Do BT's do this?

[Natas5150]

So this morning me and my wife went up to skok unit. After driving around we finally decided on a gate and went in. Probably about 200 yards in my wife saw fresh tracks around a big puddle. So i tried to trace the tracks and found them going all over. We walked at a slow pace about another 100 yards when i spotted a rub. At this point i thought we spooked something. We stopped and listened for about 10 minutes and we both heard something moving in the thicket near us. At that point we found another rub. I pulled out the buck grunt and about every 10 minutes i would use it. After about a half an hour i decided we should head back the way we came at a slow pace. We came back to the puddle and we stopped. My wife said get the grunt call out and so i did and began to use it. I heard a strange noise coning from the thicket near us. It was or seemed like a very low grunt and sound like what ever it was srapping at the ground like an angry bull but this noise was very faint. Eventually we called it as the noise stopped. Could this noise have come from our supposed grey ghost? Have they been known to scrape at the ground like a bull? Or was this my imagination? Please give me something to go on as this has been bothering me all day as i feel we were right under a BT's nose when this happend.  Is this normal for behavior for deer?

Thanks all

[Whitenuckles]

  I've had blackies do some weird stuff, but not that.

[Duckslayer89]

My cousin says elk hate when you use a buck grunt? Could have been an elk?

[fishnfur]

I've never heard of them doing that, but I'm surprised at least once a year when I see something completely unexpected. 

A couple years ago, I was out at first light, just inside the woods and next to a road above a cut where I'd previously seen several deer crossing back into the woods in the morning.  I heard this crazy rustling in the bushes under the firs, but it was still not quite light enough to see what was going on.  The animal was just on the other side of the road and my mind is thinking deer, deer, deer.  I nocked an arrow and waited.  Three more minutes of rustling, and out pops a porcupine.  He came right at me, but not wanting to ruin a broadhead on it, I grabbed a stone and tossed it at him.  He took it well and went back the way he came.

Sadly, you'll never know what was making those noises.  Who knows, maybe it was a buck.

[Okanagan]

Nata, fascinating experience!  Tuck that sound and great experience away in your memory.  You heard it.  Just because no one else here knows what made the sound does not change what happened and what you heard.  Too bad you could not have seen what was making each sound and how the critter made the sound but what you did perceive was a rare treat way more than the average stroll in the woods experiences.

fishnfur said it well: I've never heard of them doing that, but I'm surprised at least once a year when I see something completely unexpected. 


I'd guess that it was a buck from what you say, that was responding/reacting to the sounds he heard from you, including your walking, whispers, etc.  No way to know, but most animals have a much wider range and variety of sounds they produce than the few standard sounds most of us have heard or know about.  And it could have been a mountain beaver, porky, who knows.

[fishnfur]

The nice thing about having two hunters in that situation is that you can have one of them backtrack and come in from the other side to see if he/she can see it or flush it out, then perhaps make dinner out of it.

[Duckslayer89]

I heard a bulls rack smacking branches like 50 yards from me this year and he let out the softest chuckle he could make searching. I think about it every day