Hey guys,

Today I decided that I wanted to move my ladder stand over in my "honey hole" property. I had it set-up in a cluster of three trees in the middle of a golden rod field with a pond about 15 yards to my right, bedding behind me, and thick brush in front of me with a corn field on the other side of that.

I took a walk over where my hang-on stand is. It is a thin strip of crab apple trees with a narrow (10 yards wide) swamp on the north side, thick beddingon the south and west side, and the east side is the golden rod field where my stand is. I was pumped when I walked in there (havn't been in there since June) and I started seeing rubs everywhere. All is good and normal, so I go check my hang-on to make sure that there is no trimming that needs done and to make sure the straps holding it are still in good shape. Everything is fine so I decide just to poke around a little bit and see how the area is looking for this season. I walked east towards the golden rod field to where I have a spot for my climber and wow, two scrapes that seem to have good activity. Ok, that was a big plus, so I keep poking around and I head towards a crab apple tree that was scrapped up last year and it is already surrounded in scrapes. I saw 11 different scrapes in this area with one major scrape (5 different scrapes surrounding a crab apple tree). I stopped there and looked around and saw a perfect tree for my ladder stand and I headed to the field, took my stand down and moved it.

My ladder stand is now set-up exactly 20 yards from this community scrape (the same scrape that I saw all of the bucks using last year that I couldn't get a shot at). Here are a few pics from my trail camera when it was set-up over that scrape last year...