Help on mock scrapes.

[half2fish]

Can anyone help me? I have a good spot for my trail camra and i know the deer use the spot pretty often but i have NO clue on how to make a scrape. What do you use to scrape the ground? do you put doe scent in it? any tips would be helpful. thanks everyone.

[decoy]

Newly "disturbed" dirt/soil has a very powerful odor. Some guys make a mock scrape with a rubber boot, some use a stick. Whatever you use to make it doesn't really matter. You can add scent to it if you want to, of course scent will help, but I don't think it is required.

The smell of the dirt alone will make a buck curious and investigate. Remeber that when a buck makes a scrape, he is scenting the ground and overhanging brush/tree limbs (with preorbital gland).

Scraping is another form of signpost behavior. It generally peaks just before or during the period of actual breeding and involves a combination of overhead branch marking, scraping, and urination. In overhead branch marking, the buck will mouth a limb that he can reach, even by standing on his hind legs, if necessary. He may rub the preorbital gland just in front of the eye and the forehead glands on the branch. Next he uses one foot and then the other to paw away litter exposing mineral soil underneath the marked branch. He then steps forward and urinates in the pawed area. Urination may be normal urination or it may be a kind of urination we call "scenting," where the hind legs are held together and the urine passes over the tarsal glands on the inside of the hind legs. Usually the dominant buck in the area is the one that will do the full scrape sequence, although subordinate bucks also will come to a scrape and mark the overhanging branch and/or to taste and smell it.

Hope this helps.

[lawdog]

I think Decoy's post hints at this when he talks about when deer usually do this, but what I was going to say was that this wouldn't probably be worth doing right now. I think for purposes of taking pictures, you'd probably have better luck with a mineral lick or salt block or something now after the rutting is pretty much over.