The "J-hook" thread got me thinking. Who has successfully downed a buck by strategically hunting scrapes? What's your story? Factor in wind/weather conditions, treestand position and where the scrapes were. Interested to see how different we hunt them in Alabama vs other areas. I have not had success scrape hunting.

I have had a lot of success hunting scrapes or putting hunters on them.
1. After a big rain that ends at daylight I will usually hunt a scrape in hopes that he will refreshing it.

2 Hunt down wind of scrape just inside of a thicket to catch them scent checking a scrape.

3 Pre rut and post rut is when I usually hunt them.

Post rut you would be out there in May on our leases.

Well I meant when it slows a bit. Lowndes is the same way. Meant when a lot of the does have been bread and the hard running is in kinda a lull.

Killed a nice 8 pointer last year. I was stalking last Jan. I came on a scrape in a old logging road one afternoon. I stayed as for away as I could but I put a few drops of doe in heat in it. I found a tree to climb then the next morning I was there about 30 mins before daylight and an hour later hear he came rubbing and pawing 20 yards from me . One shot later he's down.

I don't hunt them. It's been my experience that most scrapes are made by young deer (I know better, it's just that I've never caught anything but little bucks messing with them, even using cameras). Also been my experience that 99.9% of scrapes I see show up one day, then are seldom/never touched again. I'll find a scrape as big as a truck hood, tore all to pieces, limbs mangled above it, and it never gets touched again. The ones I do see that get freshened I have to assume are getting done at night...have hunted within sight of them countless times and have never seen a (large) buck come to them during daylight.
I see this happen a lot: A scrape shows up on a dim roadbed, then seemingly goes a month without ever being touched again. Suddenly I walk by it again a month later and it's been cleaned up. Then it goes cold again. I just can't trust a scrape to be visited daily.

Found a good scrape line last year around January 15th... Hunted it off and on all the next week... Each time I would walk out around lunch I could see that a buck had been in making new rubs and scrapes each day( since I would walk in before daylight and didn't look for fresh scrapes and rubs).. So apparently it was being done at night... So I finally decided to hunt all day, that day at 1:15 killed a nice 8 point working the scrape line... I checked my camera that I had set on the MAIN scrape which was the size of the hood of my truck... Had 7 different racked bucks that had been in regularly checking that 1 scrape... All night time pictures...

I was not working a scrape line last year but took note of them as I walked back further on land past scrapes. While I was on my walk back that evening I noticed he made a fresh scrape while I was on the property. Got me kind of pumped to hunt the scrape line but had no success. I got him patterned late last season so should take him out early bow season this year. Can't wait

I've had good luck hunting scrapes right after a good rain during pre rut. They seem to want to freshen their scrapes back up. Once the does start going into heat. The bucks tend to stay on the does and the scrapes get forgotten.