During most whitetail seasons, I don’t mess with mock scrapes. On the properties I bowhunt in South Dakota and Wisconsin, the bucks usually scrape under the same trees year after year, and because I have treestands and ground blinds in place to take advantage of these locations, I never felt the need to build mock scrapes.

This fall will be different, however. After watching many of the informative how-to YouTube videos from Jeff Sturgis of Whitetail Habitat Solutions, I’m finally going to give his mock vine scrape a shot. I have a good supply of vines in the river-bottom woods behind my house, so cutting vines to use for mock scrape licking branches will be convenient.

As you’ll see in the video below, Sturgis doesn’t use artificial deer scent on the vine licking branch. He simply ties one section of vine (6 to 7 feet in length) so it hangs vertically at about waist high. After tying in the vine to live branches with parachute cord, he scrapes the dirt directly under the new licking branch. According to Sturgis, all deer will quickly begin using the vine to deposit scent from their preorbital and forehead glands.

Sturgis believes in the mock vine scrape technique so much that he installs one at every treestand location. His many mock scrape videos on his YouTube page featuring whitetails using the vine prove this technique is a great way to position a buck perfectly for a close-range shot.