It's time to plan your pre rut hunting strategy. It may the best time a buck can be fooled with decoys, and mock rubs/scrapes.

3 Ways to Fake Out a Pre Rut Buck

The weeks right before the peak of the rut are a great time to put your tag on a mature buck that usually remains off the radar during the rest of the year. But instead of hoping for a chance sighting at these keyed up bucks, put the odds in your favor with a little deception.

Fake a Scrape

Yes, we know bucks typically work scrapes at night, but there is a time during the pre rut when they are likely to check them during the day, especially if they check the area and their noses pick up on a new scent. Take advantage of this curiosity.

Suit up in scent-free clothing and rubber boots and head to your rut hunting blind locations – saddles, funnels and trails connecting doe bedding areas. Pick a spot off a well-used trail and within shooting distance of your blind to build your mock scrape. Be sure there is a licking branch above. Score the ground with the heel of your boot, a shed antler or a rake sprayed with scent killer. Don’t dig too deep. You just want to uncover the forest floor. Add some scent – either a high quality commercial attractant or your own urine (studies have shown this is highly effective). Finally, hang a trail camera to monitor the scrape. When you see photos of bucks showing up during daylight hours, it’s time to climb in the blind and hunt.

More than likely, the most daylight activity around the scrape will be two weeks before the peak of the rut (usually the last two weeks in October in the Midwest), but the scrape can attract wanderers throughout November. If you keep freshening it up, and a buck is making his rut-time rounds, he will probably remember there is a scrape in the area and come to check it out.

Create a Rub Hub

Many hunting blinds are put in the middle of large food sources where deer can be hard to pattern or funnels where the deer slip through so quickly it can be hard to get a shot. With a post-hole digger and a handsaw, you can put a rubbing tree anywhere you’d like and attract pre rut bucks or give them a reason to stop in front of your hunting blind.

Read this article on www.qdma.com for the finer points of this practice.

Fake a Fight

As the days get shorter and the rut comes closer, competitiveness increases and these light-hearted sparring sessions become downright violent clashes. Setting up a young buck decoy or two within shooting distance of your blind is one way to get him to come out early and watch or join a fight. Choose to hunt a blind that is within earshot of a buck’s bedding area and start rattling. Short, but loud rattling sequences work best during the pre rut. Once the buck responds to the rattling, pick up your bow and get ready for a shot. He will likely approach from the downwind side of your calls.

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