BSK
Well-Known Member
When commercial trail-cameras first became available (early to mid 90s), they were very expensive, and were primarily seen as a research tool. My first trail-camera system, in 1994, cost around $1,200 (Trail Master 1500). However, once the Chinese started to mass produce them in the early 2000s,and the price fell into the $200-400 range, more and more hunters began using them. This prompted a lot of public discussion about how and where to use them. Within the research world, there was a lot of discussion between researchers as to the best set-ups. Although everyone realized scrapes were a great place for cameras, sometimes scrapes were hard to find. I remember sitting around with other researchers, discussing trail-camera set-ups over beers, and hearing for the first time the idea of a mock scrape made with human urine. Of course, everyone thought that was crazy. So we all had to try it. And we all found it worked shocking well. This prompted a whole bunch of high-quality research projects involving mock scrapes made with human urine. It was shown conclusively that this works. But interestingly, only with male urine. It took years for me to convince TNdeer users that this works. Everyone on here though I was crazy at the time. I'm sure you can go back and find these discussions if you dig deep enough.
I think the major mental stumbling block was the idea about what scrapes are - what is their biological purpose? It was thought for years that scrapes were a communication device between does entering estrus and rutting bucks. Does would pee in them to alert bucks to the fact she was entering estrus and ready to breed. If this were the case, men peeing in scrapes would be counterproductive. It was thought any pee used in scrapes would have to be from a woman approaching ovulation, and some research projects were set-up to test this concept, to mixed results. However, the role of scrapes was misinterpreted. They are not communication devices between the sexes, they are communication devices between bucks. Just like every male dog peeing on the same fire-hydrant to advertise their existence, bucks make and work scrapes as a communal "message board" advertising their health and dominance status to each other - sort of a system to help establish a social pecking order. That is why using male human urine is so important in creating mock scrapes. The urine must contain testosterone, and once encountered, every buck in the area will add theirs to the mix.
To this day in 2021, some of the hottest traditional scrapes on my property I started as part of my own mock scrape research conducted back in 2003-05. I may have started those scrapes with my own pee, but bucks quickly took them over and made them their own, and those scrapes have been used every year since.
