In the Outdoors
Rub-ology 101: All rubs are not created equal
With Oak Duke

Sunday, September 3, I was scouting out one of my deer hunting areas and have to admit that I almost stumbled over my first fresh rub of the year.

There's nothing quite like seeing that first one to stoke up the fires of anticipation for the fast-approaching whitetail season!

But this was an early rub for the Southern Tier of Western New York, especially a twisted, aggressive rub.

Buck rubs are not the same thing any more than the bucks that created them are all the same.

Rubs are as individual as the bucks that made them.

We tend to want to lump everything into one pot, but after carefully studying whitetail buck rubs for 40 years, there are a few conclusions about whitetail rubs that can be inferred beyond the standard text that says, "deer rub their antlers to remove the velvet."

Years ago I closely observed a nice nine-point buck literally striping the velvet off his antlers. He did it very carefully and deliberately in a thick patch of willows in an old drainage ditch.

Even though he was only 20 yards away, I used my binos and watched how he rubbed the willow saplings.

Slowly, he would rub, then eat the velvet strip and bark at the same time. I was fortunate to watch the process for about 30 minutes. The top of the willows barely shook from his rubbing, but enough to draw my attention.

Antler velvet is packaged and sold as a testosterone booster, and is a multi-million dollar business. Many people worldwide believe in the health benefits of antler velvet. Chinese Herbal Medicine practitioners consider deer antler velvet near the top of the Superior Herb list.

Birthing does eat the placenta to stimulate lactation and other hormonal driven postnatal behaviors.

So we can conclude that at least some whitetail bucks make rubs and eat their velvet, with the bark strips.

That is one type of rub.

Another early type of rub is in the category of "aggressive rubs." Aggressive rubs are created by bucks that seem to use saplings and small trees that have "give" as sparing partners, or like a punching bag in the gym.

We can discern "velvet rubs" and "early aggressive rubs" as two different types of rubs.

These early aggressive rubs often show the sapling "twisted." That is, the upper branches are twisted around, as if we tried to break a green sapling branch with antlers, that we only a short while ago, grew!

Take a pair of sheds to where we found one of these "aggressive rubs" and try to replicate the damage to a similar sapling. Whitetails demonstrate amazing force. I just don't know quite how they get some of the "twist" in the limbs of the sapling with "fixed" antlers.

When bucks are rubbing aggressively, they will stop, look around and lick the bark, evidently enjoying the scent that they leave, and these pheromones may further stimulate their rutting or breeding behavior, analogous to the velvet eating.

After a moment, the buck attacks the tree, pauses, licks it, and then hits it again. This off-and-on behavior goes on until the actual living cambium layer of the sapling is stripped off and the center core of the sapling is exposed.

A third type of rub is the "sign post rub." These rubs can be on anything a couple feet off the ground; from telephone poles, old fence posts, even the corner of an old hay wagon. On these types of rubs, whitetails leave their scent.

"Sign Post Rubs" can be in two categories, those that are annual and those that only seem to be hit that year.

In my "neck of the woods" a favorite tree for annual sign post rubs is sumac. Certain trees are hit by different bucks each year and the deep scars of annual rubbing often eventually kills the tree. And then another sumac will be chosen, nearby to replace the dead tree.

When I let my English Setter out in the front yard, he has certain corners and spots on the hedge where he wants to mark. And he goes to them in a straight line. No doubt another dog as left his calling card there. I believe "sign post rubs" function in the same way. They are the whitetail olfactory "message boards."

This quick discussion of different types of buck rubs would be remiss if it didn't include two more types;

One would be "rub lines," which have received a lot of attention as "what to look for?" Rub lines have been defined as a series of buck rubs in a relatively straight line that show us the travel corridor of a buck. The rubs face the same direction.

Personally, I think more often these "rub lines," are created by a few bucks (as opposed to just one) and it happens to be the path of a bachelor group. And they are a great place to hunt.

And second would be the "scrape rubs." These are rubs also found in conjunction with scrapes and the "overhanging branch." Scrape rubs are the "whole deal," as far as rutting sign goes and gives us our best clues, with analysis, the stage of the rut.

And finally there are the "hooking rubs." These are great rubs to find too, during the season.

Hooking rubs look as if someone took a big knife and gouged a tree for about 10 seconds. Sometimes we can see successive hooking rubs down through the woods.

They tell us one thing: a very aggressive, ornery, and dominant buck is in the same woods we are.

Oak Duke, publisher of the Wellsville Daily Reporter, writes a weekly outdoors column.