In states that don’t allow the use of a corn pile or feeder, we must use different means to concentrate the herd members. A well-used watering hole, a gate opening or fence crossing, a specific food plot or pinch-point are all options for camera placement. However, once you get to mid-September on, a mock scrape is possibly the best spot to take inventory on your bucks.
For the highest concentration of buck pictures, place your cameras on active scrapes or create a mock scrape or two. If there is no existing scrape where you want to hang a camera then create your own and use a Magnum Scrape Dripper to ensure bucks show up and hang around. Any time of year, a good licking branch can become a community sign post. This creates perfect picture opportunities, especially for bucks. You may not see many does, but chances are you will see all the bucks in a given area if the mock scrape is positioned correctly.
For more GameKeeper tips, read “3 Benefits of Herd Management.” Most of us hunt in areas where the deer density is fairly high and there is no shortage of does to harvest on any given hunt. More people are getting on board with the quality deer philosophy and trying to do their part in managing herd numbers.
Tech Tip from OutdoorMetrix
Take the buck census a step further, use an app like OutdoorMetrix to manage the buck photos you capture and tag the pictures by the name of the bucks in the image. Then you can sort your pictures and cameras by those individual bucks, analyze their movement patterns, develop a hit list and a “safe” list, and see weather data for each photo. Over time you build a detailed photo log of all the big bucks on your cameras.
