Kansas Whitetail Deer Hunting Guides Trips Outfitters

Kansas Whitetail deer hunting guides and outfitters have some of the best whitetail deer hunting found anywhere in the country. Over the last five years, the state of Kansas has become one of the premiere places to hunt whitetail deer. A winning combination of good groceries, good genetics, mild winters and moderate hunting pressure have catapulted this state to the forefront of whitetail destinations. Kansas Whitetail deer hunting guides and outfitters have hunting concessions in some of the best whitetail deer habitat imaginable. Most of the hunting is done from tree stands and ground blinds as is traditional for hunting the wary whitetail deer. Most of the whitetail deer in Kansas weigh anywhere from 180 lbs. to 300 lbs, although they lose quite a bit of weight during the rut. The archery hunting in Kansas is legendary as the season runs concurrently with the whitetail rut and some "book" deer are taken every year. Whitetail deer hunting has never been better than it is in Kansas these days. At Hunter's Domain, we have some of the very best Kansas whitetail deer hunting guides available for you to contact. Use the simple e-mail form to contact any or all of our listed Kansas whitetail deer hunting guides and outfitters to find that Kansas whitetail hunting guide and outfitter that is right for you. The regular firearms season begins in November and runs through the first week or so in December. Archery and muzzleloader seasons begin in September and October.

Hunting the Kansas whitetail

Power Calling Monster Whitetails

Illinois’s Stan Potts is one of the country’s most successful whitetail bow hunters. In this exclusive interview, Potts shares his secrets of calling whopper bucks into spitting distance.

His biggest buck? Well, he’s killed three with his bow that make the official Boone & Crockett (not Pope & Young) record book, including a giant typical that officially scores 212 and a huge non-typical taken in 2001 that scores 220. Stan, a pro staffer for GORE-TEX, Mathews Archery, Realtree and H.S. Scents, is a master at sniffing out the haunts of mature whitetail bucks, then setting up stands that give him a controlled, close-range shot regardless of the terrain or prevailing conditions. He has put that talent to use both for himself and in helping several commercial whitetail lodges set up their stand sites.

One of Potts’s favorite hunting techniques is calling. It’s proven effective for him all through the course of the deer season, on bucks large and small. Here’s how he uses deer calls over the course of a hunting season.

“‘Curiosity killed the cat’ describes modern deer calling,” said Potts. “Whitetails are, by their very nature, a very curious animal. They are a lot like people in that regard. When they come to a call, maybe they are just a little bit lonely, or maybe they want some company. Or maybe they just want to know what is going on in their area at a given time, and when they hear a deer sound, they want to come over and see what is happening.

“I have been whitetail deer hunting for over 30 years, but it wasn’t until 10 years ago I started calling deer seriously,” Potts said. “I’ve found that it can work for you all season long. But while you can expect a lot of success, you cannot expect a deer to come to your calling all the time. That’s okay, though, because that one time a big buck does come in, it will be like no other feeling you’ve ever had. Picture this: You have a big buck walking up a hill 40 to 50 yards away and, fearing he is walking out of your life, you call loudly to get his attention. He stops and turns, so you give him a couple of tending grunts, and here he comes! You control your nerves and get the shot. When you climb down out of your tree and put your hands around his beams for the first time, believe me, there is no better feeling in the world!”

Early-Season Success

Potts believes you can call deer in both early and late in the year. Early, he uses doe and fawn bleats exclusively. During the various phases of the rut, he sticks with grunts, both loud guttural grunts and tending grunts. Late in the season, after the rut has waned, Potts goes back to using doe and fawn bleats, with some grunting thrown in as the situation warrants.

“Early in the season, I like to call in and harvest does both because I am into quality deer management programs – and that includes an aggressive doe harvest – and also, this is the best time of the year to harvest your does. I would much rather take my does now, before I am concentrating on buck hunting and want the does around as ‘bait’ to lure bucks past my stand during the rut.

“At this time I am using the maternal instincts of the doe by using fawn and doe bleats to call the does in,” Potts said. “Never forget, though, that you can also call a nice buck into you with a doe bleat. It is unusual, but it does happen from time to time. But early, and by that I mean September and early October, if you are hunting does, you can harvest your does without putting pressure on the larger bucks you want to hunt during the rut, when they are most vulnerable. Many hunters believe that doe bleating is not a good calling technique, but it definitely is, both early on, as well as during the rut. Do not overlook this powerful, yet often underutilized, calling technique.”

Rut-Time Magic

“The pre-rut is the very best time of all to call in whitetails,” Potts emphasized. “Bucks are now running scrape lines, and early mornings are the best time, in my experience, to catch a good buck as he runs that scrape line heading for his daytime bedding thicket. Now I keep the grunting soft and relatively non-aggressive, because the bigger bucks are not all that aggressive themselves right now. On calm days, it isn’t uncommon to hear the bucks grunting as they walk their scrape lines, making a single soft grunt every 50 yards or so.” Potts sticks almost exclusively to the grunt call during the pre-rut, which in his upper-midwestern hunting area is mid-October through early November.

“When the rut peaks, calling success can drop off some, but it is still a good time to call in a mature buck. During the peak of the rut bucks are aggressively chasing and tending does, and the mature studs are often married up with an estrus doe for awhile,” Potts said. “Now is when you want to be more aggressive with your grunting, because the bucks are more aggressive. One successive grunt right after another is what they often do as they cruise the woods looking for a doe to breed, so this is what you should do too. Remember that you will never call a buck off the tail of a hot doe he is chasing, but often there are multiple bucks chasing the same doe, and often the subordinate buck can be a ‘shooter.’ Give them a tending grunt, and more times than not these bucks will come to you in a flash. Now I call louder and more frequently than I do during the pre-rut.”

Potts mentioned a sound he calls the “Intense Pop,” a deer vocalization that occurs only during the peak of the rut. “This is a sound that happens when a buck has just bred a doe or has just broken away from a fight,” Potts said. “These bucks are fired up, and when either of these instances occur, the buck is as jacked up as he gets all year. It is a sharp popping grunt sound, and when you hear it, it should tell you that this particular buck is pumped up, and he will come to your calling right now. Most deer hunters have never identified this sound, but remember what I am telling you: It will work.”

Potts also believes in using estrustype doe bleats during the rut. “The estrus doe bleat is one of the deadliest calls you can use during the rut, yet it is one of the most underutilized,” he said. “It’s the sound a doe makes when she is ready to be bred, but there isn’t an eligible buck close by. Combine this with the fact that this is the time of year when bucks are aggressively trolling for hot does, and when they hear this sound they often come to it on a run. It has worked for me many times over the years. Here’s a typical, and deadly, scenario: You spot a lone buck trolling, and to get his attention you give him a grunt. That grunt stops him, then you turn his head your direction with another grunt. You now have his undivided attention. Now hit him with the estrus doe bleat. Many, many times he won’t be able to stand it, and he will come in, often at a trot. One key is to be ready to draw and shoot your bow when you hit him with the bleat, so you don’t end up having the buck right on top of you before you can get ready. He’ll be wired up, and if he sees you move when you draw the bow, he’ll be gone in a flash!” If you like whitetail hunting, also see our North Dakota Whitetail Deer Hunting page for more information.

Windy Day Calling

“On windy days, or when a buck is a long ways away from your stand, you have to get his attention,” Potts noted. “To do this, try grunting louder, then louder, and then louder still until the deer lets you know he has heard you. How do you know he’s heard you? He may twitch an ear, turn his head and look your way, or start coming, but he will let you know by his body posture or a change in his movement pattern. But you have to get his attention before you can start working him with your other calls.”

What about rattling? “Rattling can be a very effective way to harvest a bigger buck,” Potts said. “However, the buck/doe ratio in the area must be strong, at least three to one or better, before rattling will do you any real good. While I will rattle blind, hoping to make something happen, I will also rattle at a buck I have seen but that doesn’t appear to be coming closer to my stand. If the buck comes to my rattling and I can see the deer but he isn’t coming into shooting range, I will hit him with the grunt call to try and draw him in close enough for a shot. The best time to rattle is the pre-rut period, by far, when bucks are aggressively fighting. It will also work during the peak of the rut, but not nearly as well. However, in my experience, by the post-rut period, rattling loses much of its effectiveness.” Potts doesn’t carry real deer horns into the woods any more, instead preferring the compact, easy-to-carry convenience of a rattle bag. “I’ve rattled in a lot of deer using a rattle bag, and believe me they work just as well as real horns,” he said. “Plus they are so compact that they don’t take up an inordinate amount of room on stand, which I really like.”

Final Thoughts

“Like all hunting techniques, deer calling does not work each and every time,” Potts said. “Calling is not a magical, no-fail bag of tricks that can overcome sloppy hunting technique, poor stand site selection and a failure to control human scent. In fact, I think it is crucial to wear scent-adsorbing clothing when calling from a tree stand. That’s because you never know which direction the deer might come in from, and if they come from downwind and you’re wearing the activated carbon clothing, your chances are much better that you will not be detected.”

While Potts has tested all the major “scent-proof” clothing on the market today, he prefers GORETEX Scent Control garments featuring a Supprescent membrane. “The key is the fact that with the Supprescent membrane you can wash and dry the garment every day without losing any of the carbon, and thus without losing any of the garment’s effectiveness,” he said. “That’s not true with the other brands.”

Potts believes that the whitetail hunter who heads into the deer woods without a grunt tube and doe bleat call is not giving himself or herself the maximum opportunity to be successful. “Deer calling is super exciting and, at the right time, can be pure poison, even on the largest bucks,” Potts said. Given his track record, that’s a statement that’s hard to argue with. For more on whitetails, see our main Whitetail Deer Hunting page for more.

By Bob Robb

This article and many more like it can be found by Successful Hunter Magazine. Visit them at www.successfulhunter.com