Researchers at the University of Georgia conducted a two-year study on a 3,500-acre property in the northern part of the state where the rut peaks in mid-November, as it does in most regions. The land was managed for a healthy whitetail population, and the age structure of the bucks was good. Those bucks were wild, and hunted by people. This was not another study of pen deer, but a real-world project that unearthed some interesting results. Aiming their trail cameras at every scrape they could find, the researchers got reams of videotape and images of deer at scrapes. One major finding--while multiple bucks of all ages (in one case 13 different animals) might eagerly paw one set of scrapes, similar [...]

Research years ago by Dr. Karl Miller, Larry Marchington and Matt Knox provided some good skinny on whitetail buck rubs. The highly regarded biologists found that when an area is blazed with a noticeably large number of rubs, dozens or hundreds, the peak of the rut often occurs days earlier than normal. The theory is that by depositing gobs of “priming pheromones” on all those trees, the bucks stimulate the does into early estrus. So if you find twice or three times as many rubs as usual in your hunt zone this fall, you might want to take off work and hunt a week earlier than you planned. The number of rubs that pop up in the woods can also [...]