Mock Scrape

[Prairie Sasquatch]

I thought I would make a post regarding a mock scrape I used in order to get bucks to move into a spot that I could have a better chance to kill them. This is on a private piece I have exclusive permission on but it’s a tough spot to hunt.

The spot is on a shelterbelt that runs north and south and the deer are bedding to the north in a slough which I can’t hunt or sloughs to the west. Next to the shelterbelt on the east side is a crop field which I can’t hunt. This year it was in corn so I hung a camera in the shelterbelt to see what was moving through. There were some good bucks. The way it lays out the deer enter the shelterbelt one of two ways. Either from the north or from the west through a low spot that provides enough terrain that you can’t see them through an open grass alfalfa field. If they come from the north they enter the cornfield about halfway down behind a slight hill that makes them impossible to see from a road. If they come from the west they enter the corn further south.

This spot was really getting hammered by the deer every night by 15-20 deer. The problem was that the does were of course coming first and from the west and the bucks were all coming from the north right before dark with some does as well. There aren’t any trees big enough to hang a stand so I had to use a ground blind. Where I needed to set up was south of where all these deer were entering the shelterbelt and corn field.

If I set up too far enough north I’d have a chance at bucks but would get busted by the does on a north east or west wind when they entered the shelterbelt. I needed to be set up south of all the deer to hunt a northwest wind which would blow my sent out into an open grass field. I needed those bucks to go south an extra 70 or so yards.

I decided a mock scrape might work so I set one up with a grapevine for a licking branch put some Smokey’s pre orbital and scraped it out with a stick. Well it worked but at first only at night. Then I started getting some daylight activity.

Anyway I ended up killing a buck last Thursday on it after four sits with lots of does and small bucks but non of the big boys. The deer I killed I had no pictures of. Not sure where he came from. I included some pics. Hopefully this might help someone who needs a buck to move just a little off his normal route.

[Prairie Sasquatch]

Ground blind pick. You can see the corn field in the back ground they were feeding in. Blind window is looking northeast.