Old is a state of mind my friend.
Having said that, my young state of mind makes my body do stuff it shouldn't do anymore, thus making it feel old!
Kind of a chicken or the egg thing!
Who Loves Winter Scouting?
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Old is a state of mind my friend.
Having said that, my young state of mind makes my body do stuff it shouldn't do anymore, thus making it feel old!
Kind of a chicken or the egg thing!
I am taking a youngster (48 yrs old) on a snowshoe scout in the Adirondacks tomorrow. See if he can keep up with his elder (70). My happy place is being a few miles in on snowshoes, flintlock on my shoulder, day pack on my back, and cold air in my face.
ADK Bigfoot
ADK Bigfoot
Daryl Crawford
50 Cal.
I've been learning a lot more about community scrapes vs rutting buck scrapes. A rut line and I'm grunting or light rattling a little in mid-October, a community scrap it's fawn beats at that time.
That's scary!Around here you just have to make sure that what you're tracking isn't already tracking you.
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In winter I like to scout also. I look thru the neck of my beer bottle and if I can see the bottom it's time to get another.
If not hunting, carry a sturdy beam of wood with you. Taylor it to your capabilities and swing it about against some trees. You will develop strength and be immune to the shock after awhile when deploying such. A simple isometric tool.
Jerry Petersen (founder of Woods Wise Game Calls), through his videos and talking to him once at a show, was who I learned the most from about the language of deer and when to use certain calls. I use doe talk more than anything, but during chase phase and rut may combine that up with some buck grunting. Jerry's teaching revolved around calls that would match what is happening...ie: pre-rut, chase phase, actual breeding, post rut...vs where in the woods a person is.
I think buck-to-doe ratio also could play a role. If lots of does and few bucks, loud aggressive antler rattling will probably scare more away than call them in. If it's 2-1 bucks to does and competition is high, then aggressive calling/rattling might work better. No matter what, Bucks are looking for does in rut and subtle contact calls or doe in heat bleats have always produced the best results for me personally.
There's a LOT going on in those rocks! Never saw anything like those. Some parts look like tree parts petrified in, some like volcanic material, and other things like gems, etc. Would love to hear what a geologist would have to say about them. Pretty cool!
Yesterday while I was up in the woods I found something very interesting. It wasn’t a scrape but it resembled one. There were about 4” of fresh snow. This spot on the ground was not just all the way down to the dirt, but actually dug down several inches. It was most likely a bed due to its shape, but I’ve never seen one dug down so far in the dirt. Of course there were fresh deer tracks in it. There were also what looked to be 2-4 older beds near by.Scrapes are where a buck will use his front feet to clear out leaves, grass, or other debris down to bare dirt. Some scrapes are made and abandoned with virtually no use. Around my area those are usually along field edges well before the rut. Sometimes, however, those are kept open throughout the rut and for years and can grow to enormous size. Other scrapes appear along trails, and the ones I really like are in thickets and can get exceptionally large being 6 to 10 feet across.
Most scrapes have an overhanging branch(es) that the deer lick, chew, rub the scent glands on their foreheads on, or interlock in antlers twisting and breaking the branch, etc. I have personally witnessed this many times. Deer virtually "make love" to that overhanging branch. They roll their eyes, rubbing, licking, etc for long periods sometimes, as if in a trance. They also urinate in it. Bucks will squat and urinate down their hind legs over their tarsal glands.
While many will say that dominant bucks are the scrape makers and users and no other buck will dare to use it, my time on an 1100 acre lease with many cameras sitting over scrapes taught me that virtually every deer in the area...bucks of all sizes, mature does, and even fawns will work the licking branch, paw the scrape, and urinate in it.
My opinion is that these large perennial scrapes are simply "meeting places" for deer...kinda like a bar or other human social gathering place. By visiting, they know who is around (by scent) and can even track them, if desired. Our trail cams would sometimes capture many deer (upwards of 10) all gathered together at scrapes. Of course, this is usually in the middle of the night.
The circled scrape looks like an ordinary trail scrape...certainly not one of the giant ones, but still around 3 feet in diameter. It's not being used right now as there was no fresh sign in it, but when you have a string of many of these on a trail, it might be a good place to spend some time next year Oct/Nov.
Probably way more than anyone wanted to know!
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Yeah, me too. It’s on what looks to be the bottoms of 3 large limestone boulders that have rolled down the steep slope at some point. Someone pointed out in another thread (Longcruise I believe it was) that it appears water had seaped under those boulders and made those impressions years ago before the boulders rolled down the steep slope.
I wonder if you sent those pics to the Geology Dept at a University if they could give more definitive info just from pictures?
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