First let me set the stage for a minute...
I've been scouting hard the last couple weeks and was finding squat.
Eventually I did manage to find and area where deer are moving regularly, and even more promising found a couple rub lines in roughly the same area. More encouraging is the fact that I also was able to find rub lines going back the past couple years telling me this is a historic travel route for bucks (it should be, it's along a ridge heading toward a clearcut with a thick alder swamp below it)...so far so good.
Scrapes were the the problem. I was puzzled by my inability to find ANY scrapes. Today while out I found freshly turned dirt (it rained 2 days ago). It wasn't a hole like somthing had been digging, it just looked well...like a classic scrape except instead of being under a tree it was on the side of an embankment - no licking stick, no tree just pawed dirt. I couldn't see a clear deer track on the spot but trust me it's right where a scrape "should" be - near a rub line along a trail. Looking around a bit more I found couple more along the travel corridor(made before the rain) and thinking back I had seen such "scrapes" a few times elsewhere while scouting.
Has anyone else ever seen this or similar?
