Cover scent

[tughillhunter]

Sounds stupid....... i put my clothes in a bag of corn. when i hang my drippers, i wipe them with apples, cause i always hang them in apple trees. does it work??? i have no idea.

[SteveNY]

Sounds stupid....... i put my clothes in a bag of corn. when i hang my drippers, i wipe them with apples, cause i always hang them in apple trees. does it work??? i have no idea.

Sounds stupid to put clothes in with leaves, but you put yours in with corn?

[tughillhunter]

i meant me putting clothes in with corn sounds stupid... bad wording, i apologize

[mxsmitz201]

before i started putting my gear in a tub with pine branches i had my gear layed out on wood pellets. all my stuff had that distinct woody smell i dont know if it helped or not but i cant imagine it did any harm

[BizCT]

I'll say it again: I just use everything non-scented. Wash my clothes non-scented, spray down before walking into woods. I use non-scented body wash, deoderant, toothepaste, etc.......just 2 weeks ago in PA, I had 2 deer eating the bush I was sitting against on the ground.

I think a lot of the products out there are close to equal in quality, its just personal preference.

[SteveNY]

i meant me putting clothes in with corn sounds stupid... bad wording, i apologize

ohhh, haha, alright

[tughillhunter]

ohhh, haha, alright

lol, im bad with that

[bayrat]

I usually take an old piece of venison and leave it in my washing machine untill it gets lots of maggots then wash everything with the meat maggots and all.

Edited November 16, 2011 by bayrat

[arrow nocker]

I have boiled all kinds of leaves and pine needles and pine stems into a tea and it really smells woodsy.You put it in a sprayer and spray your clothes.Well,I put it in an empty juice bottle in the fridge and wrote on it"DON'T DRINK......NASTY......DONT DRINK...."

Well,low and behold,my kids thought it was sweet tea.And they would poor it into a glass and go to drink it.Let me say that was funny the first time my 6 yr old daughter came to tell me.Then i couldn't believe even my teenagers did it later on.They finally dumped it out so i dont use it any more.

Besides.it only makes you smell like woods to you.Deer smell woods all the time.its your smell you dont want them to smell.So i just make my own homemade scent killer.I spary down with that and thats it.Deer dont smell nothing.

[RifleSharpShot]

I use the spray my freind doesn't think it matters we have shot about the same amount of deer,but the point is he never uses a scent blocker of any kind and i doesn't seem to affect his hunting outcome!

[SteveMcD]

I use the Autumn Blend or Acorn Cover Scents. I don't use attractants at all. Not sure how well the cover scents actually work, but if they at least mask some portion of human odor that's a good thing. The main thing is to pay attention to the wind. Animals smell like we hear, they pick up dozens of smells at one time and then have the ability to sort them out.

[132 eight pointer]

a few weeks ago I went hunting for a weekend and forgot my unscented soap.Friend of mine said he had some of the hotel shampoo in the small bottles.I opened it and it smelled like perfume so I asked if he was kidding me.He said he doesn't care about unscented soap or cover scents.I went and bought some "hunters" soap.Well he saw more bucks than I did.Now he was in a treestand and could have just been lucky,I don't know.

Edited November 24, 2011 by 132 eight pointer

[Gthphtm]

I used all of that in the past,laundry soap,body soap,foot powder,spray.I have not done it for a few years.Sunday I had 2 does sitting 20 feet and 30 feet from me for an hour,they saw me but I was sitting up wind of them,One came 10 feet away snorting and stomping trying to get me to move, I just sat still and it went back to the other one and bedded back down.

[biggamefish]

The only thing I use is the spray for my boots. I don't even know if that is all it is cracked up to be. I had a deer 15 feet from walk by like I didn't exist then another bed down 30 yards for an hour or so. I don't think you need all that stuff but if it makes you more confident hunter use it.

[ny hunter]

I wash my cloths before the season and then pack them with leaves in a plastic bag.I spray down every morning before I leave the cabin.When I come out at night My boots and cloths go back in the truck in the bag.I never go in the cabin with my hunting cloths on.

[bkln]

The scent thing is the biggest marketing scam ever invented, it is a great money maker, scent this, scent that...BS I say.

My Grandpa used to smell like a tobacco bag and beer...lol...and he always got the biggest buck in the camp. The deer sleep on my front lawn where they can small my truck, my garbage, my guns, my socks...you get the picture and they don't care a bit...this scent paranoia made someone really rich...I wish it was me :-)

[screamon demon]

The scent thing is the biggest marketing scam ever invented, it is a great money maker, scent this, scent that...BS I say.

My Grandpa used to smell like a tobacco bag and beer...lol...and he always got the biggest buck in the camp. The deer sleep on my front lawn where they can small my truck, my garbage, my guns, my socks...you get the picture and they don't care a bit...this scent paranoia made someone really rich...I wish it was me :-)

I agree 100% - Some guys take this whole scent thing way too far.

[Paula]

My father laughs at the stuff people seem to waste money on when it comes to hunting. His family and my mothers family hunted to feed the big families and they never covered any scent or even played the wind. and none of them died of starvation.

[Jennifer]

There are simply too many variables that come into play when someone asks if it matters or not.

Things off the top of my head that impact scent and how deer react to it:

- Temperature and relative humidity / dew point

- Wind speed, direction, and flow over uneven landscape (updraft? downdraft?)

- Barometric pressure

- Deer's 'experience' with being hunted/hunting pressure and overall attitude which can change hourly or daily (wisened buck, cautious momma doe, dumb young fawn, distracted rutting buck, etc!!)

- Deer's expectancy of the scent (deer that live near houses/constant bombardment of man-made and human smells vs. deeper woods deer, etc)

There are probably a billion others that I'm not thinking of! If these factors were constant, then yes we could determine what works, what doesn't, and so forth. But they're not. There are too many variables to know if you see more deer any given day because you smell less, or because you smell like apples, or because the deer are simply moving that day.

It's not wrong to think about scent, especially scent reduction, but I, too, wonder if some folks put too much thought into it. At the end of the day, if a deer is going to smell me then it is going to smell me no matter what. A deer is going to care if it's going to care, no matter what. I just try to enjoy my time hunting and don't stress over my scent to the point where it becomes labor instead of enjoyment.

If someone gets a kick out of extreme scent control, then power to them!

[SteveNY]

Well put Jenn

[Suilleabhain]

I tried scent bow hunting, no effect. When deer lures were fairly new we used G66 Sour Apple and the deer came in like crazy. Then everyone used it and it was worthless. Then we used Tink's, that worked for a season and then there was so much in the woods a deer would go psycho trying to follow it. Now I don't use anything. I don't even wash my socks.

[Antler Ice]

I think you are all right....It just depends on the deers mood that particular day/time... He may react to something one day, and the next day avoid it...

[Pistol Pete]

Save your money Every time you exhale you put A gallon of foul stink in the air If you exhale 3 times a min. For 3 hours on stand Thats one hell of a lot of stink !!!

[deerpassion]

I don't waste the time or money.

It is impossible to hide one scent from a deer by adding another - they simply process both at the same time.

Their sense of smell is equal to or better then a dog - if you could hide/cover a scent, tracking dogs would not exist.

i use coon urine on my boots to cover my tracks to n from my stand, one day i hiked in 3 mi, before i knew it i see two hounds comin from half a mile away in the exact track i had walked and ended up right at the base a my tree sniffin away, until they looked up n saw me,,, amazing...

[erussell]

Ive had way to much luck with scents to just write them off. Each scent has its use and time of the season when it will work. Personal hygien is very important and staying as scent free as possible. Using scents when you smell like the south end of a donkey heading north will do nothing for you no matter how much "cover" scent you use.