It's just like scents. People spray and drag the crap all over the woods and hang a stand. Well, if you've got half a brain to begin with you hung the stand in an area deer frequent and are likely to pass through. So along comes a deer and the guy say, boy he came right to the XYZ Stinko Outlandish Lure. When in fact, the deer was heading that way and passing through that section of woods for a month to get to his secure little bedding area where the girls hang out. Probably 99% of the deer claimed to have fallen to a lure would have fallen to stinky free that day too.
I agree with this statement mostly. But, the current scent I'm using has been amazing me. I use just scent wicks hung in trees mostly. I can't tell you how many different times I've had bucks come in downwind of me, only to catch wind of it and come in and smell and lick the wick. Its the only scent I've had this type of reaction to so often. I had a small spike once catch wind of a bottle of tinks I stupidly placed on the ground because I was in a hurry. He came in, stuck his nose in it and knocked it over. $10.00, in the ground.
The mock scrape, to my surprise has actually worked the last couple seasons. I never did it and was skeptical. I got a dripper on sale before so I decided to give it whirl. Made a scrape, hung it and left it go. To my surprise, the area really got tore up during the rut. Of course it was all done at night as I never seen a buck in it during daylight hours. But, it did get a reaction.
Grunt calls, they're hit and miss for me at least. I missed a really nice buck a few years ago that walked by me out of range. I grunted to him and he came in on a string. Kinda caught me off guard becouse in most cases, my attempts are ignored.
One of the coolest things I ever seen while bowhunting was while rattling. A very large, chalk white 8 pointer came crashing through the woods while I rattled. He scared the crap outta me when he came exploding into view in front of me. Hair was stood up on the back of his neck, walked stiff legged up to a bush and thrashed the heck out of it. Of course, I was shaking like a leaf in the tree.
I think a lot of the success of these types of things really depends on the area, deer density and buck/doe ratio. Our ground has quite a few mature animals. So, I think its the main reason why I've had deer respond more to calls and scents.