Thanks for all the congrats from you guys. Too answer a few of the Q's. Hopefully I don't miss any. I've tried mock-scrapes much more than once in my life.. and never seemed to get them right. But I have learned a few things from them. This particular mock I put in a more strategic location than ever before. This piece of ground took me almost 11 years to get on. Over those 11 years nearly every year a scrape existed within a small 10 yard circle. 2 years ago I got permission to finally hunt the ground. Although the first year I never even hunted it.. but had a stand in place.. and even more interesting the scraping there stopped cold. The does that once bedded there.. even stopped bedding there. Obvious it was my human pressure.. even though I had never even set foot on stand. Last season on this piece I saw limited deer.. nearly all does and the 1 buck who I actually took of this same piece in early October. I hunted that stand like 4 times all year.. 3 of those sits taking place in late December and January. The problem with this ground is there is NO reason for a buck to go through it.. almost AT ALL. Which lead me to starting the scrape in August. I used that deer dirt stuff from the start.. and refreshed it with Mrs Doe Pee.. both buck and doe urine. James Valley scent on the over-hanging branch.. which I'll admit I didn't spend enough time on that part of the scrape as I probably should have. My plan was to create a kinda community scrape.. since it was on ground a buck would never bed on when there's 500 acres of cattail swamp around it littered with islands. I knew this. I don't know how exactly it all worked.. but it did. Believe me.. they have failed for me miserably before. But I've learned alot over those trials too.. so it was bound to finally go my way. I'll actually be putting a trailcam near it today in hopes of developing a history with 1 or more of the young bucks I saw visiting it. I'm weary of the trailcam hanging though.. since all it took was my past hanging of this stand to drive the deer away. And believe me.. I know.. this buck had the genes to go from his 133" 3 yr old frame to every bit of 150" at age 4. Likely.. although food sources are less nutritious in these swamps.. so 140"+ should have been attained at the very least. I just couldn't let him pass after the season I've had.. and knowing he should net Pope.. and I had no Pope from this county. I could literally write an interesting story on these past 8 weeks. In which Justin and I had nothing but adventure from the get-go.. and even (NO joke) nearly passed into the next life together. But that story is for the camp-fires. Thanks again. Oh.. and I took the stache off this morning.
Nice Duke, congratulations to you. I like reading your stories as they provide me with a wealth of information. Good stuff.
Nicely done my friend. I have to admit, I'm very jealous of your stache-growing abilities. Mine pale in comparison to yours. Now let's get some footage of you smacking another one before the season is out!
Nice buck, good work on that mock scrape. I got a picture of my buck two nights before I killed him on a mock scrape. The cool thing is that I actually killed him before I saw the picture of him lol. Good luck the rest of the season!
