Easy Ways to Hide Scent From Deer
A deer'south No. ane defense is its nose, as many a hunter tin can attest. Just is odour elimination possible? This successful bowhunter doesn't think so — but he's come up with a system to overcome the vaunted olfactory senses of his casualty.
As bucks go, it wasn't a record-setter, but it was a practiced ane — a real good one.
Adrenaline surged through the hunter'southward body. A few more steps and the deer would exist in the angle simply right to launch an arrow.
And then it was like the animal striking an invisible wall. Its trunk stiffened momentarily, and so it tore off, blowing in warning.
The last matter the hunter saw was its white flag tail disappearing into the woods.
What happened — what, what?
Sammy Romano said that the hunter stunk. Literally.
Romano should know. Deer hunting is what he does.
The confirmed bowhunter hunts every gratis moment during the flavour and spends the other eight months preparing his property for deer.
He manages most 500 acres of upland hardwoods owned by his family due south of Vicksburg, Miss. He's as well a shareholder in one,200 acres of bottomland hardwood north of that Mississippi Delta town.
To pay for his deer habit, what does he exercise? What else: He teaches deer hunters.
He'south the manager and bow technician for Chag's Sporting Goods in Metairie. It is the largest total-line archery supplier in Southeast Louisiana and southern Mississippi.
"Deer relay on odor, sight and hearing," Romano said. "A deer can encounter yous and non run off; he may keep looking at you. He may hear y'all and, depending on what's going on — proximity and loudness of dissonance — he may still not run off.
"But if he smells you, he will immediately leave the area. The scent of man triggers an immediate alarm response."
That said, information technology might be surprising that Romano isn't out to completely rid himself of scent.
"When it comes to scent, nearly people call up of scent emptying rather than odor management. Realistically, I feel elimination is impossible," he explained. "Smell management is not any 1 matter, but rather a series of things, including personal hygiene, equipment maintenance, encompass scents and attractants, field tactics, and scent containment."
Romano talked about them ane at a time.
Personal hygiene
"It's no secret that humans have an scent," Romano chuckled. "The first pace is to effort to reduce odour from the body."
Romano showers immediately before hunting to wash off bacteria and peel particles, in an attempt to minimize exfoliation.
He recommends using some sort of scent-free lather and reminds hunters to brush their teeth, which he calls a huge source of odor.
"Nosotros have to exercise some of this on organized religion," Romano said with a smiling. "We tin can't go ask a deer if information technology works."
As for urinating from a stand?
"I've seen research that deer can exist attracted to human being urine," Romano said. "Personally, I never urinate near a stand. It might non injure to do so, but information technology probably doesn't help.
"It's not that it scares or attracts; information technology alters deer beliefs. That'southward truthful for all deer hunting, but specially for bow hunting with the animal best within 40 yards. A deer on warning behaves differently than a relaxed animal and will react quicker to the sound of the shot. Audio travels faster than arrows."
Romano always hunts with rubber knee boots to minimize sent transfer. And he keeps his clothes in sealed plastic totes, even in the offseason.
If cooking is taking place at the campsite, he hangs his hunting clothes outside.
He washes his clothes on the washer'due south antibacterial bicycle afterwards running an empty bike with a hunting-specific detergent that is also not-UV.
And so he line-dries the clothes — except for carbon suits, which have to be recharged by running them in a dryer on its highest setting with unscented hunter dryer sheets
"I work hard at my hunting," he said. "No one knows what a deer is thinking. Nosotros tin can only theorize."
Equipment maintenance
The aforementioned intendance Romano puts into his body and dress goes into his equipment.
He leaves his stands covered outside several weeks earlier using them.
He washes his prophylactic harness and backpack the same fashion he washes his wear.
And he never stores his equipment in environments that have household smells: Bow strings and grips can retain scent.
"I've had hunters bring bows into the shop that smelled similar ash trays," Romano said. "That olfactory property may not hurt, merely sure it doesn't help."
Cover scents and attractants
Encompass scents are designed to cover man scent rather than reduce information technology. Romano puts very piddling organized religion in cover scents.
"Enquiry I have read indicates that a deer tin process many smells at one time — differentiate between them and react to them individually," he said. "If we walk into a house where someone is cooking soup, we aroma soup. A deer smells corn, peas, potatoes, and carrots. A drug canis familiaris tin detect a tiny amount of cocaine in a tanker of gasoline.
"If gasoline tin can't hibernate scent, and so fox urine can't cover our scent."
Attractants are fabricated to lure deer into position for a adept shot.
"They work well at times," Romano said. "During the rut, bucks are more susceptible. I do occasionally use a drag rag to lay down a scent line to bring bucks in.
"But most people practice information technology incorrectly. Don't put doe urine on a rag and then walk to your stand. I learned that the hard mode. A buck did what I programmed him to do: He tracked the aroma line back in the direction of the ATV. Deer, like dogs, rail aroma from where it is weakest to where it is strongest.
"The correct mode is to utilise it to a rag at the stand and walk away from the stand; and then remove the rag and carry it to the stand to hang it."
Of class, there are a lot of choices in attractants, and Romano said it'due south important to know which ones to choose.
"Don't use 'doe in heat' when deer are weeks away from the oestrus," Romano said.
But this hunter said he actually doesn't hang his hat on these scents.
"I don't use a lot of attractants; rather, I locate my stands based on normal deer behavior, reading terrain features such as funnels, pinch points and signs of deer activeness like rubs, trails, and scrapes," Romano said. "Attractants can modify that beliefs — sometimes for the meliorate, sometimes for the worse.
"The exception is during the rut. Then there are no rules. Bucks no longer follow their routine. The estrus is the best fourth dimension to use attractants."
Romano'due south favorite — when he uses it — is Conquest EverCalm Deer Herd Scent. Information technology comes in a stick form, similar human deodorant, and he applies it to his boots prior to a hunt.
"Apparently, it makes deer behave more than at ease," he said.
Romano includes scent-emptying sprays in the comprehend scents and attractants category. Typically these are sprayed on boots, clothes and backpacks, merely non on bows because they leave too much moisture.
"I don't know if it helps, but it doesn't hurt," he said.
Scent containment
This is simply keeping the hunter's scent from reaching the deer'south olfactory organ and involves more mod applied science, according to Romano.
"The Achilles heel and, at the same time, a deer'due south greatest strength is its trust in its nose," he said.
Several brands of scent containment clothes are sold today. Some are anti-microbial; others trap aroma and hold information technology until y'all release it.
"Like a roach motel, they check in merely they don't check out," Romano said with a laugh. "I love carbon clothing. They are lined with carbon fiber that captures and holds aroma molecules on the carbon's surface.
"2 that I prefer are Odour Blocker and ScentLok. At $200 to $400, they are expensive, but they work exceptionally well.
He said this specialized clothing has been instrumental to his success.
"I've hunted here from 1990 to 2009 and only taken i exceptional buck with a bow, although I've killed a million does and small-scale bucks," Romano said while sitting in his camp. "The first year I had a carbon suit, I killed two big bucks and shot at three more.
"And the two I killed came from straight downwind. I didn't just miraculously become a better hunter in one year."
As much every bit Romano likes carbon wear, recent advances threaten to make them former-fashioned.
Olfactory property Blocker's new engineering — called "Trinity" — uses man-made polymers that are more than fabric friendly than carbon to trap odor.
Scent Blocker National Sales Manager Corey Waller said that, because Trinity is human being-made, its scent-trapping pores are uniformly the right size to capture scent molecules.
Carbon in carbon suits (which Scent Blocker too makes), on the other manus is a natural product with widely varying pore sizes.
Besides being fabric-friendly and more than efficient at trapping olfactory property, the new material breathes better than carbon and doesn't absorb water like carbon does.
The other matter in Romano's scent-containment toolbox is what he calls his "magic bullet" — an Ozonics in-field ozone generator he mounts on the tree immediately over his caput in the stand.
He is sold on information technology — large time.
"If you told me I could only take i thing for scent command and give up everything else, Ozonics is what I would keep," Romano said.
He cited a 2013 hunt every bit an example of its effectiveness.
"I had 22 deer on a food plot, and half dozen of them were rack bucks. All but ii of them came from straight downwind," Romano said. "That's a good feeling, when yous crush the best noses in the business."
Oxygen, equally information technology exists almost normally in nature, is a molecule of two oxygen atoms bound together. Ozone, a much rarer oxygen molecule is made up of three bound atoms, is chemically highly reactive.
According to Romano, ozone bonds with man scent molecules, making it unrecognizable to deer and other scent-savy animals.
One of the inventors of the device, a dentist named Scott Elrod, used ozone to sterilize his instruments and as an aroma mitigator subsequently noticing ozone knocked out the nauseating smell of cauterizing flesh.
Together with one of his patients, Dennis Fink, who had a background in research and development for a chemical visitor, they created an ozone generator suitable for field utilise by hunters.
Romano said an Ozonics unit of measurement costs nigh $400 and uses rechargeable batteries that last four to half-dozen hours. It must be mounted over the hunter's caput and must face downwind.
"Some people say, 'That'due south a lot of trouble,'" Romano said. "I say, 'What the heck? You're sitting on a stand. What else are you going to do?'
"Others complain near the price. These are the same people who own a $7,000 ATV, a $1,500 bow and pay for a lease."
He said the unit is worth every dime and all the hassle.
"It's the only thing I know that tin dramatically increase the number of deer seen," Romano said. "If I go to a stand and find out I forgot it, I'll go dorsum and get it.
"Information technology'due south the ane thing I won't hunt without!"
Field tactics
"It'south all about the wind," Romano said. "If you lot have a steady wind and the deer is upwind, you have him trounce. But, contrary to some belief, deer don't always work upwind. If they did, they would all winter in Canada."
And wind direction is a moving target, anyway.
"… (Y)ou tin can't anticipate wind direction to locate stands," Romano said. "And yous can't climb a new tree every day; sometimes at that place are no climbable trees where you want one. I have 40 stands on 500 acres to take advantage of current of air management on any given twenty-four hours. Hence the need for odor management."
"The valley-like hollows on my property south of Vicksburg do foreign things to scent: The wind swirls in them. The hills of Mississippi, similar those of North Louisiana, have made me even more aware of the demand for scent management."
This issue is even more important today, since deer herds take largely grown.
"The fly in the ointment is that, in modern times with adept management, deer are everywhere," he said. "You might exist located correct for that cadet yous want, just a wandering doe can react to your scent and spook him.
"In some ways, information technology used to exist easier to kill ane of the ii deer on a plot than 1 of the fifty deer at that place now — also many noses; too many eyes."
Romano also feels stand up pinnacle helps minimize scent dispersal. In general, he prefers a stand to be at least 15 anxiety high, simply he cautioned that elevated stands are non always the solution.
"I firmly believe that, in some areas, years of hunter predation from heights has conditioned deer to expect upward for danger," he said. "The new hub-style footing blinds are an choice that offers both concealment and odor containment."
He also said at that place are more considerations when choosing a stand up site than if deer are nearby.
"The No. one concern I accept when I option a location for a stand up is access and entry," Romano said. "Can I get into and out of the stand without the deer knowing I was there? You lot have to be able to access the stand without crossing trails.
"Once a deer realizes that it is being hunted, it changes the balance of power. It goes to the deer."
Finally, Romano cautioned hunters not to wearable out a stand up or mess it upward.
The first chase in a stand is the best hunt. Just by sitting and exfoliating in it, a hunter changes it. A stand can be "messed upwardly" by hunting in it at the wrong fourth dimension.
"Go to another stand," Romano said, "even though the trail camera tells you that a big buck is at the offset stand."810rp
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