OK - so Sari and I are sitting on the patio, our favourite spot in the early evening in summer. She was talking about her clarinet, her new sax etc. So I wanted to show her what I was playing. I brought out my elk calls, a reed based call, a diaphragm based call, and a hand held, and started blowing.
Didn't really think about it, but a large doe deer stuck her head out of the bush about 65 yards away. As we both pointed her out to each other, she started running towards us and the dog lying on the other side of the rock wall, right beside us... Whaaat??? She covered that ground in about a second and a half and zeroed on poor old Leo, trying show us he was a 'good dog' and not chasing the deer.
We were both yelling, and I got to my feet thinking I would have to jump on her back and beat her upside the head! She was less than 6 feet away on the other side of the wall. She decided the odds were not in her favour and retreated.
I called her back a few minutes later, using the same call.
I believe the doe had fawns nearby and the call, although elk sounding, sounded enough like a fawn in distress that she didn't wait to think. Says a lot about a lot of things, but the two top hits are how mindlessly protective the doe was and how mindlessly obedient our dog is, he has been reprimanded numerous times for chasing deer out of the yard, and when both Sari Cox and I were yelling he froze thinking "Look, I'm a good boy, I'm not chasing the deer" while he got a general lambasting...
