Mock Scrapes and Deer Scents
Here's an article written by Shannon Thompkins of the Houston Chronicle that includes references to the study I spoke of done by Ben Koerth:
Scrapes can tell some surprising tales
By SHANNON TOMPKINS
Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle
The smell hit us before we saw the bare patch of sandy loam raked under the
holly tree.
Thick and musky and a lot like fresh-turned wet soil, the scent once
experienced is unmistakable.
Deer!
Leaves and other debris had been cleared from a spot about the size of a
trash can lid, leaving a blank canvas of dirt on which was written messages
my brother Les and I could only guess at understanding.
What we knew for certain was that this was a deer signpost.
Heart-shaped prints of deer hooves were pressed in the dirt, some of them
obviously made as the deer pawed the ground.
Some of the grayish sand was stained dark and wet. That's where the smell
came from.
A holly limb hung about 3 feet over the bare spot. One of the twigs on the
end of the limb was broken, its dead leaves a stark brown against the waxy
green dominating the tree.
Here was a perfectly classic deer scrape, and a "hot" one at that.
Deer hunters thrill at the discovery of scrapes -- these pawed spots on the
ground, almost always situated under an overhanging branch. They most often
are located along edge -- the margins of fields or pastures, openings in
thick brush or along logging roads or trails.
Finding one of these deer-made spots carries so much more impact than simply
finding random hoof prints or even tracks around a feeder.
A scrape is a physical proof that deer -- bucks, in particular -- are in the
area. Scrapes are important discoveries -- no doubt about it. But they may
not be the ***** in a buck's armor many hunters believe them to be, nor may
they tell the tales hunters think they do.
Generations of deer hunters have been taught that scrapes are made by bucks
looking for does during the breeding season -- the rut.
A rut-addled buck makes a series of scrapes -- paws bare a piece of earth,
leaves his testosterone-charged scent on the ground by urinating over his
metatarsal glands and on an overhanging branch by rubbing it with his
preorbital glands -- to mark his territory and leave a kind of "trapline" by
which he attracts willing does.
Find a scrape, sit over it long enough, and the buck, which makes regular
rounds of his scrapes, sooner or later will be back to check it. And that
puts him right in the sights of the hunter.
Except that almost never happens, if it happens at all.
Over the past few years, new research into scrapes -- including "real"
deer-made scrapes and human-made "mock" scrapes created with commercial deer
scents -- have shown that much of what hunters think they know about
scrapes, the use of deer scents and related issues "ain't necessarily so."
Using the relatively new technology of remote-sensing cameras, it is
possible to monitor natural scrapes around the clock for weeks or even
months.
The results of researchers and average hunters using these
infrared-triggered cameras to monitor scrapes have shattered some of the
long-held beliefs about what these marked areas mean and how deer relate to
them.
Scrapes are not the purview of a single buck, nor do bucks (or does) make
regular visits to the sites. They are, as deer researcher Ben Koerth said,
"community property."
Koerth, a research associate at the Arthur Temple College of Forestry at
Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, offered insight into his
remote-sensing camera studies of real and fake deer scrapes at a seminar on
using the cameras for wildlife research earlier this year in Kerrville.
Much of what Koerth and others have discovered flies in the face of what
hunters figured were immutable truths.
While a single buck may create a scrape, typically pawing it out in the
"pre-rut" a couple of weeks or more before the start of the actual breeding
season, other deer make it their own.
"If a deer -- any deer -- passes by (the scrape), it will use it," Koerth
said. Does as well as bucks will stop at a scrape and leave their scent,
then wander on their way.
The huge majority of those visits occur at night, Koerth said. And just
because a particular buck visits a scrape, it doesn't mean he'll visit it
again on any regular schedule. He may never visit it again. Over long-term
monitoring of scrapes, Koerth has found no regularity or predictability to a
buck visiting a scrape.
"They may visit it once and never come back," he said. "We did have one buck
come back to the same scrape, but it was five days later."
Scrapes -- both natural and mock -- attract more bucks than does. This jibes
with personal observation via remote-sensing cameras. Remote-sensing cameras
set to monitor scrapes on our East Texas deer lease recorded what appeared
to be completely random visits to scrapes.
The huge majority of the visits were by bucks, and they came at night. But
during October and the first week of November, a few visits came during
daylight -- mostly right at dawn or dusk, but a couple during the middle of
the day.
By mid-November, less than two weeks into deer season, more than 90 percent
of the scrape visits were at night. Several bucks visited the scrapes, but
only one made a return visit over the more than three months the camera
monitored the scrape.
From that information, hunters can infer that setting a stand overlooking a
scrape is no guarantee that a buck will visit it on regular basis.
Deer are attracted to scrapes by both sight and smell, Koerth said. He has
proved this by making mock scrapes but using no deer scent on the spot and
recording several visits by deer.
Mock scrapes do attract deer, he said, particularly when made in a spot deer
would naturally use for such a signpost and when combinations of buck and
doe scents are used.
Koerth's studies also cast serious doubt on one of the strongest held
beliefs of deer hunters -- that the smell of human urine inevitably spooks
deer into the next county.
When doing the mock scrape study, he used human urine as the only scent
placed in some of the mock scrapes. His cameras recorded bucks using these
mock scrapes, leaving their own calling card on the bare earth. And the
research showed that buck visits to mock scrapes dosed with human urine were
"not statistically different" from those on which he used buck deer urine.
Amazingly, the mock scrapes dosed with human urine drew statistically more
deer than the mock scrapes baited with doe deer scent, Koerth said.
"There is no indication that human urine scared deer at all," he said.
If nothing else, this is great news for deer hunters who like to take a
Thermos of coffee to the stand.
