Before the rut arrives, bucks are confined to bachelor groups, traveling together and very close to groups of does. When the mating season begins, hormones fly, and the entire deer herd busts out of the frame, going out in all directions. Competition between suitors and available heiresses becomes a cat-and-mouse game in some cases and an all-out battle in others.
Deer are constantly making efforts to communicate with each other and to fuel fecundity by leaving visual and olfactory messages on saplings, tree branches and on the ground surface. While most artificial scents have questionable use for many deer hunters, creating mock scrapes is well worth the effort.
Deer make scrapes to communicate. Bucks will paw out an area under a tree branch, and then deposit scent on top of the clean dirt and on an overhanging branch. The message is fairly clear, alerting other deer in the area or deer that are passing through. Deer will recognize the mock scrape by smell and by sight only in some circumstances, as confirmed by deer-hunting pro Robert Johnson of Cherryville.
“Deer that are trotting or trolling through an area will come visit a mock scrape and stop, whether it has scent or not,” said Johnson. “Just make sure your scrape is within 20 to 25 yards from your tree and is in clear view of a shot.”
Johnson will take a small garden rake and clear out an area about the size of a hub cap. Then, wearing rubber gloves, he will snap a branch pointing down towards the scrape.
“We have a lot of deer come up to investigate, and many deer will adopt the scrape and start using it themselves. They encourage deer traffic and a lot of them will be bucks,” he said.
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