In Praise of Buckspeak
By Mike Handley
Joe Blanton would almost rather discover he'd left his bullets at home than find out he'd gone afield without his trusty grunt call. He uses the contraption more than an asthmatic sucks on an inhaler.
The 55-year-old pastor from Clarkson, Kentucky, became hooked on the tactic the first time he tried it. He and a friend were hunting together when five does ran past. The sounds of their passing were still echoing when he pulled out his call, surprising his buddy.
"I explained to him that if a buck thought another buck was pushing those does, it couldn't help but come and get in on the action," he said. "Soon after I did it, a 14-pointer came charging out, and that was the biggest deer my friend had ever shot."
Employing the same tactic, Joe scored his best buck to date in November, on day one of the weeklong vacation he'd scheduled to coincide with the first few days of Kentucky's rifle season.
Joe has hunted a family friend's 204-acre farm in Grayson County for 44 years, since he was 11. Except for 30 acres planted in soybeans, it's mostly overgrown now.
In 2023, two days after he burned his tag on a big 10-pointer, he and his sons got a trail camera photograph of a much larger buck. Thereafter, they collected images from the same camera — never from the four others deployed — almost daily, always 10 minutes before sunrise and 10 minutes after sunset.
Joe would discover much later that at least five landowners were also amassing photos of the deer, suggesting it traveled a 1 1/2-mile loop every night.
"I never thought a buck that big would travel that far," he said. "And it was totally nocturnal. None of the neighbors had pictures of it during the daytime."
Joe and two of his four sons suspected the buck was spending its days in a thicket on the farm they hunt. From there, it could see anything approaching from two directions, and there's a deep spring nearby offering a permanent water source.
Photos were scarce in 2024. Prior to Oct. 26, the best buck captured was a 5x6 that might've scored in the 160s.
"Until the big one finally stepped in front of the camera, I was worried the 5x6 might've been it, and that its rack was going downhill," he said.
Almost one year to the day they got the first photo in '23, Joe would see it in person, and while the sun was overhead.
On Monday, Nov. 11, he and his son, River, left his home at 5 a.m. When they arrived at the farm, River opted to take a stand from which he could cover more ground, leaving his father a ladder stand next to a field choked with cedars and broomsedge.
"River had never been to that ladder in the dark. He didn't know how to circle through there so as not to disturb the bedding area," Joe said.
The stand was leaning against a pine, the only tree big enough to accommodate one.
"Everything was just perfect that day," he continued. "It was clear. There was hardly any wind. And it had rained the previous day, so getting in and out was real quiet."
When dawn broke, Joe had been aloft for nearly a half-hour. His first order of business was to pull out his old snort/wheeze-grunt call. Minutes later, a buck with a 9-inch drop tine arrived to investigate.
"I always do the same thing. I'll throw out 15 or 20 consecutive grunts, not too loud at first, as soon as I hear the first bird. I'm not shy. When a buck's chasing a doe, it's grunting with every step, not just two or three times," he said. "I might follow that up with 30 more.
"Anyway, I let the deer with the drop tine go," Joe resumed his story. "It walked on off into the thicket, where I suspected the big buck was bedding, and then it came back out real quickly. I figured the big one might've run it out of there.
"It was a nice buck, for sure, but I'd decided my season was the much bigger deer or bust," he added.
Just before 8:00, Joe let out another series of long grunts. As soon as he finished, a buck answered from within the thicket. When Joe responded, the next answer was closer. And when he offered a third grunt, his target buck walked out of the brush only 35 yards distant.
"I didn't get excited when I saw it because I knew it was coming, or at least I was 90% sure," Joe said.
Ben Gore scored the 20-pointer for Buckmasters, arriving at 201 6/8 inches. It's a strong mainframe 6x6 with 8 little irregular points measuring from 1 to 2 1/2 inches that account for nearly 13 inches of its total, which places it into the BTR's Semi-Irregular category, the eighth largest ever recorded from Kentucky.