Starvin Larry

By now,you already know the deer’s movements,where his bedding area is,where his main food and water sources are,and the trails he follows to get to and from each.

Starting around the 3rd week of October-or just prior to start of rut where you live-find a field edge that has small trees along it-no more than 3-4″ in diameter.

Place you stand/blind so you have a clear shot in the close vicinity of the multiple fake scrapes I’m going to tell you how to make…

Make a your own fake scrape line,pick trees that have at least one branch that’s in reach of a deer-as the bucks use it as a licking branch.

You want your scrapes to be no closer together than 10 yards,any place where woods meet field edges works, a place where a brush field meets an agricultural field is  better,a place where a tree line meets an ag field is the best.

Using a rake,and/or garden claw,scrape away all the leaves,twigs,rocks,and debris from an area about 3′ in diameter-doesn’t have to be exact-3-4′ is fine,use the garden claw,make long marks in the dirt,so it looks like the antlers from a buck made the marks,go front to back,and side to side. It should look sorta like an oval tic-tac toe game.

Since bucks piss in the scrapes when they make them-be sure you drink a lot of water before you head out to make your fake scrape line-once you have made the scrape-“mark your territory” by pissing in each scrape.

As it gets closer to the rut-late Oct/early November here in NE Ohio-start putting 8-10 drops of doe in heat urine in your fake scrapes,as it gets closer to the peak of the rut-increase the amount of doe in heat urine you put in the scrapes,and add a few drops of buck urine to them.

Adding the buck urine will piss off the dominant buck -(pun intended)-the dominant buck is the one you want to shoot,he’s biggest,strongest,healthiest buck in the area. The younger ones will all be challenging him in pre-rut,and the early part of the rut.

From pre-rut,up until the rut starts is the best time to rattle- using real antlers is more effective than using any of the fake products/ methods.

This is also when you should be using a grunt tube-use it sparingly-deer aint like elk-they don’t bugle to challenge each other. There’s a plethora of You Tube videos on how to rattle and use a grunt tube-watch as many of them as you have time for-you’ll see many different techniques,find what works best for you-and use it.

Pay close attention to when the peak rut is in your location-because 28 days later-all the does not bred during the main rut go into estrous again-the bucks will be following them just like during the main,and first rut.

Again-pay close attention-as in another 28 days-there’s another,much less active rut.

These are the times of the hunting season when you have the best chance at getting a really big buck.

There’s a lot of people who could care less about antler size-I’m one of them-I’ll shoot a doe-it’s meat in the freezer.

Tips and techniques on how to harvest does will be in a future post.

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