Scent Control when Deer Hunting- Part 1
With Iowa’s Archery Deer Hunting Season already underway, many of us are gearing up for the most magical time of the year- THE RUT!
Personally, I start bow hunting in earnest the last week of October and even then, do so sparingly making sure the conditions are perfect for a particular stand when I head out. The reason for this is because I am a very firm believer that many people burn their best spots out before ‘things get good’, which is usually the end of October through the first two to three weeks in November when the rut really heats up. How do they burn them out you might ask? Plain and simple- by leaving scent in their hunting area, which alerts deer to their presence even when they have left the stand are at home on the couch. We all know that big bucks didn’t get that way by being dumb. When they know humans have been in the area, they know they are being hunted and will find somewhere else to spend their time.
If you’ve watched a deer hunting show on TV, thumbed through a sporting goods catalog or walked through the hunting section at a store, you are well aware that there is an entire industry devoted to fooling a deer’s nose. I’m here to tell you that it can’t be done 100% effectively. There is not a scent control product in existence that is going to eliminate your scent to the point that a deer can’t smell you at all. You can, however, take steps to greatly minimize your scent while you are in the field and what scent is left behind when you leave. Doing so can pay dividends when it comes to filling your tag.
I want to mention that for the purpose of this article, I am referring to products whose purpose is to cover or eliminate human scent. I’m not talking about ‘lures’ that are meant to attract deer. Scent control products can be broken down in to the following categories- cover scents, scent ‘eliminating’ products, scent ‘eliminating’ clothing and ozone producing products. Here are my thoughts on them.
Cover Scents
I define cover scents as products that have a ‘smell’ that is supposed to cover up human scent. Personally, I think these are a waste of money. If you think that you are going to use one scent to cover up your own scent, you are the only one that’s going to be fooled. My theory is that I want to ‘smell invisible’ and that ‘no scent is the best scent’. I know this can’t be completely accomplished, but I believe that the harder your work to attain this goal and the closer you can come to it, the more success you will have in the field.
Scent ‘Eliminating’ Products
You’ll notice that I put ‘eliminating’ in quotation marks. As I mentioned earlier, I don’t believe that any product can totally eliminate your scent. I do, however, think that when used as a part of an overall Scent Control Plan (SCP), they can definitely help.
This is category has the largest number of products to choose from. They can come in a bottle that you spray on yourself or your gear, a liquid infused cloth that wipes the scent away, a bar of soap or deodorant or a detergent that you wash your hunting clothes with. I’m not a scientist, but in the simplest form, these products work in one of two ways. They either attempt to stop the odor before it has been created or they attempt to ‘capture and kill’ it once it has been produced.
The products that stop odor before it happens would be your body soaps and deodorants. The plethora of sprays on the market would fall under the capture and kill category. I think that using a scent control detergent to wash your clothes is a necessary part of any SCP, but personally, I think that most of them are simply laundry detergent that has no scent added. They get your clothes clean without the ‘fresh scent’ of commercial detergents, which are both good things for hunters.