Gumby

Ok Last night i rattled in a nice big 8 pointer and it took him a about 10 minutes to respond. He acted as though he was scared or something scanning the woods as to try to figure out where the other deer where. I thought this was the dominant buck of my hunting area.
my question is can you tell by the body language of a buck if he is the dominant buck or not?

RICHIE3

In my opinion, it would be hard to determine if he is the dominant one unless other bucks were in the area of view. And even then it would be difficult. There is almost always another bigger buck in the woods at any one time due to travel routes taken on by bucks during the rut. The buck you rattled in, was just intent on finding out who was doing the fighting, so he can determine if he should join in or not. I have ssen this many times when two smaller bucks go at it, and a spike or a forkhorn come running to see what all of the comotion is about. I have also seen in the past 3 weeks, two basket racks going at it hard, and then a nice 10 point shows up, and both basket racks quit fighting each other to take on the 10 pointer. It was over before it got started. The smaller bucks wanted nothing to do with the larger one.