Thread: Deer sounds - how accurate do they need to be?

Hey everyone,
Been looking at things like callers and learning to make animal sounds, not necessarily to call in animals, but to keep potential animals around me keep calm. E.g. if i accidentally make a ton of noise by breaking a branch, i could make a deer sound to lessen suspicion that im a predator. But sometimes I also worry that if I make the wrong sound, I will scare everything away.

Some of the cheaper callers seem to be for whitetail deer, like grunt callers and bleat cans. Can these work for fallow or reds or do you reckon it will scare them? Another option is just learning to make the sounds myself. Bleats would be easier than roars, just need to find videos trying to mimic the sounds. It doesn't look like the sounds need to be super accurate as shown in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=960DnQbqyHc , but maybe depends on the animal.

nek...sort of like nek minute is very close to fawn/yearling call..... roars very a heck of a lot...less is better than more....go spend time beside or better still in a deer farm....on other side of wire from stags for next two months....but any time around hinds n younguns...when you hear them call,try imitating it...can be quite fun watching the reaction... hard case is when you give warning bark and it sets off the whole farm into barking....

Less is better, if they aren’t roaring, don’t. If you break a stick and they are close and worked up they will challenge (grunt) or come for a look anyway, don’t make more noise by grunting or roaring, they are alert for danger , just wait a bit.
If they are spooking from close (without winding you) grunt.
Roaring is handy when they are going well and not super close.

@ethos Thanks for the tips. Do you have videos of what the grunts sound like? When i try to look up fallow/red deer sounds all i find is roaring/croaking. @Micky Duck I will try to get close to the deer farm near my work, I know some people in my department actually do research on deer so maybe I can ask them for permission to go in/near the paddocks. A fawn or yearling sound seems really easy, just need to get it right if i do end up using it.

if you want a roaring vid try the Graff boys, the full film about 20 mins but there is some shorter clips from the full one.

have stopped a sika dead in its tracks with a short sharp whistle........know someone who had red stag replying to a chainsaw.....

Stopped a Sika stag dead in his tracks roar before last. He was walking through a tussock saddle and I was hiding behind a Tanekaha tree. Mewed at him. stopped him in his tracks and he turned and walked stiff legged over to me. Dropped him from 20m

Originally Posted by scotty

have stopped a sika dead in its tracks with a short sharp whistle........know someone who had red stag replying to a chainsaw.....

Have also heard deer roaring at a chainsaw. Pretty cool when they are fizzed up. Personally I reckon the big stags roar best when there are satellite stags cruising nearby.