I know nearly all my fellow deerhunting BloodBrothers have read hundreds if not thousands of various  writings from experienced and knowledgeable hunters about the wonderment of hunting over active scrapes and the effectiveness of creating mockscrapes.

But bear with me if you will, as I give you the Uncle Ted Backstrap addict Gonzo-take on this relatively new hunting method phenomenon.

I say relatively new because anything that is so widespread and talked about as buck-scrape information is today, it really wasn’t that long ago, say sometime in the late 1960s and early 1970s, that most hunters, myself included, were unaware of just how to incorporate these known buck calling cards into our deerhunting strategies.

Like most hunters back in those days I got excited when I discovered tracks, trails, droppings, rubs, scrapes and all the different obvious deer spoor in our hunting and scouting endeavors.

And like so many hunters I reacted to my logical impulses to setup an occasional ambush stand near these deery zones.

And in the insane over-pressured whitetail world of Michigan, without much success I might add.

Eventually my successes started to materialize when I began to create mockscrape lines in conjunction with other buck sign like bigger tracks, rubs and bucky droppings in areas where such evidence indicated the most likely daylight travel corridors for the boys.

As much as I love the increased deer encounters when hunting over bait, everyone knows that a baited deer is a much more alert and spooky deer, making them very hard to kill. My highest kill percentages have always come from non-baited pinch-points and natural travel funnels where the high agriculture ground melds into the nastiest puckerbrush hellzone bedding areas of swampland, marshes and impenetrable tangles in my fen.

I don’t recall which deer-scent brand I used originally back in the 1970s, but I have since tried pretty much all of them over the years with equal success.

In as bucky a zone as you can determine, preferably where scrapes already exist, I have a scrape designated heavy leaf-rake that I use to rake the hell out of the ground under that critically important overhead licking/rubbing branch. I also knock off the earth debris from the rake onto that overhead branch, then add a small amount of deer urine both to the raked earth and the branch.

Of course I make sure I am wearing my earth-scented rubber boots and scent-free clothing as well, making certain I touch nothing in the area leaving no trace of dangerous, bloodthirsty guitar players anywhere in the vicinity.

I touchup these scrapes every few days and everytime I hunt over them. And believe when I tell you, all deer use these scrapes year round; big, small, young, old, male, female. I don’t wait for the huntseason to arrive before I start scraping, I play scrape-doctor all year long. Scrapes are a killer calling card. May as well play with a loaded deck!

Ted Nugent is an award-winning musician and writer, with numerous best-seller books including “Ted, White and Blue: The Nugent Manifesto,” “God, Guns and Rock ‘n Roll,” and “Kill It and Grill It: A Guide to Preparing and Cooking Wild Game and Fish” with his wife, Shemane, among other books. Be sure to check out his website for more news on his latest music, thoughts and upcoming shows, and also at World News Daily, Newsmax and Daily Caller for more insights.

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