Photo: Jake Ehlinger

 

Making mock scrapes can be a great way to mimic traditional deer behavior and draw a deer to your property. By placing your own scrapes around your property you can observe the deer on your trail cameras and even use the scrapes to direct the deer to your blind location. They’re also easy to recreate, so you should be able to set up as many as you need. Learn more below.

Observe Behavior

One of the benefits of setting up mock scrapes is to monitor deer behavior. Another great way to monitor the herd behavior is to monitor their activity at your food or water sources, but that isn’t always possible. Supplemental feeding isn’t legal in every county, so check your local regulations before you place a Feedbank Gravity Feeder. If it isn’t legal in your area, scrapes are your best friend. It’s a way to direct the deer to your blind’s location or you can set them up away from your blind to observe their natural behavior. Watching the deer at these mock scrape sites will give you insight into the size of the herd and the buck to doe ratio.

How to Make a Scrape

When deer make their scrapes, they’re looking for a low-hanging branch. They paw at the ground to release scent from the glands between their toes. Then, they release pheromones from their forehead by rubbing their face all over the low-hanging branch. Then they lick the branch to finish marking their territory. Sometimes they will even urinate on the ground over where they pawed the ground. All of this is designed to leave their scent on the spot so that other deer in the area will know they’ve been there.

You can recreate these scrapes by using something solid to scrape at the ground below a long-hanging branch. If you can’t find a suitable low-hanging branch near your ideal site, make your own. Take a branch from another tree and attach it to the one you want to use and hang it at the height you want. You want to make sure it’s not too high for the deer to reach. It should hang directly in front of the deer’s face.

How to Use Them with Your Stump Blind

Stump blinds have multiple windows surrounding the blind so you can set up mock scrapes in a circle around your blind to maximize your chances of the deer finding one. Most deer activity at scrapes happens at night, but there’s still a chance a deer will visit your setup during daylight hours. If they do, you’ll be ready from any of the multiple windows. Even if they don’t visit during the day, they might stay in the area once they find the scrape and return during hunting hours.

Scrapes are one of the major ways deer communicate with each other. It lets them know who’s in the area and possibly how long ago they were there. During rut season, this lets other bucks in the area know that they’ve got competition and lets does know where to find them. Setting up mock scrapes can help you observe this behavior and direct them to specific places on your property. This is especially helpful in areas where supplemental feeding isn’t allowed.

Do you make mock scrapes during hunting season? Share your advice in the comments below!

 

 

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