Saturday, December 10, 2011

Ducks & Bucks


A deer scouting tip I've picked up from my dad is keeping an eye out for scrapes while in the woods doing other hunts, and I thought I was pretty conscious of keeping an eye out for them even when in duck swamps.. that is until Macy started finding scrapes I walked by dozens of times on the way to a cypress pond.. she'd be working in front of me on the walk in then lock up smelling a spot, I'd go check it out thinking she had something- and clear as day there'd be a scrape.. She'd found a few the same way then I figured out the scrapeline was along the edge of the swamp and found a couple others..  this was during the Fl rut so I imagine the rubs were pretty smelly from being frequented often, probably a young buck since it's using small trees and scraping close to the ground.


With the high water last season I had to take the boat to hunt this same spot and found this little buck while poling the boat in about 20 yards from the shoreline.. only a couple inches deep so couldn't have drowned.. had plenty of healthy body mass, no visible wounds.. only thing I can think of is maybe hunters were running dogs and it ran itself to exhaustion..


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