I hunted a large parcel of public land for years, both with a bow and with gun. Got so I knew most every scrape line and figured out the best time to hunt those scrape lines was before they were made. Many times the scrape line itself was the hotspot, not the individual territorial scrapes themselves. While one could sometimes irritate a buck by urinating or putting other buck urine in the scrape, it generally got recleaned/remarked at night. The more human presence around it, the more nocturnal the activity got, if it continued at all. The large breeding scrapes were best hunted downwind 50 yards or so, as that seemed that once made(generally at night) the bucks never went back to them directly during the daylight hours unless there were deer they could see, in close proximity. They preferred to bed or walk downwind 50 -100 yards downwind to check them out by scent first, instead of going to them directly. It also seemed that after the initial spurt of scrape activity that it slowed down considerable as the deer became accustomed to what deer were where. After the general gun deer season in which a good portion of the bucks were taken, the scrape activity became active again as bucks restructured their dominance and territories accordingly. The about Christmas when those does that were missed in their first estrus came around again, one would find new fresh breeding scrapes. This holds true now to the numerous other public and private parcels I hunt nowadays. Scrapes, like scat, tell me where a deer was. Odds of it coming back to the same spot are influenced by a myriad of things, including coincidence.
