Timber Life Buck Scrape

My dog Sadie and I were out walking the last of October looking for signs of bucks setting up their territories.The first scrape was noted on October 18th and a day later the second scrape was getting a start.

We checked the north pasture and then a specific tree on the south side of the ravine splitting our property. These two areas seem to be the first places where the buck activities become most notable - they have favorite scrapes that let me know when the heat is on the rise. After that all the little trees are marked for sending out messages.Then low and behold if they aren't scored again when it is time for the separation of antlers.

October 21st, my trail camera caught some stills of a buck marking the scrape that seems to have become an active spot in the last two years. The pictures seem to verify what you read about...rubbing the head, face and turning around to include bodily fluids in the mix of the cocktail.

My short little video is actually longer than the sum total of all the seconds on the time stamps on the far lower right hand corners of the pictures. I don't use my movie mode on the camera yet, because I haven't invested in a 16GB SD card to have enough space to capture all that information.

The Whitetail Rut season is over here in Iowa and the bucks are on the downhill slide of testosterone levels. Night time images of anterless bucks started  to appear on December 18th...seeing fresh blood and holes where the bone was once attached to the skull is setting off an alarm. Time to get out for some shed hunting before the varmints carry them all away...