“Give me those rattling horns!” demanded the gray, mustachioed, Old West-looking character sitting next to me. He was supposed to be watching for bucks as I rattled.
“I’m tired of watching you scare every buck in the country,” he said. “Or 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 probably scared away any mature whitetail that might have been remotely interested in coming to investigate my grunts and rattles.
“Will you be quiet!” I said, getting 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,” he continued. “And, as you will recall, I’ve rattled in eight bucks. Two were sure shooters, 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!”
“Lessons? Wasn’t it me that taught you how to rattle up whitetails?”
Momentary silence. I knew my old friend, Johnnie Hudman, was trying to conjure up the appropriate response . . . And too, I knew we had both been rattling up bucks long before our 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. Over the ensuing years, we had often hunted wild hogs, turkeys and deer together in Texas and New Mexico. From our first meeting we gave each other a hard time, no matter what outdoor endeavor we were jointly involved in. Regardless of the “exchange of words,” there was always a twinkle in his eye, and I hoped he saw the one in mine as well. Obviously he did, because had he not, our friendship would never have thrived.
I was beginning to wonder why my friend had not yet responded when I noticed him intently staring at something.
“Give me the horns, now!” he ordered. “You get on the sticks. A 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 Johnnie, I placed my Ruger M77 FTW/SAAM Hunter in .300 Win Mag on the shooting sticks, raised the bolt, checked to assure I had a Hornady 200-grain ELD-X in the chamber, then waited for the buck to close the distance.
Johnnie started mashing the Rattling Forks together, doing his best to simulate two bucks fighting. The post-mature eight-point buck kept coming our way, running, slowing, stopping, rubbing on a bush, then continuing toward us.
My hunting partner glanced my way and winked as if saying, See, that’s how it’s done. I rolled my eyes and refrained from saying anything, which took a great amount of self-control.
I tracked the buck in my scope. When he got to within a hundred yards, he stopped behind a bush.
“Do your snort-wheeze!” instructed my old friend.
“Fit,fit,fit, ffffffeeeeeeeee!” I uttered using natural voice. 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!”
“You rattled him in? That’s not the way I saw it! I snort-wheezed him into our lap!”
Next time.