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Getting community scrape activity

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flankston

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Joined
Aug 14, 2021
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Knoxville
Thought this was a cool pic - been getting some community scrape activity.
03_01_2021_183004_243.jpg
 
DeerCamp said:
How "late" is that for what you typically see?
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Right about latest ever. Worst year ever was the record heat/drought/acorn-failure/EHD year of 2007. In that year, first scrape was Oct. 23 and on 500 acres I found exactly 6 scrapes the entire season (normally I record 60-80). That year was also the only time in 35 years that I firmly believe we saw a very delayed rut. Our normal peak breeding is Nov. 10-20, but that year it appeared to be around the first week of December.
 
My community scrapes are still covered as well. The licking branches are still being hit but no scraping. I tried opening it up to get them started after the cold front but no avail. I'm getting some pictures of bucks but mostly feeding in the fields at night
 
BSK said:
Right about latest ever. Worst year ever was the record heat/drought/acorn-failure/EHD year of 2007. In that year, first scrape was Oct. 23 and on 500 acres I found exactly 6 scrapes the entire season (normally I record 60-80). That year was also the only time in 35 years that I firmly believe we saw a very delayed rut. Our normal peak breeding is Nov. 10-20, but that year it appeared to be around the first week of December.
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WOW! Crazy to think it would have shifted that much.

I am really considering delaying my trip to Oklahoma this year to Late Nov/Early Dec. As you know, their drought has been exceptional.

Reports from there are that bucks are still in bachelor groups. GW for Hughes County told me that the peak for them is Nov 7-20 or so.
Maybe I'll go twice. :)
 
BSK said:
Interesting. I'll be checking cams for the last time before MZ tomorrow. Hope I see a sudden change in activity.
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What I found to be really interesting was that I had those 4 different bucks at one time all within very close proximity to each other and there was zero sparring and only light posturing between the 1.5 year old and a 2.5 year old. The 2 2.5 year olds didn't seem bothered by each other, but they all gave space to the 3.5.

Before I was in the stand, my camera on one of the scrapelines had 3 different bucks hit the licking branch. I did not see any of those bucks that came through before daylight. They came through between 5:27 and 6:08. Last buck i saw on that line this morning was at 8:33. I had dipped that licking branch in a bottle of active scrape last week.
 
backyardtndeer said:
What I found to be really interesting was that I had those 4 different bucks at one time all within very close proximity to each other and there was zero sparring and only light posturing between the 1.5 year old and a 2.5 year old. The 2 2.5 year olds didn't seem bothered by each other, but they all gave space to the 3.5.
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I saw the same thing mid early/October except they sparred a little. Been seeing bachelor groups still together all the way up even until this morning. This is the weirdest season ever. I'm not sure what to think of it yet.
 
BSK - in your experience, how much time goes by between the beginning of scrapes opening up to peak breeding? 3 weeks on average?
 
BSK said:
Just one more reminder that once you think you've seen it all, you haven't.
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Yessir that's for sure. I don't think there's another wild animal on the planet that gets singularly studied like the whitetail. There are university programs offering degrees based on it. And still there's so much yet to learn.
 
flankston said:
BSK - in your experience, how much time goes by between the beginning of scrapes opening up to peak breeding? 3 weeks on average?
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Depends on the year and the acorn crop. When deer have access to a rich source of high energy foods, they have energy to burn. They literally make a lot more rubs and scrapes because they have so much more excess internal resources. Quite a few studies on this. In an acorn-driven herd, rubbing and scraping behavior is heavily influenced by quantity/quality of the acorn crop.

So in big acorn years, bucks will start scraping in September. Yet the rut doesn't change. However, in a poor acorn year, with limited resources, bucks may not start scraping until mid-October, even though again, peak dates of rut don't change.

What I'm getting at is the start of scraping activity is more driven by food resources rather than rut timing.
 
BSK said:
Depends on the year and the acorn crop. When deer have access to a rich source of high energy foods, they have energy to burn. They literally make a lot more rubs and scrapes because they have so much more excess internal resources. Quite a few studies on this. In an acorn-driven herd, rubbing and scraping behavior is heavily influenced by quantity/quality of the acorn crop.

So in big acorn years, bucks will start scraping in September. Yet the rut doesn't change. However, in a poor acorn year, with limited resources, bucks may not start scraping until mid-October, even though again, peak dates of rut don't change.

What I'm getting at is the start of scraping activity is more driven by food resources rather than rut timing.
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That is really interesting. I wonder if it also affects cruising?
 
Ski said:
That is really interesting. I wonder if it also affects cruising?
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No idea, but it does effect chasing. I only have one year of video data for a good acorn year and one year for a poor acorn year, but chasing started earlier in the good acorn year, even though the same peak dates of breeding could be seen in the data for both years.
 

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