Try this for whitetails

[ribo451]

If anyone is interested in trying a deer scent this is the one I used for the last buck I got. I’ve never had any luck with artificial scents and didn’t think they really worked. I bought this one on Amazon because it was relatively cheap compared to others.

I had planned on using it as a scent drag. Instead I was hunting a place near my property in the evenings and I made a mock scrape and put this in it. This next part sounds weird but then I would pee in the scrape too. My brother had told me about a time that he had found a scrape right behind his shop and he peed in it and the next day there were 5 scrapes in the same place. So I figured I would try it on a mock scrape and see what happened.

After the first night I went back and it looked like a deer had worked my scrape. I added that code red scent to it and peed in it again. The next day my scrape had been worked and there was another scrape right next to mine maybe 4 feet away. I peed in mine and added that red scent again. The next afternoon when I got there my scrape had been worked. The other scrape had been worked and there was another new one about 8 feet on the other side of mine.

I juiced mine up again and then went to my brush blind I had made 92 yards away and this buck came in about 1/2 hour before dark and went straight to the scrapes. I should have waited to see if he was going to work them but I shot him before he could.

He’s not a giant and just like every other time I get something I didn’t take very good photos of him but he’s pretty nice. He’s 16 1/4” wide and the back tines are 9” long. I’m guessing he’s 3 1/2 years old.

I’m convinced that he was there because of the scrapes. I don’t know if it was the code red stuff or maybe I’ve been producing and wasting perfectly good deer scent all this time.

I’ve got one more tag and I don’t know if I’ll try this again this year because I don’t know if I’m going to hunt the same place several nights in a row but I’ll be doing this in the future when I have more time to dedicate to hunting one particular area.

I need to get a new game cam and hang it over a mock scrape and see what happens.

 

[ribo451]

I am heading out to hunt this afternoon but I wanted to stop by that mock scrape I made and freshen it up in case my parents wanted to try hunting there. This guy was in the scrape when I got there. I plan on holding out for a nice one with my last tag and if this guy was in the area where my last tag is good for I would have been tempted to shoot him. He looks a little bigger than the one I got yesterday. I watched him lick the branches above the scrapes and he sniffed them but I didn’t see him scrape around in them. He was there when I got there so maybe he had already done it. I will be buying more of that code red stuff after what I’ve seen this year.

 

[cohunter14]

Very interesting, thanks for sharing!!

 

[ribo451]

I’m probably done for the season. There is a chance I will get out next Monday which is our last day. I only hunted a handful of days. I filled two tags and didn’t fill the last one but had some of the best days I’ve ever had hunting whitetails.

I live in a place where you don’t see piles of deer. I’ve gone several days without seeing anything. Most of where I hunt is pretty thick.

I had one day where I sat in a ground blind watching about 350 yards of an old road that goes through thick bedding cover. I had a deer walk by about every 20 minutes for the first 6 hours of the day.

There was a buck next to my blind when I walked in there. It was legal shooting time and I watched him running around sniffing the ground for almost 5 minutes but it was still too dark to make out his antlers. That’s the second time this year I watched a buck and couldn’t see how big he was because of low light.

After that it was a constant parade of does. I had a pretty decent 4x4 walk out sniffing the ground but I passed on him. I had a buck walk by following a doe grunting up a storm. He was maybe 30 yards away and I never saw him. Did I mention it’s thick in there? Three hours later I had another buck walk by in about the same place grunting up a storm and all I saw of him was a couple antler points through a bush. It was the most rut activity I’ve ever had in one day.

The next day I went to a different area and was looking at three does when a nice buck took off running in front of me. I might have seen him if I had been looking where I was going instead of looking at the does on the ridge to my right. I put the rifle on him but didn’t want to try a running shot. I was hoping he would stop. And he did. Behind the only bush on that part of the mountain. Then he ran straight away.

Overall it was a great season. My only complaint is that I only got to hunt maybe 6 or 7 days. Hopefully next year I will have less going on in the fall.

I did put the scent I mentioned at the beginning of this thread on scent wicks up and down the road I was watching. I had bucks and does walk right by several of the wicks. Not a one of them acted like they even noticed it. It was pretty strong too. I could smell it easily when I walked up to the wicks. It seemed like it was attracting bucks like a magnet in scrapes during the pre rut but didn’t seem to be very effective after that. I will try it again next year.

 

[ribo451]

I guess one other complaint I have is that I hunted the whole time hoping for snow and we never got any. Now I am headed to stare at my in-laws for thanksgiving and it snowed overnight. Oh well.