine, paw the ground and leave his urine to tell this intruder buck to leave.
After following this same routine for three or four days, tie a drag rag to your boot, soak it with buck urine, and walk to your tree stand near the spot where you’ve been pouring out the buck urine. Plan to reach the place you’ll hunt 45 minutes before the time you’ve been pouring-out the buck urine daily. Let the woods settle down, and make several, low, deep grunts on a grunt call. Be ready, since that nocturnal buck in the thick cover may come looking for you in these last minutes of daylight, and then you can take him.
No deer attractant always works to call in every deer it should. However, under certain conditions, these unusual tactics have worked in the past when hunting for big bucks and may for you.
To learn more about hunting for big bucks, you can go to John E. Phillips’s hunting books, available in Kindle, print and Audible at www.amazon.com/author/johnephillips or https://www.amazon.com/John-E.-Phillips/e/B001HP7K6O.
