Scouting beast style question

[Jed33]

I have been scouting a new piece of property that is huge. I hit the 1/3 elevation and found some great sign, rubs scrapes and a heavily used trail along a transition edge inside the hardwoods. I feel real confident about this area, however I did not find any beds nearby. Also another interesting fact is that the scrapes have been worked recently. I was there a few weeks ago and the scrapes were visible but the dirt was smooth and had some leaf litter. This past weekend, looked like someone to a garden rake to them. Is this normal? I've never heard or seen anything like this before.

Another good spot I located was at the top of a very steep point, found a faint bed or two, and a trail exiting the point. I am confident it is a buck bed for a few reasons, 1) the location, 2) wide footed heavy foot prints in the exit trail, 3) large poop around bed and trail. I went home and watched the hill country bucks video again and now I am concerned about it being a buck bed because of the lack of rubs. Do any of you fellow beast think this is a buck bed even without the rubs?

The cherry on top of this trip is I found a shed antler too

[JoeRE]

That last point you described sounds like a good spot. You are not alone, when I first tried finding them it used to bother me I wasn't finding single big worn beds but now I am pretty sure that doesn't happen that often in hill country. More commonly there are so many good bed locations, even just on 1 point, what you end up seeing is several lightly used beds not one heavily worn bed. So exactly what you saw.

There are some old threads on here that talk about rubs next to beds and what everyone is seeing. Some buck beds have them but some don't. In my opinion the more rubs you find around bedding the more likely you are looking at where a younger buck or bucks bed. Some big old bucks leave very little sign. The tracks you found are the 1 thing a buck can't hide so keep an eye on that spot.

[<DK>]

Welcome Jed33!
I agree w JoeRE and that second spot you mentioned sounds good! Great job catching those tracks!
As far as scrapes go, yes they can stay open. I took these pics bc I hardly ever find a rub in a scrape, usually just around the area and I found x2 in one day. These were closer to does and food.

[dan]

Joe nailed it... I will add that scrapes get used all year. Just not as much outside of rut.

[rfickes87]

JoeRE said it perfectly about the rubs and I know Dan has helped me out with the same issues when I posted about finding beds before and not seeing rubs.

Personally (and i know you shouldn't do this) but I hung cameras directly in the beds and it showed a 4 1/2 year old buck in them and there were no rubs nearby. Another time that same 4 1/2 year old was in another bed and there was a big fresh rub next to the bed that I got excited about and thought that he made that rub, but camera intel showed me it was actually by another much younger buck. So don't worry about the rubs, I kinda think they're almost meaningless. Sure its nice to see and it proves a buck was there but the big boys don't seem to make the rubs if they're not threatened by other bucks or in low deer densities. It seems mostly just the little guys are making the rubs trying to look all tough and impose their "dominance".

One bed I just found on public about a month ago I'm real excited about bc there are about 3 rubs in it that are at least 2 years old. And I know its a fresh bed bc of all the belly hair i found. This tells me that either the buck that's using the beds is obviously a mature buck bc he's still alive from rubbing those trees several years ago OR those old rubs tell me the bed is being used by multiple bucks year after year OR It could be telling me both of those options, haha if that makes sense. Either way TO ME it can be very promising sometimes what you find and in my case I didn't even see any fresh rubs...

[Jed33]

Thanks for the responses guys. If I figure out how to post pics I'll aerial and topo maps. Hopefully you guys can help me out on a stand site.