Smell and Deer Hunting

i couldn't agree more with those who say smell is over rated. i was smoking a butt last year (pretty dumb i know) waiting for a deer to step out when i heard a crunching sound behind me. i turned and looked over my shoulder and three does were within 20 yards of me. i also fired at a buck from about 400 yds on another day and completely missed. i walked down into the woods where it ran and a few minutes later another or possibly the same buck walked to within 10 yards of me. the brush was too thick for me to feel comfortable shooting, mostly because i couldn't see anything but in my scope. i hadn't done a single thing to block scent and was wearing blaze orange and blue jeans.
 
I'd say over half the deer I've killed I killed while smoking. The only thing I do is wear rubber bottomed boots because if you don't and they cross your trail they will smell where you walked. Rubber doesn't leave a scent trail. I don't wear camo or anything special. Most times its just jeans, a t shirt, a light jacket and an orange vest.
 
i couldn't agree more with those who say smell is over rated.
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I am the one who posted about how I have watched them cross my path without being alarmed, however I have had a buck that would come in down-wind when I was in a ground blind watching a two track and got "busted" by him three days in a row just before it got light. It was dark, I was in full camo, was not moving...he still would snort the alarm call when he came and then run back the way he had come. My point was, you do not need cover scent on the bottom of your shoes, but the wind sure seems to announce your presents.
 
Couple of years ago I walked down to my stand and a doe with a buck crossed behind me. She got to my trail and stopped dead and looked right up at the stand. She stared at it for awhile and then finally went on. The buck payed it no attention. The doe got behind some brush and I thought she had kept going. I raised the rifle to take the buck when she stomped the ground. Both of them took off like rockets. I've worn rubber bottomed boots ever since.
 
It is notable that the diminutive Pygmies who hunt the small (relatively) jungle elephants will cover themselves in elephant dung before sneaking underneath an elephant and thrusting a spear into its soft underbelly. If covering one's self in dung did not work, I doubt the Pygmies would bother to do it. So, if you really want an effective cover-scent, you know what you must do. But, I suspect that, that method would only work for single men.
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Natives around the world have been documented performing all sorts of things before and after hunting to assure successful hunts, all of which are claimed to work. There are groups of people who won't sleep with their wives before hunting, sometimes for several days.

I don't know about the pygmies covering themselves with feces as all I can find is this fictional story about doing what you describe that includes the pygmies being unrealistically short http://semanticweb.com/elephant-hun...g-data-and-linked-data-to-your-company_b32963 , but I know that there are several other groups that hunt elephants without doing that. It would appear that the dung story may be a complete myth. http://discovermagazine.com/1992/may/aquestionofsize42

There is a less than bright hunter on Youtube that will spray elk urine in his mouth before deer hunting. He claims it works and if it didn't work, he wouldn't do it, right? Of course, you have probably seen the guy. He is the guy that gets the heck beat out of him by a buck while being video'd. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khKrd1RNy2U

The bottom line is that people will do things that they thing will work, even if such things don't necessarily have any empirical basis in reality.
 
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Or it could have been that time of the month.
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I almost said that earlier but passed.... Now that you brought it up however....

I met a girl that saved her, well, items in the freezer and used them as boot drags during deer season. According to both her and her husband, they said it never failed to bring the bucks in.

I don't doubt it either but I'm just not willing to go that far.
 
This year I'm going to **** all over myself before going hunting just to prove to y'all that deer don't care. I'll report back to tell ya :eek:
 
I met a girl that saved her, well, items in the freezer and used them as boot drags during deer season. According to both her and her husband, they said it never failed to bring the bucks in.
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I've always considered myself a serious,legal hunter. Having utilized urine from bucks or estrus does, tarsal glands as well as relocating fresh deer droppings to equate them into my hunting scenario. Have even used the same from goats as well in deer hunting with success...

...but there are limits to the extent I'd go for a monster buck.
For the record...this would be above my limits. ;)
 
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It's all hype as far as im concerned. My dad shot his biggest deer while smoking a cigarette upwind from it. My grandfather and his friends all smoke and even cook while hunting, and all have harvested many deer doing so.
 
I can usually tell a hot doe has been through the woods, cuz the urine on the leaves smells like vanilla extract; which can drive bucks crazy during the rut.

If you drag hot female pee rags through the woods... be prepared for wild dog/coyote packs following the scent trail. It happened to me once --- wild dogs --- just glad I was up in a treestand; with my bow at the time.
 
downwind

You can be as foul as smelling human as there can be, smoke a pipe, cigar and cig, spit, eat beans 3x aday, chew, and never wash your clothes, pee and crap near where you hunt.

You can be and do all these things, but there is not a deer alive will smell you if you are down wind at the right moment. We cannot control the wind, and can barely predict it, so we pay attention to odors, at least some of us.

I hear the "wind don't matter" stories, but I don't hear it from bowhunters very much. A rifle lets you get ahead of the wind a bit in some places. A deer inside 50 yards, down wind, will pick you off, eventually.

I gave up on cover scents and deer attractants quite a few years ago. Lots of fuss and mess and questionable results. Also, hunting pressure matters.
deer spooked and wary from lots of pressure play the wind hard.
 
I hunt on horseback and tend to hang my clothes that I'll be using near my mare for a few days before I go out. Not sure it works but I've never gotten the "head up" that some of my other friends get.
 
I've hunted a lot of places that deer tend to be very spooky and you need to be careful of scent but most places deer are curious. For the most part you're wasting your time and money if you by too much commercial products. If worried buy some pure vanilla from grocery store and a little dab on boots before walking to stand or stalking. 10 times better and a lot cheaper than all the crap they sell at sporting goods section. I don't have to use it where I live but needed it other places I hunted.
 
I hear the "wind don't matter" stories, but I don't hear it from bowhunters very much. A rifle lets you get ahead of the wind a bit in some places. A deer inside 50 yards, down wind, will pick you off, eventually.
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+1 bamaranger...

...And you most likely won't. Not an avid,successful bow hunter that's used to bringing home especially bucks that others dream about.

That big ole buck didn't get that way by walking into a smell he is not familiar with in his core area. He'll skirt that area and most likely the hunter will never see him and will never know he was busted.

I feel certain I can get by with less scent control or less playing the wind when dealing with does or a younger buck even when bow hunting. But I know you have to play the wind and practice scent control as best you can if you're hunting that monster buck.

I've not found that peeing from my bow stand to have adverse affect on big bucks. Don't think I'd put my fav. cologne on and expect the same results.

egor

Agree with you as well as far as your clothes smelling of horses.

There's cattle all around here. Every deer around these parts graze with the cattle and are accustom to the smell. Hanging my hunting clothes in the barn or stepping in a pile on my way to the stand provides a great cover scent.
 
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I do believe that deer become slightly accoustomed to some human odors like cigarette smoke, gas & oil. But I've spent alot of years in an elevated blind with a good view and have seen many, many deer cross my scent path downwind and react. Even when I dabbled in scent products I found them busting me at times.
I have also had deer cross my scent path while I was smoking and not pay any attention at all. For myself, I just face the wind and look behind me occasionally. The wind/air doesn't allways travel linearly so you never know.
I do wear camo 'cause they are my hunting clothes and it can't hurt, especially when still or bow hunting.
 
I know what you are saying...human urine will draw them in for some reason!
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Absolutely wouldn't you be interested in someone who had been in or around your home and were they went?
 
I do believe that deer become slightly accoustomed to some human odors like cigarette smoke, gas & oil.
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Think you're right as well arch308

There are many Metro Parks with thousands of deer in them and thousands of people a year walking threw them. Those deer are born in and are use to breathing air containing car fumes, tobacco smoke, perfumes, sweating joggers etc. Also the deer get too used to people. I used to run in a park in Reynoldsburg,Oh (Blacklick Metro Park) that you literally had to be careful while running/jogging down the narrow paths that a deer didn't step out in the path and you fell over it.

Not many country deer will ever smell those smells and the instant the older/mature deer do, they are alerted.
 
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I don't know about other smells but they seem to be attracted
to the smoke and smell of Garcia Vegas and that's a fact.
 
I've had does stop the moment they hit my trail like someone smacked them in the head. I've also had does almost stick their head into my ground blind (with my oldest and I in it) before legal shooting light. I really think its dependent on location.

As for bucks, I've never had one scent me that I could see. I've been snagged moving, but have just not seen the reaction to scent. I had a buck that walked up to me, up a draw with me at the top, while I sat on the ground with my back on a blowdown wearing a borrowed orange jacket that almost made me look like the kid from "A Christmas Story". He got within finger football distance before I shot him. He looked at me several times and never thought about it.

I've also had bucks look up at me in the stand, like "something just doesn't look right", pause for a few moments, then move on. I've also had them look up and not think twice about it. I've had them walk under my stand and move on.

I don't go overboard with scent lock products, just wash my gear in scent free, try to bathe with scent free products, avoid petroleum, and just go hunt and pay attention to the wind. Either I will see deer or I won't. Either way, it's better than work.:)

All I can do is prep for the worst and hope for the best.

We won't talk about what happens when you eat baked beans with deer burger and sausage the night before. There's nothing like getting in your stand and it hitting you five minutes later. After a quick run down the ladder and stripping off clothes while running through the woods, deer crashing everywhere. You don't notice the cold when you have to crap!
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Now, that was funny, and another reason to pack toilet paper in the pack in addition to blood trailing!

BTW, I also know first-hand that coons will take large offense to coon cover scent. Beware large, angry male coons walking up to your stand if you use it! :eek:
 
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