In the pre-rut, nothing drives a big buck mad quite like seeing a decoy of another buck invading his turf. In at least one case, the tactic was so effective that it worked on the same buck twice. Whitetail hunting legend Jay Gregory managed to fool the same buck in back-to-back years and capture it all on video for the world to see. Jay starts off the video with the first attack on his decoy. The encounter happens when Jay and his son Wyatt are after a different deer. The Decoy Buck effectively ruins the hunt for the target buck by knocking the decoy flat, forcing Jay to leave the blind to go set it back up. While he's doing that, the target buck appears and subsequently leaves when it realizes something is up.
Fast-forward a year later, and the Decoy Buck is showing up on Jay's cameras with regularity. Since the buck has already been fooled by a decoy once, Jay figures he'll fall for it again. The hunt does not start off well for Jay. There has been an unfavorable shift in the wind, and he left his phone in his truck. It seems like the world is working against him. That's until the Decoy Buck steps out and puts on a show before Jay can get his bow drawn on him.
This beautiful 6x6 buck fell for the same trick two years in a row. The second year, it cost him his life. It just goes to show how a good decoy can tip the odds in your favor. We have all had hunts that started off the way this one did for Jay. It's weird, but at least in my experience, it's the hunts where everything goes wrong that everything also seems to turn out right.
The lesson at the end of the day might be that we often overthink things in the deer woods. Find the right place at the right time and use the right tactic, and good things will happen. Great buck, Jay. Thanks for sharing the cool footage of the hunt with the world!
For more outdoor content from Travis Smola, be sure to follow him on Twitter and Instagram. For original videos, check out his Geocaching and Outdoors with Travis YouTube channels.
