July 29, 2013
By Jon E. Silks
No bowhunter wants to hit a game animal squarely in the shoulder blade, but sometimes things don't go exactly as planned. And when your shot placement is less than ideal, you want to know that your broadhead is capable of not only passing through bone but doing the deadly cutting job it was designed to do when it reaches the other side.
With that in mind, our 2013 broadhead test included the hard-impact test, designed to simulate a broadhead's performance after it encounters a hard object such as bone. We shot each head into .03-inch sheet metal from a distance of 25 yards. Approximately 18 inches beyond the sheet metal, we placed a single layer of dense foam to catch the heads after impact with the metal.
We recorded the results of each shot using high-speed video equipment so you can watch each broadhead in action. As you will see, the broadheads' ability to absorb punishment from the hard impact varied greatly from model to model. For the best-performing heads in the hard-impact test, the sheet metal was barely a bump in the road. For others, it was a significant challenge. And for a few, it was a virtually insurmountable obstacle. We'll let you watch the footage for yourself and draw your own conclusions.
Tending Grunt The tending grunt is a series of short grunts that a buck emits when actively chasing an estrous (ready to breed) doe, and it is effective from the beginning to the end of the rut. The manner in which you perform this call will depend on your bowhunting goals. For instance, if you're a trophy hunter, you can keep those grunts fairly deep to high in pitch while mimicking the sound of a lovesick intruder, because a mature whitetail is confident enough that he will come and investigate any challengers he believes are harassing does in his territory.
Conversely, if you are like me and love to eat deer, and you have your eye on a tasty medium-sized buck, keep those calls a little higher in pitch and not so pronounced. After all, a smaller buck isn't going to rocket right in if he thinks a monster buck is waiting to thrash him.
How do you know exactly what a tending grunt sounds like to accurately imitate it? The best way is to spend time in the field, listening to actual deer communication. Another way is to research the subject online and search out sites featuring genuine deer audio clips. The tending grunt is generally carried out by blowing a series of four to eight short buck grunts, and then repeating it as the situation warrants. Personally, I don't employ this call unless I have visual contact with the buck, because I want to see his reaction and call accordingly. Still, blowing the occasional tending series every 20 minutes while on stand to draw out unseen rutting bucks isn't a bad idea.
Fawn Bleat My next preferred deer call is one I've nicknamed the 'antlerless tag filler. ' Its more common moniker is the fawn bleat. This call copies the high-pitched fawn mew, and it works wonders at drawing in adult whitetail does. This call is a snap to duplicate as several call manufacturers have produced easy to master 'can calls ' that precisely replicate the fawn bleat. This call is best used in very short series of one to three bleats. You can also produce realistic fawn bleats from an adjustable-reed mouth call. The great thing about this sound is that it can be used to successfully call in does throughout the entire bow season. However, in my experience, it is especially effective in the early season when cover is thickest and deer are more apt to feel separated. As with the tending call, a few well-placed bleats spaced 20 minutes apart can work well at drawing a curious doe from the brush and into bow range.
Social Grunt Another excellent doe lure is the social grunt. Does use this sound when coming into contact with other does and fawns. Many times does emit this single, medium-length, low-pitched grunt when they are contentedly browsing. This call has the added benefit of being an all-season tool, and it can lure bucks in as well, making it a great pre-rut call. The social grunt is also best used in thick cover where deer can't easily identify each other by sight.
Buck Grunt For bowhunters seeking to entice heavy-beamed bucks, the buck grunt is the call to employ. It has the advantage of working well throughout bow season, but it is really useful before and after the rut. I've found that bucks hanging out in early season bachelor groups are pretty susceptible to this call. Post-rut bucks that are focused on feeding to replenish lost fat reserves can be called in with this sound, too.
The buck grunt is short in duration, deep, and calm sounding. Bucks use it for many purposes, including showing passive dominance, as a social call, and to display submissiveness. For instance, a group of late-season bucks feeding in a small food plot may jockey for the best chow, and body language along with buck grunts is how they carry out the hierarchy in a peaceful manner.
A few years back, I was perched in an oak overlooking a tall grass meadow ringed by heavy timber. It was an unusually bitter cold early October day, and that had the deer moving. Unfortunately, my calls had fallen on deaf ears, and I could only watch as the deer traveled through the field out of arrow range. A few hours into the sit, I spied an eight-pointer with good mass on the far side of the meadow. I reluctantly pressed the call to my lips and belted out a few loud buck grunts. I barely had time to put the call away and grab my bow as the buck reacted and raced over, appearing like a guided missile not 10 yards out! Sadly, during the rush to get on him, I flat-out missed! That morning was a perfect example of calling success ratios. Eighty percent of the time you'll note no reaction. Ten percent of the time deer may spook due to your calls, but magically, the remaining 10 percent of the time they react just about how we want them to.
Snort-Wheeze Lastly, there's the infamous snort-wheeze call. My experience with this form of deer talk says that bucks use it mostly while they are tending a hot doe and want to roust her from a bed, or when they want to threaten other bucks. Bucks will also snort-wheeze when discovering a fresh estrous doe urine trail or urine deposit at a scrape.
Replicating this unusual sound takes practice, and it should be reserved as a dominant-buck call because it can easily frighten off smaller bucks. I've never personally used it while hunting, but I have observed dozens of bucks communicating this way during the rut, and every time it either preceded breeding a doe or threatening another buck. Interestingly, this past November I was mock charged while photographing a buck after I did my own rendition of the snort-wheeze! This was a wild, free-ranging, bruiser 4x5 that mistook my crouching form and camera system for another buck. Thus, I would use caution with this call, as it's apt to put a buck on high alert or spook him out of the vicinity. If you happen to hunt an area rife with bold, mature bucks, I would definitely add this adrenaline-charged call to your bag of tricks.
Check out more of our 2013 broadhead tests in the September issue of Bowhunting Magazine .