Deer Scrape Observations

We have been observing a deer scrape with a digital trail camera since late September 2007. I've read different opinions on the time of day deer use scrapes and since I have all of these photos I thought it would be a good idea to see exactly when deer showed up at this scrape.

Let's start with a little background about this scrape. This scrape is along an old road and this is at least the second year that it has been used. We still use this road and travel on it with our ATV's and it is also used somewhat as a deer trail. To get these deer scrape visit numbers I didn't count passer-by deer; instead I tried to only count the deer that were actually visiting the scrape.

Out of the approximate three month study period there were only about two weeks that a camera was not present. One of these weeks was part of Thanksgiving week, which was during rifle season, and the other was a few days in mid-October.

From September 3rd through January 3rd there were 94 total visits with 58 visits during the dark and 36 visits in daylight hours. This is a 1.6 to 1 ratio of dark to daylight deer visits.

Bucks accounted for the majority of the visitors but there were several does. The ratio of bucks to does was 3.3 to 1 (72 bucks to 22 does).

I also broke out the ratios of bucks to does in the dark and in daylight. These ratios were 7.3 to 1 (51 bucks to 7 does) at night and 1.4 to 1 (21 bucks to 15 does) in the daytime.

What can we learn from this? It surely looks like the night visits are dominated by bucks, but on the other hand nighttime visits as compared to daytime visits is not real far out of line.

Do I think this was a good place for a stand? I would say no, and I did not have a stand there. With only 36 deer visits in about 90 days this is not a lot of deer traffic even if you would add another 36 passers by. On the other hand it sure did prove to be a good place to put a camera.

I'm not entirely sure how significant these numbers are and how well they would stand up under scientific scrutiny. I'm not sure how I could change the circumstances to get numbers that would be any more reliable, but I think they do offer some more insight into the use of deer scrapes.

This is a photo of a buck working the licking branch at 11:25 PM.