(Image: Screenshot from video)
Whitetail hunting pro Jeff Sturgis loves his mock rut scrapes, as you’ll know if you’ve watched many of his videos. He picks a handy spot, dangles a hunk of vine over a scuffed-up spot in the ground, and pees in it if he feels the urge… then he sits back and watches the whitetails come.
Along the way, he’s learned a thing or two about what NOT to do, so he’s made a video called “Top 8 Mock Scrape Fails.”
I admit that I have never seen a natural scrape made under a dangling vine to act as a licking branch– but his videos prove that deer do use his scrapes with the hanging vines. He likes to make a scrape in a good location for his stand, then destroy natural scrapes within 30-50 yards to encourage the deer to use his scrape.
He spends the first 4 and a half minutes talking at great length about the benefits of mock scrapes, why & where to make them, etc. before he starts covering the fails that brought us viewers to his video.
His list of fails include:
- Using commercial scent (4:30)
- Hanging the licking branch/vine too high (9:27)
- Making too many mock scrapes (10:15)
- Placing the scrape off to the side of a trail rather than in it (11:40)
- Hanging the licking branch/vine diagonally or horizontal rather than vertically (12:40)
- Using a licking branch/vine that’s too light, so it moves around too much when the deer use it (14:45)
- Hanging the licking branch/vine unnaturally (16:57)
- Placing a mock scrape where you can’t (photograph and) shoot a deer that’s using it (18:52)
Of course he goes into detail about each point… watch the video and let us know what you think.
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