If you’ve ever wondered how to make the best mock scrapes even better so curious bucks get fired up about them, then take a look at this cool video.
Jeremy James hunts in southeast Pennsylvania and sent this video to our good pal Smokey McNicholas, a professional trapper and veteran deer hunter in West Virginia. McNicholas produces a series of lures for deer hunting and trapping, including the super Smokey’s Preorbital Gland Lure. It’s for licking branches above scrapes and as you can see in the video, it’s powerful.
“I put the Preorbital scent on both of these limbs Monday mid-day and the next morning this is what I had on my camera,” James wrote to McNicholas.
If you’re using mock scrapes or freshening existing scrapes, you absolutely can’t forget about the licking branch. Deer chew on the branch to leave saliva and rub their faces on it to leave scent from the preorbital gland near their eyes. This identifying combo of scents is the buck’s calling card and identifies it from other bucks. In layman’s terms, it allows deer to understand their rank in the pecking order.
What many hunters don’t realize is that bucks keep tabs on one another by using licking branches, and they do it year-round. Why? Before bucks ever scrape the leaves away under a licking branch, before they ever deposit urine on the bare earth, and long before the does come into estrus, the bucks are watching, testing, and paying close attention to one another by depositing scent from their pre-orbital gland to licking branches. Bucks regularly visit licking branches and become aware when a new rival shows up — the licking branch has the scent of a buck they don’t know.
The ingredients of Smokey’s gland lures are proprietary, but are extracted from the pre-orbital, tarsal interdigital, and forehead glands taken from harvested deer, and processed to enhance and retain the properties of the scent. This is the only lure on the market that has a patent pending on its process.
Smokey only uses glass bottles, because plastic tends allow the scent to degrade over time. Diluting shortens the shelf life of the scent. All of Smokey’s gland lures will only get better with age.
Check it out here along with five great tips to make your mock scrapes even better!