If daylight triggers deer behavior, it’s no wonder they sometimes get confused.
QUESTION: While turkey hunting this spring, I found several patches of bare ground that looked like scrapes. I know turkeys scratch the ground to feed, but these were single bare patches in places where I’ve found scrapes in the fall, but looked like they were recent. Do bucks scrape in the spring, and if so, why?
ANSWER: While they do so more in the fall, bucks and does use so-called licking branches all year. Those branches often hang over scrapes. While we don’t know the exact purpose, it is believed that scrapes serve as a means of olfactory (scent) communication, primarily during the rut. However, a buck will occasionally scrape outside of the fall breeding season, even well outside it.
While it’s more speculation than pure science, I have a theory as to why. Most spring turkey seasons occur roughly six months after the whitetail rut. Hours of daylight are roughly the same as they were six months before. We do know that day length controls the whitetail’s biological clock, and it could be why bucks sometimes scrape in the spring, and birds sometimes sing and turkeys gobble in the fall. In each case the effort is a lot more subdued.
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