Question for everyone? But first, some background. I have hunted many places(7 states in one year)and seem that you can fool most of the northern deers nose but I don't have much success in the the south(Florida to be exact). These deer are hunted for 4 1/2 months straight with a bag limit of 2 bucks per day everyday of the season. There is no deer management in Florida period. They get smart fast or die. Are they just hunted so hard that you can only play the wind, or can it be done. I do everything I can do from the shower to the field. What works for me in other states does little to nothing here. List of what I do. I wash my scent Blocker and Scent Lok Clothes in the carbon wash and dry them to activate them. Store in air tight container. Brush teeth with scent away toothpaste, use unscented Deo. Shower in same kind of unscented soap. Dry with towel that is treated. Where treated clothes to the field and change to hunting clothes. Spray down with scent killer several times during the hunt. Sometimes rub pine limbs on my closes. Things that work other places just don't cut it here. Just ordered a hazmat air tight suite to go under my hunting clothes. LOL Its worth a try. Any advice on the subject. Thanks for any tips.

In my experience with deer hunting in the South the answer is a "no", but that's with exceptions...real young deer...stands placed too high to get the scent...varying winds that defuse the scent trail and probably other exceptions that don't come to mind at the moment.

But, generally speaking, they will make you easily by scent and the does seem to be the sharpest on this.

One educational example..I was placing a ladder stand on a tree out in a field and out of the woods comes a doe who has spotted me and must investigate. I finish putting the stand together and climb up and get seated. She's still standing there looking at me trying to figure it all out but isn't spooking.

Finally she comes within a few yards then puts her nose in the air and looks at me again. But still doesn't spook. Then she starts obviously very purposefully walking a 360 circle clear around me. When she finally reached the inevitable downwind spot she instantly reacted like hitting an electrified fence and leaped high in the air and took off. I think she only touched the ground a few times returning to the woods. Anyhow, that's how it goes with scent.

The whole other side of the story is movement and it's pretty interesting too how that works.

This will sound stupid as hell to some folks, but, and my experience is mainly with Texas White tails, but, I do not believe that white tails in most of the lower 48 are ever out of sight/sound/smell of humans to really get that cautious.

I have to believe it is other factors that are keeping you from connecting.

As was mentioned by the other respondent, movement may be the answer to your problem.

How and where you set up may also contribute to your success or lack there of.

Time of day that you are hunting may also play a factor.

You don't mention what you are hunting with. Setting up with a muzzle loader or a shotgun and slug will be different than with a centerfire rifle or pistol, a bow even more diffferent.

My brother-in-law goes through all these kinds of scent blocking precautions and even stores his hunting clothes in an air-tight container filled with apples and pine limbs. The last time I went out with him he got his hunting clothes on, sprayed himself down with scent blocker, and then pulled out his slug gun. I could smell Hoppes #9 from 20 yards away and my nose sucks! Dumb...

I think that it is more important to pay proper attention to the direction of wind and air flows than on scent control. I still doubt that these products really work, you just can't air seal yourself in completely.

quote:

Originally posted by DUK:
I think that it is more important to pay proper attention to the direction of wind and air flows than on scent control. I still doubt that these products really work, you just can't air seal yourself in completely.

Bingo! Give that man a cigar.

I've hunted with men who smoked cigarettes in their tree stands and walked away at the end of the day with a buck. It's all about wind direction.

Thanks but for good orders sake I have to add that my reasoning was in part driven by laziness to do all that special laundry and storage and my hesitation to purchase all those scent-free products to spray my hunting clothes, boots, rifle and more private parts.

In my experience, deer are much less cautious than hogs. I will use the spray to try to cut some of the scent, but nothing will get rid of all of it. I think it is more about motion than smell.

I've crept up on a buck in Miss., with my bow, to within 35 yds and killed him, without going through all that BS. I've also been winded 200 yds away with a bad wind, and killed ducks and geese wearing blue jeans. If you take a 4-wheeler into the woods, park it, and walk away 500 yds and watch, I guarantee you a deer will walk up and sniff it by day's end. So what's the point?

NO

Thanks for all the help guys. I hunt with every weapon allowed in each state. Bow, rifle, and muzzleloader. Archery is the toughest because you have to get so close. I always play the wind on all my hunts but you know how it swirls and changes on those light variable days. As for seeing me, I have less than 1% of the deer see me. With full camo I get atleast 20 to 30 feet up with good cover for archery and 30 to 60 feet with my rifle around here in these tall southern pine stands. So their site I have whipped. Like I've heard in other post, it looks like they walk into an electric fence when they hit that down wind spot. Not all of them, but most of them turn inside out. I think a deers eye site is poor at best. I have had deer as pets in the past and scent and sound are their defense in my book. Wish I had another pet, I use to make their bed out of my hunting clothes. That works so good you would have to see it to beleive it. I use to have deer get down wind of me and come looking for me with their nose in the air. It was sssoooooo unfair. I still feel a little bad about those hunts. No not really!!! Any more advice. Keep it coming, I love this stuff.

quote:

Originally posted by OLBIKER:
NO

Emphatically!!!

This last weekend I had several deer walk within 10 yards of me.

I was using raccoon urine as a cover scent, and some HS Scents wafers.

Raccoon Urine is the best cover scent I have ever used, it even works pretty good for wild pigs.

All this has me thinking back to hunting in the '70s. Back then we had something called Johnny-Warmers (that's not the right spelling but I couldn't find it on the web) that were a combination scent device and hand warmer. Some here will remember them. You used cigarette lighter fluid and it had a wick that glowed. You just held it to keep your hands warm. You used an eye dropper to put doe urine scent on a sponge device that attached to the warmer and it put out a warm urine smell that was supposed to both mask and attract. I never see those anymore.

We did stuff like that, and carefully showered and washed our clothes. And I agree fully with others who feel that none of this is necessary or even makes a real difference on whitetails.

On the movement issue, something interesting - I have literally sat right over does that were totally unsuspecting as long as no noise or movement from me. While this is going on they are intent on following the sound of a loud truck many hundreds of yds away when it slows and makes the turn unto the gravel road that leads thru the farm. There was all kinds of woods and hills and much distance in between. But they were really staying right on top of that potential trouble (quite right from their point of view) while at the same time missing the big picture.

On the other hand, I've had a deer make me when I just slightly shifted position in the stand some 150 yards away. I think his angle of view flattened out at that distance so the advantage of height was lost. I also learned from it however that deer have only a limited memory. An hour later I saw the same buck back behind me in the woods and he finally walked out in the field right in front of me...with for him disasterous results.

quote:

Originally posted by N E 450 No2:
Raccoon Urine is the best cover scent I have ever used, it even works pretty good for wild pigs.

I've had them nearly step on me (honestly)

using the raccoon urine on my boots and spraying apple juice on the surrounding area

(Do not know Fla. rules on scent
(apple juice, etc) as "bait" check the rules.)

I was up in the woods cutting wood. I had on a pair of well used coveralls and a pair of farm boots that had trod in most everything. I sat down to take a break and promptly fell asleep. When I woke up, a doe deer was about 25 yards away peering intently at me. Bobbing her head up and down, etc. I stayed still and didn't look directly at her. She kept coming closer. She would stamp her foot and jump away, trying to make me move. But she kept coming closer. She finally leaned forward and smelled the toe of my boot. I watched her out of the corner of my eye as she eased back and drifted off into the woods.
My point is that you can buy all of the wonder products in the world and they won't do you any good if you can't sit still. If you've got to fidget, and eat candy, and drink, and play with your range finders and other toys, and cough, and whatever, you'll never be a good hunter.
IMO, the best scent block you have is to spit on your finger and hunt toward the cool side. If you're hunting with the wind at your back, there is NOTHING you can buy that will disguise your scent. There have been too many test run with dope and bomb scenting dogs where cover scents were tried to disguise the dope/explosives and failed. If a dog can smell a sack of coke in the middle of a gas tank, I daresay a deer can smell you in a superman scent proof suit.

I agree entirely: if you have the wind blowing from you to the deer, you will be scented. However, that does not necessarily mean you are busted. In the farm country where I hunt, there is always some human scent around. But I believe that if what they smell is too "strong," that will put them off. I once was in my stand and had a small buck walk up and smell the spikes up which I'd climbed a couple hours earlier. Undoubtedly there was some scent from my hands on them, but he didn't freak. He looked up at me (I was frozen!) and then slowly backed up and went back the way he'd come.
Having said all that, I do take rigorous scent precautions, primarily so I don't "pollute" my trail going in and coming away from my stand. I also like to use doe (estrous) pee as a "cover" scent-- but only at the appropriate season. Used out of season I have seen deer react to doe pee as though it were wolf piss!

It seems to me that all parents make an effort to teach their children not to urinate on themselves. After 40 years of practicing it myself, I refuse to put any type of urine on myself on purpose. Just does not seem right!

quote:

Originally posted by gotogirl3:
It seems to me that all parents make an effort to teach their children not to urinate on themselves. After 40 years of practicing it myself, I refuse to put any type of urine on myself on purpose. Just does not seem right!

I like that response a lot--I agree.

I'm pretty sure the handwarmers were called JONI handwarmers BTW

quote:

Originally posted by stillbeeman:
There have been too many test run with dope and bomb scenting dogs where cover scents were tried to disguise the dope/explosives and failed. If a dog can smell a sack of coke in the middle of a gas tank, I daresay a deer can smell you in a superman scent proof suit.

Absolutely.

I recently attended a seminar with a popular dog trainer here. This guy, Uwe Heiss is the name, also trains dogs for police work, especially explosives and drugs. He says that there is no need at all to train them with each drzg individually. He just puts a sample of each drug or exploisive in a tube because according to him, these animals are able to identify each and every aroma individually out of that mixture of scents. Trainig these dogs is time consuming and expensive, therefore he found out that this way he saves a lot of time.

He says that is like us human beings looking at a piece of paper with spots coloured differently, we can distiguish them and do not see a mixture of colours because our focus is on sight, not smell. Thus, we apparently have that optical capability dogs have with their sense of smell.

If deer are similar, cover scents would not really work but for the manufacturer's balance sheet.

Besides, even if it worked I would hesitate to sprinkle myself with racoon urine, unless of course if it worked miracles with those pretty waitresses when having dinner after the hunt.

A few years ago, I was hunting Kudu as they were browsing away from me in Zim. The wind was in my face and all was going well. I felt the wind hit the back of my neck and literally a fraction of an instant later it was like the animals had been hit with a cattle prod. They didn't pause, they didn't look around, they had an immediate and instinctive plan to be in the next county RIGHT NOW. I very sincerely doubt it would have made ANY difference at all if I had been wearing some high tech clothing or even been sealed in a thick plastic bag.

I also agree with the above that cover scents just buy you sympathy from the deer...."Oh, that poor hunter must've been pissed on by a racoon!" Seriously, you might buy all the scent block clothing you want or hermetically seal yourself off while sitting in a stand and most likely animals can still recognize the unnatural smell of either your gun solvent, gun oil, or even burn/unburnt gunpowder in your rifle.

I do however think some animals are curious by nature and will actually seek out secondary indications that something is just not right when they only suspect it. I was bear hunting years ago 100% covered with camo sitting at the base of a tree. A whitetail doe came in and started circling me at a distance of about 4 feet. She kept circling for about 10 minutes sniffing sometimes 2-3 feet away from me. I would even move slightly and slowly letting her see it and she would just take a step or two back and re-evaluate the situation...eventually coming back in to sniff me again. She could certainly smell "people" but couldn't actually get any other cues as to exactly what I was.

The only real hope is to minimize movement to avoid giving secondary cues to the animals and also obviously keep the wind in your favor. All the high tech stuff is like top-shelf fishing lures....designed to catch sportsmen, not game!

Yes, and no.

My experience has been that deer use smell as kind of an early warning system. The stronger the smell, the closer they assume you are. Once they smell you they start listening and trying to get a specific location.
If your smell is weak they may try to sneak around, or even assume you are not close enough to be a threat.
If your smell is strong they will assume you are close and may bolt, eve if you are not actually that close.

I dunno, some very good deer hunters use the various blockers and scents. Their thoughts are basically a reflection of frank4570's post above that you can't really fool them but you can mask your proximity or the time value of your scent trail. Like I said, I dunno, I don't use them but I don't claim to be a really good deer hunter, I'm just not that mad at them anymore.

I've read one famous dog trainer, who's name escapes me, comparing scenting abilities and stating that deer probably have as good a nose as a dog, said that not only can a dog pick up your scent, but if he wants a dog to trail a pizza delivery guy, he can trail him, tell what's on the pizza and what kind of perfume his girlfriend was wearing when they made it.........hyperbole? Maybe, but the point was you're not going to beat that nose with a shower or any other reasonable blocking techniques. Wind management is your friend.

Most of the good hunters I know in our area, which has lots of heavy river bottom type woodlands, use tree stands and get at least 15 feet off the ground. Seems to either spread the scent around or get it above the immediate area. They kill lots of big bucks doing it. I'm deathly afraid of heigths, I wouldn't climb a tree 15 feet with one of those contraptions if they told me the biggest deer in Texas was going to walk by, so that I can't comment on the system personally.

Finally, I've told this story before, but it illustrates the quality of "noses"......I was driving around on my ranch, as a northern cold front was blowing in one spring, wind was at least 15 to 25 mph, mostly steady but with some gusty swirling. I spotted a big hog in middle of pasture a few hundred yards away and didn't really want to fool with her/him at that time, so I thought, "Well, if I can get up to where I can make a perfect head shot, I'll take him." Not that it matters, but I was using a tricked up 6.5x55 700 at that time. So I started easing up to him on foot.....wind's still blowing like a SOB at 90 degrees to my path to hog, that is, I was walking W, wind out of N. I got within about 75 yards of hog and was thinking about shooting, when a VERY slight swirl came in the rush of wind from the North. About 2 seconds later, hog, which weighed at least 200 pounds, stood up on his back legs, stuch his nose up in the air like a dog, posed for a second, hit the ground, and took off running. He had obviously picked up my scent. Frankly I was amazed because the wind never really quit blowing at 90 degrees to my path, it just swirled in a gust but that was enough. Hunt into the wind.......

I am definitely with Crazyhorseconsulting on this one. Two reasons. As Crazyhorse mentions (and this really hit home for me because I always have been opposed to camo, scents and "de-scenting" -except not smoking on stand) he doubts that a whitetail being exposed constantly to sight/sound/smell of humans is really that cautious around them. I couldn't agree more (and while his and my experience of whitetails is thousands of miles apart, apparently, they are the same deer) I really go with Crazyhorse's comment about "movement". When on stand, many hunters simply don't realize what it means to be really still. Totally still. So still that chipmunks run over your feet and birds alight near you. That "still" is what is meant by being still on stand. (The kind of sitting -or standing {hopefully with a tree to lean against} where you may take 10-20 minutes to get really "set" into your "statue" position) Many hunters simply don't realize what being still means on stand. Deer have very poor depth perception {It's why they may not spot you against a tree trunk even at 30 feet -but they are absolute experts at spotting the slightest movement -even a batting of your eyelash. OK, I'm exaggerating with that last bit -but you get the idea.

quote:

Originally posted by Gatogordo:

Most of the good hunters I know in our area, which has lots of heavy river bottom type woodlands, use tree stands and get at least 15 feet off the ground.

Same area I grew up "still" hunting,
as the older woodsmen did.
They disdained tree stands,camo, optics,etc--etc--

The use of raccoon urine on the boots was SOP, as was careful slow movement and use of the wind.
(No--it was not commercially available--
it was gathered at the time the raccoons were killed.)

So, its use is not new or novel--
rather,
time proven and effective.

Wow this has been a great topic. Glad I brought it up. Deer do see movement very well. In Texas that is our number one rule, stay still. I don't have a problem there with my scent much at all. In fact we only play the wind sometimes and sometimes not. But, They will spot you in your stand and if you move, they really don't like that. In Florida, its thick oaks and pines and I hear 95% of the deer coming before I see them. I'm almost always ready for the shot as soon as they give me a clear one. Scent is 99% the factor here. I hunt with friends that kill 12 to 15 bucks a season and hardly wear camo. They only play the wind. I just hate waiting for the right wind, or that horrible swirling wind is my nightmare.

An interesting side issue to this I think is, do bucks and does react the same to scent? I have seen situations where bucks had cause to scent me but ignored it, whereas it seems different with does.

I pay very close attention to wind direction -- always have the wind blowing to me from the game or crosswind with me downwind from the game. I have never used cover scent, don't wear scentless clothing and don't hunt from elevated stands. I always seem to get a deer or three each year.

Hunt into the wind.

quote:

Same area I grew up "still" hunting,
as the older woodsmen did.
They disdained tree stands,camo, optics,etc--etc--

Yep, they were good hunters, no doubt, but I've seen the "big" deer mounts that they killed and they aren't even close to the size killed from deer stands in trees.

quote:

Can you really fool a deers nose?

quote:

IMO, the best scent block you have is to spit on your finger and hunt toward the cool side. If you're hunting with the wind at your back, there is NOTHING you can buy that will disguise your scent. There have been too many test run with dope and bomb scenting dogs where cover scents were tried to disguise the dope/explosives and failed. If a dog can smell a sack of coke in the middle of a gas tank, I daresay a deer can smell you in a superman scent proof suit.

Well said, stillbeeman!

If you are downwind of the deer, it doesn't matter; you don't need to fool his nose.

If the deer is downwind of you, within any reasonable distance, he WILL smell you. His reaction will depend on the strength of the scent (influenced by distance, temperature, "scent blockers" and/or "cover-up" scents.) Bucks reactions also vary with the time of the year and the depth of "rut-craziness" of the particular buck.

But he WILL smell you. I believe a mature buck can smell what you had for breakfast day before yesterday, and you AIN'T gonna fool his nose.

Do what you reasonably can to keep scent down, but first, and foremost -

HUNT INTO THE WIND!

Very entertaining thread, with some real good pointers in amongst the the funny stuff. Like one guy said if a load of coke does'nt get by in a tank of fuel, pouring piss & stuff on you ain't going to work, hunt into wind & move slowly.

I would like to add, that I keep my boots is a plastic container so they don't pick up human scent from the house. Then I smoke them before I go into the woods. It is pretty common for a deer to cross my path and not alert in anyway.
But a fox is a whole different story. If a fox hits my scent trail he KNOWS what is up, and he's gone.

Shack:

Yours is an interesting point. I wonder if it might not have to do with dropping a "late fawn" (in August) and therefore the doe's efforts to protect such a fawn. (Practically none of them ever survived northern NY winters anyway)

Gerry, that could be. Also, with bucks I was thinking of times when big ones come up real close. Once it was when two of us were working on a stand making a good bit of noise and talking. A 12 pt came up from way down in the bottoms and stood almost literally beside us. Another time one that was large, I think at least 10, came up within about 20 feet or so to watch us sitting on the back of the tailgate cleaning squirrels. Occasions like this have happened when there's no way they couldn't smell us, but apparently they just don't care in some circumstances what they're smelling. The way I read them, they're saying "stay out of my territory!"