I don't have areas where I'm allowed to plant food plots but I have done a lot of cutting trails and/or enhancing trails in an attempt to make them walk where I want them too. This works well especially in thick honeysuckle type cover. I also use mock scrapes but not as an attractant necessarily. I use them for trail cameras. I put them in an area where I can check a trail camera with as little intrusion as possible, and away from hunting setups. There used to be a product called "deer dirt" that worked perfectly for this. It was soil impregnated with scent and was treated to stop it from freezing. That is no longer made but Code Blue makes a similar product that also works well. The other reason for mock scrapes is too put one in front of your November treestands where you would like a crushing buck to stop. This doesn't have to be anything fancy and can even be done the morning of your hunt. Just take a long stick and rake away the leaves making a "scrape" about four feet in diameter. Use as long a stick as possible so you can minimize residual scent. When a cruising buck comes through he will stop in this scrape nearly every time. As an example, 2 seasons ago I went into an area with a treestand on my back for an evening hunt. The tree I intended to hunt had already been prepared but it was in an area I did. It want to leave a stand up due to thefts. So I carried in a Lone Wolf stand Nd quickly got it in the tree. After I was done I raked out a 4 foot scrape where the trails converged 15 yards from my stand. Later that evening the first mature buck of the season appeared. He was a 150 inch 5x5. He was walking away from in thick cover so I wheezed at him. He stopped and listened for a bit and started to walk away. I wheezed at him again and he again stopped. This time his head was behind a big tree and he could not see my direction so I took my lower bow limb and thrashed it around in some honeysuckle. He bristled up and came walking right too me. When he got to my scrape that I had just made a few hours earlier. He put his head down in it and offered me a perfect broadside shot. I've had other smaller bucks do the same.
Topic: attracting whitetail (Read 253 times)
