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The formulas we hear about in articles and shows for creating mock scrapes typically won’t work perfectly for the average hunter. These tricks make utopian tactics work better on real-world grounds.
By Steve Bartylla
My heart was literally in my throat. After watching the specific buck I was after drop down the point, of course he had to stop and work the truck hood sized scrape, as I was sure he would. Unfortunately, the only trees that covered the scrape offered very unsafe winds. So, I’d setup another 70 yards “downwind” of the scrape. Though doing so was mission critical, it was causing me an awful lot of stress right now. Of course, that wasn’t helped by the doe and fawn that were literally looking through me, at the buck refreshing the scrape.
Finally, he was done and still following the script. Hitting my shooting lane, his attentions shifted to the alluring scrape odors dripping from the Magnum Scrape Dripper I’d hung over my mock scrape. Turning to give me a gently quartering away shot, as he began working his second scrape in 60 yards, I watched as my Mathews sent the Easton vanishing through his boiler room. Less than 50 yards later, the hunt was over and tag filled.
Scrape hunting seems to excite as many hunters as it frustrates. Sure, there’s a formula that delivers for scrape hunting, but not everyone has the abilities or the opportunities to follow it in the real-world settings we hunt.
Here are some tricks I’ve found to make utopian tactics work better on real-world grounds.
The Formula
Consistently successful scrape hunting comes down to following a simple formula. That begins by understanding scrapes are essentially the whitetail world’s equivalent of human billboards, meant to convey very specific messages to other deer. Thankfully, we have John J. Ozoga to take such a complex act and simplify it for us. For our purposes, simply knowing that they can be compared to billboards will suffice.
Because deer, in the absence of major changes, have the high tendency to follow the same general patterns year after year, the best locations for scrapes, or advertising, have a high tendency of being the same locations year after year, as well. Sure, the crops may switch between corn and beans, but both are still going to be drawing deer, and the deer will generally be traveling to and from that food source location the same.
Where that falls apart is when the food source is something like a clear cut. Those clear cuts will likely eventually mature to the point where they aren’t a food source, resulting in massive usage changes, but that oak ridge will likely be used the same every year it drops nuts, and that meadow will continue producing cool season grass and weeds. Generally speaking, for as much as that changes year to year, far more stays the same.
That last line is truly key. Odds are extremely good that the best scrape locations in 2018 will also still be the best scrape locations in 2020, unless that “clear cut” matures beyond producing much food or something else that drastic occurs.
Because of that, over season and on through spring green up, we can inspect the scrapes. Those that were overly large or have a bowled shaped appearance have obviously been worked many times, often by many bucks. Those are generally the scrapes we want to target.
Next, we understand that the overwhelming majority of scraping activities occur under the cover of darkness. We need to target those in areas where Mr. Big feels safe enough to move during daylight. So, we can toss out those scrapes along fields and such. Sure, they may still be good spots to hunt, but it’s really not the scrape they’re going there for. It’s as likely the food and they’re just scraping when there to feed. Those can be great spots to hunt, but I’m looking for scrapes in the timber or on isolated, small food sources surrounded by timber, as it applies to specifically setting up on scrapes. In fact, somewhere around half I target are on the edges of established family group bedding areas.
Speaking of daylight visits, that’s unlikely to happen if Mr. Big knows he’s hunted at that scrape. Because so much scraping occurs after dark, I find it’s best to wait for that last week to 10 days of the peak scrape phase, before the bucks start truly chasing does in earnest. Doing so allows their testosterone levels to rise higher, inspiring more daylight movement. Waiting until that occurs goes a long way toward keeping me out when I have no chance and making that first sit truly count, keeping Mr. Big ignorant of my plans.
Following that approach has put a lot of my tags on scraping bucks. Target last year’s most heavily worked scrapes, in areas that haven’t undergone tremendous changes in deer usage and in areas Mr. Big feels safe. Prep the stand well before hunting and leave it alone until the last 7–10 days of peak scraping activities. Add it all up and we have a formula for scrape hunting success.
Applying the Formula to the Real World
Where this gets tough is that most hunting a 10, 20, 40 and even an 80 chunk of dirt don’t always have these nice little scenarios playing out in textbook manners on their hunting grounds. What then?
I’m afraid that the formula gets a bit sloppy when applied to a lot of real-world properties. Frankly, many are lucky to have a mature buck spending somewhat regular time on the dirt, even during just one phase of season, much less doing all of the things we want him to, specifically on our dirt.
So, how does one adapt the formula for real-world settings? When you’re lucky to have a couple serious, annual scrapes on your dirt to begin with, odds are pretty low that one or more will allow low-impact access or hunting. When they don’t, the formula gets thrown out, and we can forget about scrape hunting.
Not so fast. Always remember, our most powerful weapons are not our bows, crossbows and firearms. It’s our brains and their powers of both creative and analytical thought.
Remember the hunt that began this piece? It was painfully obvious from the tracks and sign that the first scrape Mr. Big worked was the exact type I wanted to target. Unfortunately, that one, as well as the others I could hunt in that area, were all tragically flawed, due to spooking too many deer to get to the location or spooking deer while hunting the location.
As you all already know, I couldn’t shoot the scrape I was targeting from my stand, and the tree options that allowed the scrape to be covered just wouldn’t work wind wise, promising glorious disasters, if tried.
Rather than walk away from the otherwise prime scrape to target, ask where Mr. Big is likely coming from and where he’s likely headed next. When those routes are somewhat consistent, one can often safely setup on his entrance or exit routes, as I did on his exit path.
Next, one can sweeten the deal a bit with a mock scrape of our own. I next to never truly bank on mock scrapes to drag bucks to within shooting range. I almost always strive to set up where Mr. Big naturally wants to be, anyway. However, mock scrapes within a 100 yards or so of heavily worked, natural scrapes can sucker bucks pretty effectively.
Remember, Mr. Big is advertising all sorts of info to other deer. They seem to appreciate other bucks trying to steal their advertising about as much as if we paid for a billboard to advertise something for ourselves, only to later find billboards on either side, trying to steal our thunder and advertise their own, competing products., right after ours went up.
Now, Mr. Big doesn’t have an advertising company to call and raise a holy terror with. Instead, he often tries to overtake the competition, either by working their scrapes or opening scrapes right next to them.
No, I’m not suggesting readers count on mock scrapes to draw him to that spot. I can’t stress enough that we want to be set up where he’ll naturally be walking by, anyway, when he’s approaching or departing the scrape.
That said, you know he has scraping on the brain, both when going to and leaving that scrape. Deer, like humans, are always riper for suckering when they are already searching for what the con artist is selling. Now, top that off with trying to steal his advertising thunder, and we’re in the game.
The more one thinks about this approach, the more one realizes that we don’t really have to be set up on scrapes to cash in on the scrape hunting formula. We’ve had it drilled in our heads that we need to be set up downwind of the scrape, intercepting bucks as they work or scent check the scrape from a distance, to truly be scrape hunting. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Dang it! I may not have Mr. Big living on my dirt, but he comes to check on the family group bedding area and tears the edges up with scrapes. I just can’t hunt it, without exploding the ground. I’m hosed!
Nope. There’s a way Mr. Big is getting to and from that bedding. If one can even put themselves within 200 yards of those scrapes, somewhere in a “safe” spot along that route, toss in a mock scrape and we’re scrape hunting.
The same applies to that tore up scrape on the clear cut in the big woods, the scrapes on that creek bottom or anywhere else. IF you can figure out how they’re arriving and departing, a whole new world opens up.
That can be mission critical for the real-world hunter, as their corner of the deer world is often relatively small. We simply must often be creative to use the tactics that work so well when hunting whitetail utopias.
Conclusion
It doesn’t matter if we’re talking scrape hunting, setting up on the downwind sides of family bedding, setting funnels, hunting isolated staging plots or so dang many other hunting methods discussed for tagging Mr. Big. When hunting limited acreages, one is typically very lucky to have one or two of them line up nicely enough to create textbook hunting. Unfortunately, textbooks don’t always apply to the real world.
Luckily, our brains and creative thinking allows us to bend these formulas to what works for us. Don’t waste precious energies lamenting the fact that things just don’t apply to your dirt as well as they do in articles and shows. It almost never will. Instead, use those two powerful weapons to determine how one can bend the formula to work in your real-world setting, and you’ll likely be much happier with the results.
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