When did your scrapes go dead?

[fr0sty]

Mine basically dried up after opening morning. I assume that's due to my hunting pressure. Just curious what you noticed in your area. Anyone in 240 would be especially helpful.

[Wes Ellis]

I have game cameras on 4 different scrapes. Very little day time visits. Have pictures at night tell Monday Nov 10 after that they did not stop at the scrapes just passed. The rut in our woods was very short. zone 242

[smsmith]

Nocturnal scrape activity until the night of 11/9...then they were totally abandoned.

[Naturboy]

hunting pressure can throw everything off but aside from that if a buck finds a doe that's close enough to her cycle he will skip the scrap line to stick with her. then it's time to find the does and that's where the bucks will be.

[Wes Ellis]

I think our does got taken care of before the snow! We had 3 to 6 does every evening around the stands and just a little fork showed up!

The snow sure changed things.

[sticknstring]

Mine are still being hit, but nothing like the week prior to the foot of snow. That really changed the patterns where I hunt.

This was the 14th at 11:40am.

[Wanderer]

Geez, wonder what made the big guy dash off like that?

Our scrapes went dead opening weekend in 172. I made a pretty long mock scrape line last weekend and it was never touched.

[sticknstring]

He was tending a doe and she got a little too far away while he was distracted.

[Notime]

I saw a fresh scrape Sunday morning in 184. It didn't even have the previous days snow in it.

[MNHunter65]

November 2 was when all scrape activity stopped at our cameras. All nocturnal activity as well. This was near Tower, MN.

[96trigger]

I had fresh scrapes and rubs in zone 342 last week. Scrapes and rubs were made after the snow, so later in the week. Haven't been out since. Cameras are still going though.

[CANOPY SAM]

Is this what the pros refer to as the "lockdown" stage? When the bucks find their doe in estrus and just stick to her like glue until they consummate the marriage?

I've talked to several folks now who experienced the same thing on their hunting properties. Lots of sign and animals around Fri before the opener, and then Sat morning, on the heels of the cold and snow, everything went dead quiet.

[fr0sty]

That's kind of what I was wondering. If it was hunting pressure or does coming intro estrus that moved them off the scrapes. I had a doe and two fawns come by my stand Wednesday evening looking like they didn't have a care in the world. Maybe she had been bred already?

[Crow Hunter]

I am in 241, had a big scrape opened back up last Friday. Hopefully I will run into him in muzzleloader season.

[O.T.C.]

I'm in area 240 frosty of course with a name like O.T.C there's a good chance of that. Area 240 might have the best buck to doe ratio in the state and I saw once again more bucks than does this year, my gut feeling is we saw many buck with does the week b4 gun season and I think in some parts most were bred only to have the ugly opening weekend winds and the deer scent checking their trails and our stands leading to a lot of nocturnal breeding which is normal anyway which took care of most of the does. By legal light, they were bedded tight and not trusting their ears and noses they waited for dark and quickly found human scent everywhere which spared a lot of deer this season. Then throw snow in the mix on Monday which can make them quite skittish that first snow of the year and then it was wind again. The scrapes I was hunting went dead a few days b4 opener in both places within area 240 that I hunt, they were not visited again as my tcams with new batteries caught nothing but a yearling buck looking scared. This is the first year no one in our hunting party(s) saw a buck chasing a doe and there's about 20 of us out there on different farms and river bottoms.

[CANOPY SAM]

Interesting observations OTC. Very interesting.

Like I stated a week ago, it's going to be really interesting to see what's out there during the muzzleloader season this year!

I'm counting (hoping) on seeing several nice bucks running about.

[fr0sty]

My experience also. I'll be checking my cams weekend after Thanksgiving. It will be interesting to see if any visits took place since firearms.

[O.T.C.]

I agree Canopy Sam, I'm plenty fired up for muzzleloader more so than any other year, very few went down by rifle and there's plenty around, but to slide into an area and see muzzy daylight movement has never been an easy task especially when I have zero food sources to hunt and the darn things are bedded down b4 legal light much of the time. Most important reminder for me now is......trigger pull is nothing like my 30.06, need to remember that if I plan to fire, longer trigger pull, stay down on the deer, most get missed high would be my guess, on occasion I'll see a fresh scrape in the snow on Thanksgiving as I scout a little, have yet to see the buck return though kinda like the dead rifle scrapes I was watching this year, for me the earlier rifle opens the better chance he'll check his scrape(s) and or add to them. They were already with does this Nov. 8th in my area, about Halloween we saw some chasing, but an abrupt end come Nov. 8th, sure in the night of course some of that had to be going down per usual.