Well, I've hunted three of the last four days now, and have learned a fair amount about the deer here, but also have some questions.

On Saturday, I went out very early and got to the apple trees while it was still dark. I sat down in a somewhat concealed spot about 30 feet away from them and waited. At about 8:30, I heard a whole lot of noise behind me, and a little spike buck trotted right up within 10 feet of me and stopped. He then walked over to the apple trees, sniffed around (all of the apples I knocked down on Thursday were gone) and then took off. once he got 100 feet or so away, I used the grunt call, just to see what he would do. We stared eac other in the eyes for a few minutes, then he leapt up and ran off into the woods. I then followed the stream from the apples down to the swamp. I circumnavigated the swamp stopping for an hour or a half-hour at a time. During my last stop at the swamp, I saw a big deer get up from some pines on the other side. I couldn't tell if it was a buck or a doe (we can only shoot bucks) and I watched it wander off into the woods. I continued around the swamp to the spot it had risen from and then followed it's tracks into the woods. I found a scrape in there, it looked fresh and was the first one I've seen this year. Does it mean they were just starting rut? I waited near the scrape until sundown which is when something large (I don't know if it was a deer or a moose) snorted at me 5 times.

Sunday I started a little later. I crossed another hunters tracks early in the day as I went toward the apple trees again. There is a very overgrown pasture that runs North from the apple trees. As I reached the North edge, I heard a snap and saw a deer (again, sex unknown) go into the field from the West. I moved East hoping to reach where it would reenter the woods before it did. When I got there, I just found tracks. Big tracks though, with dew claws. Just about then, a pickup truck pulled in on the road above and four hunters came down. They said that they thought they were moose tracks. Could my deer have stayed in the field or turned back? I don't know, I really thought these tracks were made by the deer. They were quite fresh and I'm sure I would have seen the moose. Do moose have dew claws? I plodded around in the woods some more, but there were so many other hunters out there. I called it at 1 so I could watch the Steelers.

Monday it snowed, and I unfortunately had things to do , so no hunting.

Today I went back out with about 6inches of new snow on the ground. I found tracks immediately. The first couple of sets that I saw went straight to the apple trees. There were numerous tracks there. I began following the outbound tracks down the stream toward the swamp. They were all from relatively small deer, but I figured maybe I could find out where they bed by following them. Well, I followed them across the swamp and back into some more woods. Back in these woods, I found about 2 dozen small scrapes, and tracks everywhere, mostly small, but some that were not so small. No biggies like I had seen on Sunday though. The tracks down here just seemed to wander around and I never really found where they left the area. I crossed back over the swamp and went to the area where I had heard the snorts on Saturday. Here I found more fresh scrapes (about a dozen) and tracks wandering all around.

So my questions are:

Do just bucks scrape, or do does do it too?

Will a deer tend to eat first thing or will he be tending his scrapes? In other words, where is a better place to setup, one of the scrape area or near the apple trees? What about the use of scent on the scrapes, will that do anything for me?