Now that is what you call a rub.
All deer hunters love to take a stroll through the woods and see a tree nice and scraped up. That’s basically a sure sign to plant a tree stand or blind somewhere in that area. When you see a rub out in the woods, it typically means that a deer isn’t too far away – or at least frequents the spot near the tree it picked out as a scratching post.
Bucks like to scrape their antlers and forehead on trees for a number of different reasons. Each spring, deer grow new antlers, which obviously means that at some point before then, they lose their racks. That usually happens during the winter, and the “shedding” is usually helped out by the male deer rubbing trees throughout the winter season.
A buck might scrape against a tree in the Fall to help remove the layer of velvet that coats their antlers. They’ll also do it as an act of marking territory. During mating season – also known as the “rut” – male deer will utilize the scent glands from their forehead and rub them up against the trees to both let females know they are there and inform the other bucks that this neck of the woods is taken.
Rubbing repetitively on a tree can also allow for the tree’s cambium layer to be exposed, which is just another scent that can be emitted that allows for a buck to communicate with other deer that it’s laid claim to that area. If a tree is scraped year after year, it is sometimes referred to as a “signpost scrape.” That’s because it’s a good sign that a deer – most likely a bigger buck if it’s happening on a yearly basis – has really set up shop in one particular spot.
Rubs and scrapes are sometimes hard to spot, since some don’t chip away all that much at the tree. The one featured in the video below is basically the opposite. It genuinely looks like someone took a dull-bladed chain saw to this black walnut tree. I can almost guarantee you that you’ve never seen a rub quite like this one. And if it was just the singular buck that shredded this tree down to almost a toothpick, it’s gotta have one of the strongest necks in the animal kingdom.
“Ever wonder how big bucks demolish a tree? This might explain a thing or two… so much for that black walnut tree!”
That’s wild.
Safe to say that the big ol’ buck was scraping on that tree religiously, and shoutout to the hunter who decided to strap a trail camera on a nearby tree to capture the deer in action. All of the deer hunters that came across the clip were astounded by the scrape, and left comments like these below the post:
“That’s one hell of a scrape!”
“The coolest is when you get a big buck down that still has bark and wood embedded in his antlers.”
“Dudes got a neck like Marshawn Lynch.”
“I never realized how much they use their head to do this and not strictly their antlers.”
“That what my wall corners look like after scratching my back.”
