Ann, The folks at BO swear by that Oil of Anise or Vanilla. derf

I think I will try the Tonquin today on a cotton ball. There is a bruiser buck on my lease but he is crafty. He does not respond to food or food scents. Tonquin really smells good, oddly enough, it is probably an ingredient in store bought perfumes.

I have to agree about the store bought deer pee. It is rotten out of the bottle.

It may sound funny, but you can get results with immitation tonquin musk mixed with human urine. I know a guy who uses this combo. You can get results from human urine too. Pee in an active scrape sometime and then monitor it. You might find the whole thing ripped up. It really seems to make some bucks mad.

I trapped muskrats in a marshy area when I was younger and I'd often walk to my sets in the early morning and find deer around them. I don't use scents anymore, because I've scaled back the stand hunting, but deer seem to like most of the sweet musky scents.

Tonquin will work on just about anything that walks and beaver castor and oil is also pretty attractive to most animals. I wouldn't be surprised that these are key ingredients in most deer lures. They're key ingredients in most other lures.

Tonquin mixed with beaver oil and a touch of castor would seem to me to be a good base to start with. But, you could just as well go with another musk like civit or muscaro. Urine degrades pretty quick into an ammonia smell, so unless you get it fresh, or supply your own , I'd just avoid it. Most of the pee-type lures on the market are junk.

Foodwise, you have quite a bit of ingredients to choose from that will attract deer: sassafras; apple essence(definite); acorn(definite); anise; sweetcorn(I think this would be killer); sweetflag; honey essence(another definite); persimmon fragrance; and, probably birch; pennyroyal; cherry; and fennel.

Basically you're looking at the rut and outside of the rut where food is of more importance. You'd want to play up the heavy musky/urine-type scents during the rut and play up the food scents in late winter.

It's pretty straightforward, but you'll need to keep a notebook and experiment, and be careful not to contaminate your scents.

Give it a try and let us know what you come up with.

Have any of you ever tried unusual scents like beaver castor or Tonquin musk?

If so, what were your results? I am considering trying them this year.

using them for what purpose?

I feel like the BEST scent is NO scent. Unless I'm hunting from the ground with my bow, which is 65% of the time. Then I use Buckeye deer scents.

To attract a curious buck!

Toss all my scents out last night.Last straw was thoses burning sticks by tinks.The wind shifted so I climbed down and put 1 out. A VERY NICE BUCK!!!!came in and when he hit the corner and go a whiff he was out of here.Every time this year I used scents the deer spooked.

Ummmmmmm..... okay. Thanks.

This is something like going to the doctor, getting help is embarrassing.

Plinker