dan wrote:It seems like bucks make these scrapes where staging areas intersect...
That is what I have seen as well and I think it has to do with deer densities. I can't remember seeing a scrape that had only one buck's tracks in it, or getting only one buck on camera over a scrape (although I hang cameras on what are definitely community scrapes along field edges and such). Even the ones very close to or in a big buck's sanctuary get used by others as well because there are generally other bucks nearby.
I note buck bed scrapes in my hunting strategy but don't hunt just the scrape. I have found (in hill and farm country anyway) such scrapes just happen to be where a big buck stages to leave his bedding area and I would hunt that location scrape or no scrape. The exception is when it stops raining, after a good long rain, and I think the big guy will hit the scrape to freshen it. I have had that work a couple times but not on any bucks I wanted to shoot.
Hunting the big woods is different I have found, although my experience there is more limited....often scrapes in a big bucks core area are used almost exclusively by him. Those are also, not coincidentally, few and far between.