7. Planting a Mock Scrape
John Walton from Big Rock Trees has some outstanding Hybrid Poplar trees that can be used for a quick growing, planted mock scrape and rubbing tree! For ordering information, check out “Big Rock Trees’ 6′ Hybrid Poplar”.
Mock Scrape Essentials
Here is the easy part! While I have experienced that although the strategy for using a mock scrape is often confusing and misunderstood, and that some materials for creating a scrape may or may not work, the essentials of an effective scrape are fairly easy to understand and implement. Here are the basics that you need, in order to make a mock scrape as effective as it can be:
1. Locate your potential scrape on dry, solid and mostly level ground. If the scrape is on uneven ground, make sure that the ground is at least rising above the deer trail so that a buck is working into the angle of the ground instead of the drop off of the terrain
2. A sturdy licking branch positioned at a height between your waist, and head high is great. I have personally found that a vine (vertical) is often most effective when positioned around waist to chest high, where a traditional licking branch (horizontal) works very well at a height around the level of your chest.
3. Position mock scrapes to compliment the existing flow of mature buck travel. Create mock scrapes 30-50 yards from a stand location, on either side of the stand location to enhance deer travel past the stand location, and not too the stand location.
4. Keep in mind the more scrapes that you create on the land, the lower the absolute value of each scrape on your land. While mock scrapes will not typically attract more bucks to your land, they will most definitely help to defined mature buck travel. Try to employ a strategy that uses mock scrapes purely to set up potential stand locations as well as your intended line of buck movement. Excess mock scrape creations can reduce the value of each scrape due to the over-saturation of the improvement, which in turn reduces the effectiveness of the deer movement and hunting opportunities that you are attempting to enhance.
