“Give me those rattling horns!” Demanded the gray moustachioed old west looking character sitting next to next to me. The same person who was supposed to be watching for bucks as I rattled. “I’m tired of watching you scare away every buck in the country, rattling up only babies and making a general nuisance of yourself.” I rolled my eyes and did my absolute best to ignore him, but I suspected he had scared away any mature whitetail that might remotely had been interested in coming to investigate my grunts and rattles.

“Will you be quiet?” I said, as I started to get up to move to a new location. “What’s the score now?” He questioned from beneath his well-worn silver-belly western hat. I was quiet. “I do believe at this point you’ve rattled in two yearlings, and as you will recall I’ve rattled in eight bucks and the other six looked like three and four year olds. Math tells me I’m four bucks ahead. Maybe you need to take some lessons from me,” he cajoled.

“Lessons? Wasn’t it me that taught you how to rattle up whitetails?” After a momentarily silence, I knew my old friend, Johnnie Hudman, was thinking for the appropriate response, and too, I knew we had both been rattling up bucks long before our near 40-year friendship had begun.

I first met Johnnie and started hunting with him back when he was the wildlife manager on the spacious Nail Ranch, in west Texas. Over the ensuing years we had often hunted wild hogs, turkeys, and deer together both in Texas and New Mexico. From the first meeting forward, we gave each other a hard time no matter what outdoor endeavor we were jointly involved in. Always regardless of the exchange of words there was a twinkle in his eye, and I hoped he saw the one in mine as well. Obviously he did, because if he had not, our friendship would never have continued.

I was beginning to wonder why my compadre had not yet responded when I noticed him intently staring at something. “Give me the horns now, you get on the sticks, the buck we want to take is slowly headed this way. Get on him and when he comes in closer, take him.”

Handing the Rattling Forks to Johnny, I placed my Ruger M77 FTW/SAAM Hunter in 300 Win Mag on the shooting sticks, raised the bolt, checked I had a Hornady 200 grain ELD-X in the chamber, then waited for the buck to come closer.

Johnny started meshing the Rattling Forks together, doing his best to simulate two bucks fighting. The post-mature eight-point buck kept coming our way, running, then slowing down, stopping, rubbing on a nearby bush, then coming toward us again.

My hunting partner glanced my way and winked. I rolled my eyes and refrained from saying anything, which took a great amount of self-control.

I tracked the buck in my scope, but when he got to within 100 yards, he stopped behind a bush.

“Do your snort-wheeze” instructed my old friend. “Fit,fit,fit, ffffffeeeeeeeee!” I uttered using natural voice, but before I finished the buck charged toward us. I patiently waited until he was within less than 20 yards before I squeezed the trigger. His forward movement carried him another five steps before he went down.

“I sure rattled him in close enough, for even you to hit!” said Johnny.

“You rattled him in? That’s not the way I saw it! I snort-wheezed him into our lap.”

Until next time my friend.

Photo credit: Larry Weishuhn Outdoors