Bucks check many scrapes once each, and most visits come at night

STEP 1 · Ames herd

Bucks used several scrapes and seldom repeated one

At the Ames Research and Education Center in southwestern Tennessee, Huang and colleagues ran trail cameras on white-tailed deer at 107 scrapes. The Journal of Mammalogy project covered 7,385 camera-days starting in September 2021 and ending in January 2022. They recorded 3,063 scrape interactions. In that paper an interaction meant the deer was at least standing inside the scrape or sniffing at it. If 7 days passed with no scraping behavior the crew relocated that camera to a different active scrape. The sample therefore covers scrapes deer were still using.

Bucks accounted for 2,223 of the interactions (73%). Does produced 702 (23%) and fawns produced 138 (4%). The team identified 218 individual bucks. The median number of monitored scrapes per buck was 4.5, and the spread ran from 1 to 23. Scrapes per buck looked similar across 72 yearlings, 126 bucks from 2.5 through 3.5 years and 20 bucks at least 4.5 years old.

Median visits by one buck to one monitored scrape were 1. The paper reports 2 visits for 21% of those pairs. The maximum at one monitored scrape was 11 visits. All of those counts come from this single herd and property.

Kinsell measured the sharing on DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge by watching which white-tailed deer used which scrapes. The thesis ran 71 motion-triggered cameras during October and November 2005, then 35 from September through November 2006. The tally was 5,009 encounters. Direct interactions totaled 1,830.

Identified bucks 2.5 years or older seen at least 5 times averaged 3.9 scrapes ranging from 1 to 15. The mean minimum distance those bucks traveled between consecutive scrapes was about 3,200 feet (978 m). A single scrape drew a mean of 5.1 individuals. At most 43% of individuals came back to a scrape already visited. On that refuge a buck in the frame is one name among those individuals.

STEP 2 · Night pattern

At Ames 67% of scrape interactions came at night

After dark accounted for 67% of scrape interactions in the Ames data. Day visits were uneven by sex and age. Fawns had the highest day share at 46%. The lowest day share was 16%, and it belonged to bucks 4.5 years old and up.

Mature deer there showed an apparent prevalence of chronic wasting disease of 52% that season. Huang and colleagues set their 67% night figure against earlier camera studies that found night shares of 75% to 85%. Those studies are the ones they cite from Alexy and colleagues in 2001 and from Kinsell in 2010. The authors suggest the difference may come from a younger herd structure or from disease in the herd.

Even in that setting the oldest bucks were in the day category on 16% of visits. The paper never equates its day category with legal shooting hours. Dawn and midday carry different chances for a hunter, and this study leaves those hours combined. On that property across the full fall, the 16% figure is the day share for a single age class. It says little about what one sit will do.

The same mix-up shows up in herd surveys in our camera-count guide. A crowded card can be one deer hitting the camera repeatedly or a single age class finding that setup at a higher rate. You still do not get a head count from it.

STEP 3 · Limb first

Branch contact led for every sex and age class

Licking-branch contact was the behavior recorded most often for bucks, does and fawns at Ames. Bucks recorded that contact on 1,381 of their 2,223 interactions (62.1%). Among does the branch contact count was 255 of 702 interactions (36.3%). Soil pawing totaled 321 buck interactions (14.4%). The doe count for pawing was 22 interactions (3.1%). Rub-urination by bucks came to 169 interactions (7.6%). In all 702 doe interactions that count stayed at zero.

A doe in these photos was on the limb far more often than she was inside a full scent-marking sequence. Her picture is poor proof of breeding readiness.

Male interactions on the refuge were the elaborate ones. Kinsell reports that 69% of interactions by males bundled two behaviors or more. The female share was 25% and the fawn share was 13%. Among adult bucks in the refuge project, branch grasp-and-lick held the top risk value for chronic wasting disease movement in their scoring. The part a hunter can use is that licking-branch contact was the act both sexes recorded most often.

No journal article and no university thesis we opened compared hunter-built mock scrapes with scrapes deer made on their own. Taken together those two projects support our read. A mock scrape that gives a deer no limb to mouth leaves out the act the Ames deer performed most often. Bare dirt on its own showed up less often than limb contact in those frames.

STEP 4 · November timing

Interactions peaked November 2 to 15 and then fell

The Ames interactions reached their highest point on November 2 to 15, which the authors place just before rut. They declined across the later rut periods those authors laid out. Peak rut on the property was November 30 to December 13. Sign torn up in the first part of November can fade during the chase while the deer are still living on the farm.

Our Ohio harvest paper shows another curve tied to another kind of count. Weekly check-ins in that paper build across archery season and toward mid-November. They jump a second time at the gun season opener. Those Ohio numbers are registered deer and carry no correction for hunting effort. That makes them a different measure from the Ames scrape interactions. Leave a scrape sit off gun week when the only push to move it is a statewide kill that peaks then.

STEP 5 · Two cameras

Your cards decide whether the dirt earns a sit

Our test pairs a closed-canopy scrape with a field-edge scrape and puts one camera on each, because the studies we opened never split day visits by cover. Run the same model and the same height on both, and leave them up from the pre-rut period into the chase. The Ames crews kept cameras about 7 to 10 feet (2 to 3 m) off each scrape so both limb and dirt stayed in frame together. Use that spacing wherever you have permission to hunt.

Our scouting log is the sheet to use. For each night write detected, not detected, or not sampled. When a battery dies, record that night as not sampled. Separate marks go to branch contact, to pawing and to rub-urination. A pass-by stays outside the interaction column. Apply the same night and daylight cutoff on both cameras. Add a mark for legal shooting light. The Ames day category leaves legal shooting light unmarked and pools dawn with midday.

Put our rule on the cards in your hand. If one buck works the licking branch at least twice during shooting light, give that scrape a careful sit on the downwind approach. When most frames fall after dark and no individual buck returns, hunt the trail into that scrape and leave the pawed dirt for the camera.