Stop Him Where You Want Him: The Rut Shot Nobody Rehearses

Every November I watch the same miss happen. Not to me this year, thankfully. To a buddy who sits forty minutes down the road from me and has killed more deer than I have.

Buck comes cruising through at a trot, nose down, doing the rut thing. Fourteen yards from the tree, broadside, the shot of the season. My buddy grunts with his mouth. Buck stops. Except he stops two steps short of the lane, with his vitals tucked behind a sapling about as big around as a hoe handle. So my buddy waits. Buck takes one more step, looks straight up the tree, and that's the end of it. Twelve seconds of a mature deer standing inside 15 yards and no arrow ever left the bow.

He called me that night and said, "I did everything right." He didn't. He did everything in the wrong order.

The stop is a shot you place, not a noise you make

Most hunters treat stopping a deer like a reflex. Buck's moving, you make a sound, he stops, you shoot. That works about half the time, which is the problem. Half is a coin flip on the biggest deer you'll see all year.

Here's how I do it. Before I ever see a deer, I pick the stop. Not the lane. The exact spot in the lane where I want his front leg to be when he freezes. A specific gap between two trees, a patch of leaves, a stick on the ground. I've already ranged it. I know it's 19 yards. And the noise doesn't happen when the deer is in the lane. It happens when his nose is about a step before my spot, because a cruising buck doesn't stop on a dime. He takes another half-step to plant. Sometimes a full one.

Make the sound when his head enters the gap and he stops with his head through it and his shoulder still behind the tree. Every single time.

And you don't make the noise at brace height. You make it at full draw, anchored, pin already riding the back edge of the gap. If you're drawing after the stop, you've already lost a second and a half of a window that's maybe three seconds long. A rutting buck that stops for a mouth bleat is curious for a moment and then he's either moving again or he's looking for you. Neither one is a good time to be rolling over your cams.

What to actually say to him

I use a voice "meh." Not a whistle, not a grunt tube. A short, nasal doe bleat with my mouth. Grunts make bucks look for a buck, which during the rut can turn into a deer staring a hole straight through your stand while he works out who's challenging him. A bleat makes him look for a doe. That's a softer stop. Shoulders stay square, head swings around, and he usually stays put for a beat longer.

But louder is better than smart. If he's trotting with his nose on a track, a soft bleat goes right past him. I've had to blat at deer loud enough to embarrass myself. Do it. You can apologize to the squirrels later.

The one thing I'll fight anybody on: never stop a deer that's already walking slow. A buck at a calm walk is a buck you can shoot. Stopping him just puts him on alert. Dudley talks about this a lot with 3D targets, letting the shot happen instead of forcing it, and it applies even more to something with a heartbeat. If he's walking broadside at 18 yards and your pin is settled, send it. Practice that shot in the off-season so it doesn't scare you.

Your bow needs to be ready for a held shot

Here's what nobody tells you about the stop-and-shoot. You might be holding for fifteen, twenty, thirty seconds while a buck decides whether to come those last two steps. If your draw weight is set for a warm September evening and it's 24 degrees in a tree, those thirty seconds feel like a minute. Shoulders start to shake. Pin starts to float. You punch it.

I drop two to three pounds every November. Not because I'm weak. Because a bow that's comfortable to hold in a cold stand is a bow that gets shot well. You lose a sliver of speed and maybe 3 or 4 ft-lbs of energy. A 400-grain arrow at 270 doesn't care. A whitetail at 19 yards definitely doesn't care.

And then go back to the range and confirm your pins. Two pounds changes the arrow speed, and the arrow speed changes your 30 and 40-yard pins more than you'd think. Run the new chrono number through the Sight Tape in The Forge and you'll know exactly how much your 40 moved without wasting a dozen arrows guessing.

Rehearse the stop before Saturday

This is the part people skip. You rehearse the shot, you never rehearse the stop.

Next time you're in the stand, pick three stop spots and range them. Close, middle, far. Then every deer that walks by, does, button bucks, the little six you'd never shoot, run the whole sequence in your head. Where's his nose? When do I make the noise? When do I draw? Where does the pin go? Do it without moving a muscle. By the time the buck you want shows up, you've done it forty times.

Then at the range, practice holding. Draw, settle on a spot, hold for twenty seconds, then shoot. Or let down if it isn't there. Letting down is a skill. Most hunters never practice it, which is why they punch the shot when it doesn't feel right instead of starting over.

My buddy did all of this last weekend. Picked a gap between a white oak and a cedar, ranged it at 17. Eight-pointer came cruising at about 9 a.m. He drew when the buck went behind the cedar, bleated when the buck's nose hit the oak, and the deer stopped perfectly broadside with his shoulder dead center in the hole. Seventy-yard track. He sent me a picture of the arrow.

So here's your homework before the weekend. Pick your stop spots. Range them. And if you've dropped weight for the cold, plug your new numbers into the Range and Sight Tape tools in The Forge so the pin you put on his shoulder is the right one.