Well, after not being able to hunt my new farm once rifle season began, I have to say I was a little worried. The farmer is doing the right thing though, he doesn't want many bucks taken this year, so he politely told us to just wait til next year.

After having that established, I was a little concerned about having a "good" spot to hunt. There is ONE public land spot I REALLY like. Knowing there is a possibility for GOOD deer to be in the area, I took a buddy with me and we did a little scouting/hunting today, with the .270. I had been up a little too late Saturday night and was running on about 3 hours of sleep. By the time we made the long hike in, I was just looking for a comfortable spot to sit down. I decided to get up early and go meet blake near the spot he was sitting. He had apparently been trying to get a hold of me because he saw some REALLY good sign on his way in. I walked up near him and saw a scrape. This guys is REALLY rare around here, not to mention on PUBLIC land. I looked at the scape closely and saw that there was FRESH deer pee in it. At this point I'm starting to get pumped. I walked 10 more feet, and there was a rub line. Another 15yds and there was ANOTHER super fresh scrape. Then we started finding, TONs, and TONS of rubs. All of this was near a secluded field, well you have to walk through the field to get to it and there were 2 fresh scrapes on the edge of the field, where they have just absolutely RIPPED up the ground. This deer, and I think it's more than one, but he was absolutely shredding trees. One of the rub lines were all on the same kind of tree.


So my question is, what "stage" of the rut is it when they are tending scrapes. Is this still the "seeking" stage? And in what order do the stages occur.