Muley rubs and timing

[ScreamingPotato]

Sorry for the basic question, I'm a Whitetail and Elk hunter toying with cutting my Mule Deer teeth this coming year. Just now starting to work on my starting points and thinking about how things might look.

Hunting 3rd season the last few years we've found several areas that I've marked with gobs of rubs and some big ones. Deer clearly spent a lot of time in these areas previously.
Am I correct in thinking these are pretty much only to scratch their velvet off or do they spar and practice in prerut as well?
I'm assuming there's some chance they'll still be in these areas early in archery but they'll be long gone come rifle seasons, yeah?

 

[Muleys32]

Haven’t hunted Colorado but I definitely see mule deer rake brush and trees quite a bit during the pre and peak rut.

 

[robby denning]

Yes they do use trees to rub velvet but I've killed rutting bucks right in areas with lots of rubs, fresh and old (old as in going back decades).

I've not solved the puzzle on how rubs relate to the mule deer rut like a whitetail's rubs do, but they are significant and I purposly hunt areas with rubs during the rut.

My guess is in 20 years we'll know much more about the subject and that rubs will be more significant in hunters' minds than they are now.

 

[Alpine4x4]

I had a young 2x3 come in and rub one of our small aspens on camera during the beginning of the rut one evening. Later that night a bigger dominate 5x5 came in and destroyed a small aspen about 10ft to the left of the small bucks rub. I had three other mature bucks come in the area with one being a heavy 5x5 who seemed to run the show, none of them rubbed. The deer kept using the area, but they didn't actively rub. Don't know what to make of it.

 

[Firestone]

Sounds more like rubs from the rut then rubbing off velvet to me. Seems like every buck I have watched strip their velvet, its usually on a bush, brush, or smaller sapling like trees.
I've watched lots of bucks tear into actual trees like a bull elk, in late October and November. On one occasion I picked up a buck thrashing a tree from a few miles away and ended up killing him the next day about 100 yards from where I spotted him.
I've also seen bucks leave multiple rubs in a pretty small area like your describing and they were all rut related as well.