Around 1965, during one of the first Bow Seasons in Mississippi, I was hunting a field edge on a private club “over the levee” in the Delta. The field was known as the “Pea Vine Field”, as the club grew field peas there to attract and hold turkeys and deer, and provide extra nutrition. We found and noted the afternoon wind direction, and skirted the field on foot and out of sight to get to the down wind side to hide and hunt. I found a distinct, well-worn trail leading to and from the field, backed off 20 yards from the field edge, and set-up on the ground in a thicket of second growth saplings, the slight, failing breeze distinctly in my face. I had a clear shot along 10-15 yards of the trail from my hide-out. In a short while, deer, turkeys and a few feral hogs began to enter the 45 acre or so field. Watching them closely as they fed and frolicked unconcerned in the pea vines, I noticed one of them was a huge bodied deer, noticeably larger even at the over two hundred yards distance. The sun had set, leaving only about 30 minutes of available shooting light, till “last dark”. The big deer bluffed and bulllied the smaller bucks, chased and smelled the does, and gradually worked closer to my spot. His rack became visible in the failing light the closer to me he moved. It was wide, with tall tines and heavy mass. Minutes passed, and he was close enough to make out a perfectly symmetrical 6 x 6 set of antlers, a twelve-point! He had to weigh nearly 300 pounds! I shook and shivered, as much from adrenaline-stoked oncoming buck fever as from the falling temperature. He edged closer. Just as light was failing, he began to head onto the trail just in front of me, not spooked, just using the trail as his exit route. The wind or gentle breeze had died to complete calm-or so I thought. I came to full draw with my 53 lb. draw Bear semi-recurve bow, the 30 inch cedar arrow tipped with a deadly Bear Razor-head, slightly quivering from my anticipation of the coming shot, and the exertion of holding the full draw. As the huge buck came into my shooting lane, he stopped, raised his head, and looked directly at me. He snorted, wheeled and crashed away off the far side of the trail through the saplings. “What happened?”, I wondered, and probably yelled-no, SCREAMED- aloud. It dawned on me, then, with crystal clarity: I had forgotten the thermals. My scent, borne by the faint, nearly undetectable air movement of the down-falling late afternoon thermal had billowed out in all directions from my spot! The air all around me had to be saturated with my human scent! That buck was then the biggest I had ever seen, and now, all this hunting and observing deer time later, one of the biggest I have EVER seen. Is it little wonder, then, why I harp on thermal air movement, wind direction and speed, and “hunting into the wind?”
Oct
19
Scent Control (not “elimination”)
First thing to understand and accept is that human scent cannot be eliminated. We breathe, have moist eyes and ear canals and other “openings” in our bodies that constantly exude scent. The best we can do, therefore, is try to control or mask our “smell” to fool this number one whitetail sense. A whitetail can differentiate scent particles as few as 2 or 3 parts per million. To illustrate: if a gallon of pure, 100% deer urine were poured into an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a deer smelling the water could determine the sex, age, general physical condition, probable date of a doe’s onset of estrous, what the deer from which the scent was extracted had to eat last, and many other individual characteristics. Over 60% of a whitetail’s brain is devoted to scent detection. They can smell over 10,000 times better than a human, and about 1000 times better than a bloodhound. Considering that a bloodhound can pick up a lingering scent as long as 72 hours after it’s deposited, it seems futile to try to beat this sense, right? Not necessarily.
The oldest-and truest-rule of deer hunting is “hunt into the wind.” If the wind is felt on the back of our neck, or quartering or crossing from the rear, the deer will smell us. Setting up two or more stands or blinds to allow for the most common prevailing winds in a given area is mandatory. In my area, wind from the south is most common, while north wind quandrant is second. Even in calm conditions, breezes and thermals will affect the selection of when and where to hunt a given area. Another tip: thermals generally rise in the morning, and fall in the afternoon and evening. If the hunter is restricted by time and area constraints, a masking or cover scent must necessarily come into play. Remember: we can’t eliminate scent, or defeat the deer’s nose. We can, tho, reduce the likelihood of being detected.
One year, I used a commercial scent killer. It had a musty, damp leaf/forest floor scent. It advertises being able to “eliminate up to 99% of REPLICATED human scent”: key word being “replicated”. What that means is that it COULD, possibly, eliminate UP TO that high percentile of scent that bacterial action in and on fabrics, textiles and exposed skin and leather or rubber may produce. It COULD NOT eliminate the original production of the scent itself. By experimentation, I found that by bruising and “barking” common red cedar limbs and leaves/needles, I did the same “elimination”, without the expense. Another old-tyme varmint-type hunter (kinda like me) used diesel fuel as a cover or masking scent. He stated: “there ain’t a deer alive that ain’t smelled diesel, and he ain’t afraid of it”. He would dampen a new sponge with a tiny amount-very tiny-of diesel, tie the sponge on a cord or string five feet long or so, and use it for a drag behind him as he walked to a stand location. Then, he’d wipe the sponge-using readily available, inexpensive rubber or plastic gloves on his hands-on the exposed surfaces of his blind or stand. If a reader chooses to try this, use extreme caution, as diesel fuel is highly inflammable. I’ve used this diesel-sponge and it works. I carried it to and from hunting areas in a well sealed, locking plastic bag. Given, tho, the danger of the diesel sponge use, I use the bruised red cedar leaves and branches almost exclusively. I’ve used other non-intrusive aromatics, too, like real, or “pure”-not artificial-vanilla flavoring, and fresh herbs like sage and rosemary.
Remember: hunting into the wind is the only pretty near fool-proof way to insure a target deer won’t smell us. If we can’t pick and choose when and where to hunt, try masking scents. Just don’t depend on them to do more than mask or reduce our scent.