Here are some of his quotes:

"The great thing about finding scrapes in September is that you can be almost certain that they were made by a buck with at least one breeding season behind him, yearling bucks usually do not start scraping until the rut phases"

"On several occassions in September, we haev found some early subtle activity at pimary scrape ares. This scrape acitvity is the mark of a mature buck"

He goes on to say that findng large scrapes are very difficult in the early season but if you do find them, to hunt them the first few days of the season, especially if they are along a runway to and from a food source.