What We Know About Scrapes

By: Kip Adams, QDMA

Another hunting season has come and gone, and I’ve received a new wave of questions about deer behaviors and sign that hunters witnessed in the woods. A friend recently remarked that even though he saw multiple active scrapes in the area he hunted this past season, he never saw a buck at any of them. Aren’t scrapes supposed to be good places to hunt near? Mike Tonkovich, another friend and deer biologist for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, asked about scrape use by does. Specifically, do does make scrapes and use licking branches? Even though you aren’t likely to see much scraping activity in your area at this time of year, deer hunters and managers enjoy talking about and learning about the rut at any time. While these questions are fresh on the mind, let’s consider what we know about scrapes to help you better understand this important whitetail behavior.
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Creating a Scrape
Scrapes are a visual and scent “signpost” for deer, and they involve a sequence of three steps. A buck will first mark an overhanging branch about 3 to 6 feet above the ground by licking and/or mouthing it, hence the name “licking branch.” If a suitable branch doesn’t exist at this height, bucks may stand on their hind legs to reach taller ones, and they frequently break the branch in this process. Bucks may also rub their preorbital glands (found in the front corner of each eye) and/or their forehead gland on the branch. This is not an indiscriminate marking; bucks will work the branch, smell it, and possibly work it some more until they get the right “concoction” of their scent on it. The forehead gland becomes more active during the breeding season and research suggests scent from it may persist on an object for several days. Next, bucks paw and scrape away the litter below the overhanging branch and create a shallow depression in the exposed soil. Finally, bucks urinate in the scrape. This urination may be directly into the soil or over the buck’s tarsal glands.

Rub-urination
When bucks urinate on their tarsal glands it is called rub-urination, and rutting bucks use this behavior to advertise their dominance status and breeding condition to does and other bucks. Rub-urinations are not limited to bucks or to the breeding season. Bucks, does and even fawns will rub-urinate during any season of the year. While this is an interesting behavior to observe, recent research estimates only 5 percent of urinations at scrapes are rub-urinations.

Who’s Scraping?
Mature bucks obviously engage in scraping behavior, and bucks may assert their dominance by making a scrape in the presence of a subordinate buck. The old adage that mature bucks prevent young bucks from scraping is not true. Yearling and 21⁄2-year-old bucks routinely engage in scraping behaviors, even at the same scrapes used by mature bucks. Does also use scrapes, and they use them on a regular basis. While I’ve never observed a doe making a scrape, they frequently visit them, occasionally mark the overhanging branch, and may even urinate in them. These activities suggest that does obtain breeding information about bucks as well as advertise their availability at these signposts. I’m sure many QDMA members who use scouting cameras have taken photos of does visiting and marking scrapes.

When are they Scraping?
Scraping activity typically peaks just before the peak of the rut, but active scrapes may be found over the course of several months, even in northern latitudes. However, most bucks almost completely stop visiting scrapes after the peak of the rut. Most scraping activity (85 percent) occurs at night, and this is probably why my friend didn’t see any bucks at the scrapes he hunted over.

Scraping Activity
Scraping activity can be divided into creating/marking and visiting/checking. Creating a scrape is self explanatory and marking entails working the overhanging branch and/or urinating in an existing scrape. Hunters typically refer to this as bucks “freshening” a scrape, and it’s what we do when we “doctor” a scrape for hunting or photography purposes. Research in Georgia by Dr. Karen Alexy (who is now director of the wildlife division of the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources) showed the most frequent marking behavior performed by all age classes of bucks was marking the overhanging branch with their forehead, antlers or mouth (saliva). Pawing the ground and urination occurred in less than half of the visits that included some type of marking behavior during her study.
Deer that visit or check a scrape are obtaining information about other deer that visited the scrape without leaving any initial or new information of their own. Remarkably, bucks may visit scrapes on a regular basis, but they mark them infrequently. This suggests their scent may persist for several days and make frequent marking unnecessary. This also identifies the possibility for bucks to collect information downwind from scrapes without actually visiting them, and may partially explain why some mature bucks are never photographed at scrapes (or anywhere else) but are seen and/or harvested by hunters. Unfortunately the opposite is generally true. It’s more common for hunters to photograph bucks but never see them during the hunting season. Karen’s research also showed some scrapes are used more than others. She video-monitored two scrapes less than 300 yards apart and recorded two completely different groups of bucks using them. Only one buck was monitored at both scrapes. This makes you wonder about the validity of the term “scrapeline,” which suggests a chain of scrapes belonging to the same buck.

Unique Scraping Activity
Recent research by Josh Braun at Missouri State University, who was conducting his research under the guidance of Dr. Grant Woods of Woods & Associates, identified a unique activity at scrapes. Josh video-monitored bucks from a buck-dominated deer herd at scrapes, and he and Grant coined the term “auto-stimulation” to describe what appeared to be bucks emitting semen into scrapes. The activity involved bucks approaching a scrape, raising their tail, waving it up and down while pulling their hind legs together, thrusting their pelvis and walking away. This was a subtle behavior and not all encounters included the full sequence of steps. This may be another method of marking or something else that we don’t yet understand. QDMA members who attended last year’s National Convention in Chattanooga, Tennessee, were fortunate to hear Josh present some of these findings, including video clips of numerous scrape behaviors.

Two things we do know about scrapes though is that most visits occur at night, and bucks and does use them to communicate, primarily during the breeding season. Since most scraping activity is at night their immediate vicinity may not be the best place to hunt, but trails leading to and from them can be effective locations in early morning and late afternoon. If you are successful at hunting scrapes then by all means keep hunting them. However, if you’ve been unsuccessful with this technique hopefully you can use this information to improve your odds next season.