Carry a turkey call with you next time you venture into the deer woods. Subtle and social turkey calls can put nearby deer at ease.

Bowhunting's about getting close, very close. Depending on circumstances this can prove surprisingly easy, but more often excruciatingly difficult. There are times and places when you'll swear it is flat-out impossible. The latter is typically borne of tackling problems with a stubborn, straight-ahead approach. You spy a bedded mule deer and stalk straight at him with the wind in your face of course.

You discover a bevy of feeding deer at a field's edge and naturally think hanging a stand and putting in your time will bring success. Successful bowhunting often demands more lateral thinking, studying a situation carefully and thinking several moves ahead. Unproductive bowhunting can also result from adhering to tired ploys game's already savvy to like bugling to elk or rattling for whitetail; guarding whitetail scrapes that are visited by bucks only under the cover of darkness. Sometimes it helps to step outside the box.

The Art Of Deception
This isn't a discussion on the latest camouflage sensation, but blending in on more subtle levels than the obviously visual, which wild animals depend on much less than we do. And no, this isn't another angle on the often-suspect business of scent control and "forget-the-wind" hyperbole. Unless you're "The Boy In The Bubble", arriving upwind of a whitetail deer, elk, or most especially black bear, assures that no matter what you're wearing, dosed in or have recently showered or sprayed down with, that animal will shortly detect you via an olfactory system nearly unfathomable in efficiency.

Sure, such products can provide temporary subterfuge that gives you a few extra seconds to get off a clean shot, or to make distant game believe you're farther away. But remain upwind within even bottom-pin range long enough to, say, wait for a buck to take one more step or turn just so, and you're busted.

Whitetail deer, especially in farm country, are used to new developments in their habitat. Still, common sense dictates what type of barriers will gently deflect a deer past your stand and what will spook them onto the neighboring farm.

I'm hinting at cues, often dismissed by hunters, that help game keep tabs on what is happening in their world like chattering squirrels, squawking jays, tattletale crows or ravens. Without confirmation that such alarms are part of the natural order a trophy buck may slip away without detection. At best, it may not command his immediate attention, but you've just become suspect in a world of potential trouble.

Non-Threatening Approaches
The trick is in making yourself appear neutral, at least to that deer listening 100 yards up the ridge. Quiet turkey talk is the easiest way to set nearby deer at ease in habitat where the birds are common, which today covers nearly anywhere in the country; especially whitetail country.

These aren't the raucous attraction yelps and cuts of spring seasons, but subtle, everyday social calls turkeys use to maintain ranks while traveling and feeding. Soft clucks, purrs and "do-weeps" (like a drop of water falling into a half-filled bucket) are what you are striving for. Such turkey talk doesn't carry far, perhaps 150 yards under ideal conditions, but provides confidence and adds realism to your movements through foreign habitat.