I heard talk the other day of guys targeting a buck by the rubs he made. How do you determine what rub a particular buck made? Tree size? Tine marks? Shredding?
Dan, I watched a little 1.5yr old 10pt (odd palmated rack) just DESTROY a 5" pine a few weeks ago. And when I mean destroy, I'm talking about wiping it clean for about a 20-24" section starting about 20" off the ground or so. He worked on that tree for nearly 5 minutes!!! Pretty impressive work for a young'n. After watching that, I'm not real sure what to think anymore.
One way is if the rubs are in very close proximity to the bucks primary bedding area. It helps if you can see the tracks that made the rub also. Generally, after breakup of the bachelor groups, the "target buck" beds by himself. Tine marks can help if there is some distinguishing feature to them. I found some wide (8") brow tine marks on a 14" diameter tree one time and shortly after got a trail cam pic of the culprit responsible for making them. BTW, for me nothing is usually 100% but 95% works for me just fine when I make my conclusions.
I had one rub where the G2 was scraping the tree 12'' behind it. The Buck had about 13-14'' G2's when I seen it. I also look at scrapes and the licking branch, I look for branches broke off on the tree. Most of the time I am just taking a guess, I have seen 1.5 rub the trees with the outside part of their racks.
Mature bucks secrete an oil from their forehead glad that has a very pungant smell to it. As bucks age that smell becomes stronger and stronger. So typically I like to smell fresh rubs I find. The stronger they smell the more mature the buck that made them. In some cases I will taste the rub as well. Over time a well skilled hunter can learn to taste the difference in the rubs in order to determine which buck made it.
Now you are just trying to get someone to lick a tree I agree about the smell though. Those older boys stink up the woods. You can often smell them coming and an area will smell for hours after they have left. Edit: Let me caveat that with saying that I have no idea how to tell which buck I am smelling. I can only tell that it is a buck with a strong scent and all of those that I have seen to date have been mature bucks.
I have seen smaller bucks rub the heck out of trees before and make them look like they were hit by a bigger buck. Now, if a rub is high on a tree, which for me would be around waist high or above I can pretty much tell it was a bigger buck with a high rack. Add in the fact that rubs were made close to a potential big buck bedding area and you have about as much info as you need to understand that the rubs came from a larger buck. I used to hunt the heck out of rublines, back when I didn't have much other knowledge so I have witnessed a lot of bucks rubbing. Several times over the years I witnessed rubs getting higher and higher each year on trees around what appeared to be excellent big buck bedding areas. In some instances I never saw those bucks at all, and in some instances I only saw what I thought was the buck that was responsible for those rubs one time. And in each instance that I saw a big buck mirroring that big (waist high or above for me) rub line, he was a monster for our parts. There was a diffinitive difference in the size of the bucks that I saw as compared to even the average 3.5 year old buck. They were massive. So I extrapolated that those bucks had indeed been responsible for those massive rubs throughout the years. This year I found some huge rubs in a spot that had terrific bedding for a big buck. In early November a young boy arrowed an absolute Beast not a couple of hundred yards from where I though that buck(s) was bedded. It again validated what I had learned throughout the years. Big rubs on big trees do not mean a big buck. High rubs (waist high or higher) on trees close to an excellent big buck bedding area=great chance that those rubs are from a mature buck. But once again I suck because I cannot seem to kill said bucks.
So, can you walk up to a rub on your property and know what buck made it? I mean, if you know your target buck well, can you distinguish his rubs from others?
A well-skilled woodsman can also distinguish: 1. Lineage/genetic branch of the buck in question 2. abnormal points gained in the off-season and how long it's been since the rub was made ( to determine whether it was made in daylight or not).
I found several scrapes over the years that have said Hunt me John, Hunt me Now! One in Kentucky was shaped like a saucer the size of a living room rug with a tree that supported the licking branches in the center of it, also several bushes in the center that had all been broken off at knee level. There were 20 something rubs around this scrape on trees that were big around as your upper leg and rubed into the meat of the tree. I did not know what buck did all this, all I knew was I wanted to kill the buck that had done it! And yes, I have licked a rub!
If your hunting a tall racked buck that also has some height to his body more then likely his rubs will be tall too. The buck I was hunting this year was a very tall buck (5.5 years old) and his antlers were very high as well. On one of his bedding areas I knew the exact trail he used when he left his bed. Right around the 13th of November he made a rub on this trail. The rub was 4 to 4.5 feet high. I've learned a ton about rubs the last few years. Rub height means everything to me now and the depth of a real fresh rub. I also pay very close attention to markings that were made from the beams off of the side of these rubs. Big rubbed trees are very cool to look at but are meaning less to me as I'm learning more about these rubs.
Ok, so I kinda broke the forum rules here and I baited a little bit with this thread. Not really in a harmful way, but I wanted to see what you guys said. Now, with that said, after some observations this past fall and getting some pics with the trail cams, I have changed my mind about rubs and think a little bit less of them than I did before. We set a camera up on a big rub to purposely see what happened when no one could see. We also had another camer that somehow got turned on a small rub, and the pictures sure raised some eyebrows. Note: I never thought to save pics of every buck on the rub at the time and I wish I would have. I only saved the good pics and some of them didn't have the buck rubbing, but believe me, they did. Big Rub.... Corky Brasky Franz There were smaller bucks using the big rub too, but I didn't save them. Again, I wish I would have. Now, the small rub. Again, I didn't save all bucks and not all saved pics are in the act of rubbing, but they did. Brasky No Name Franz Seeing multiple bucks using the same rubs really opened my eyes and has me thinking. Got you thinking at all?
It has me thinking! Holy crap Dan you have some MONSTERS! Cool thread. My question would be.. do you have pic evidence of 2 bucks actually rubbing the same tree? Or just 1 buck rubbing and others scent checking like the pics posted. As in.. we can see Corky clearly rubbing (and what a stud he is) and Franz comes over for a wiff (no slouch himself). Have one with Franz rubbing the same tree?
Yeah, unfortunately I think we messed up there. Its a tough property to hunt. Remember, both of these rubs were there before we put the cameras there. So, on the big rub, something rubbed it first, Corky rubbed it and its clear that Brasky is rubbing it, I have another pic of Franz on the rub. Is he rubbing it? I can't say that he is gouging it hard, but I believe he is leaving his scent there. The rub grew substantially from the time we put the camera out, until we pulled it. Corky is a big bodied deer, but has no rack. He came out of velvet like this. We think it may be Hanz or V from last year, as they were both 10s with stickers under the left brow and we heard of a 10 getting wounded by the neighbors during gun season down there. Now, like I said earlier, the whole idea to save pics of multiple bucks actually rubbing was an after thought and I missed the opportunity. I just saved the pics of the good bucks and the good pics. There were lots of other pics of bucks actually rubbing the trees, but I don't have those. Sorry.
I went back and looked at the pics.....I think you missed where I posted that pics 2&3 were Brasky. That's where a bit of confusion lies.
My bad.. I see now. I paid attention to the body on Corky and thought he was the first 3 pics. You have several great older class deer there.. not very often you find that.. I bet they taught you and Johnny a thing or two about older deer for sure. Besides just the rub thing.
Great Pictures Dan. It's cool how they try and cover up the other ones scent. I took some VHS Video years ago of a young sabordinate buck trying to scent up a scrape and rubs that didn't belong to him when this great 9 pt with knife blade G2s shows up. He starts sidewinding and flares his main while moving towards the smaller buck. it was like you let the air out of the smaller one, he lowerd his head and eased his way to the big buck, then licked the big buck in the mouth, cleaned his ear and got the flock out of there!. I watched a 160 class shread this bush a couple of weeks ago. If you look close you can see the trunks of small trees in the middle that were rubed and broken off last year.
