Nov. 1 is the first day of Annual Sniff Walking Week, for those who observe.
There are plenty of us here in the mountains of Maryland who do.
Whitetail bucks sniff. They walk. During Annual Sniff Walking Week they do both at the same time. There is speculation that they chew gum while sniff walking. I say that’s not likely, but recognize that these physically gifted animals certainly have the coordination to do so.
Bucks sniff walk, of course, during the early stages of courtship and they are not monogamous. As they traipse the far western slopes of the Free State, they seek the scent of female deer who may be ready and willing to increase the ungulate population of the hollows and hills.
Bucks will make a scrape, using their front hooves to remove leaves below an overhanging branch. Then they pee on the scrape to let does know a little more about them and to tell other bucks to go somewhere else.
Thus, if you find a scrape and are a bowhunter, you have uncovered a possible productive hunting location. If you can’t find a scrape then make one. You don’t have hooves so use a boot. You do have a personal urine applicator for the moistening of the exposed dirt.
That’s what the best bowhunter I know does and he has been smacking trophy bucks for a long time. He started doing that before there were any videos or television shows to educate archery hunters.
“Pee is pee,” says the best bowhunter I know. He has written out enough buck tags to drain the ink from a couple pens. There’s no brag, just fact. He also has the scientific knowledge about that which he speaks.
Think about bowhunting, especially for what people now call a target buck or a buck at the top of their personal hit list. Say it is an 11-pointer that has made it through several seasons in this land of much rock and little soil, avoiding hunters, both legal and illicit, and somehow putting on enough size and muscle to be an alpha-plus buck.
As a bowhunter you are trying to get within 40 yards of a witty, nimble animal that has tens of thousands of acres to roam. Duh. But some people make it happen on an almost-consistent level.
My hit list of bucks I would shoot is probably more lengthy than most nimrods. I’m good with that. I’ve never been a trophy hunter although calendar turnover and the difficulty of dragging a deer out of the woods could make me one.
When my grandson Brady was a “widdle shaver” I took him into the woods and showed him what scrapes look like. We also found some rubs and I told Brady how the bucks use their antlers to remove bark from trees as another marking of their territories.
When we got back to the house, he excitedly told Grammie Sandy that we had found nine buck scrubs. I saw his combination of scrapes and rubs into scrubs as genius and have used the term ever since.