Scent control explained- long read

[hopedale]

I'm no scientist or expert, but this is info I've gleaned over the past 10 years through reading and experience as a K9 Handler with tracking dogs that are also trained in other odor discrimination specialties, so take it for what it's worth.

Picture this. You are standing in the middle of your yard with no wind. Your body temperature is +/- 98.7 degrees and it's 60 degrees outside. Heat is emanating from your body, so it rises. Your body is shedding thousands of microscopic skin cells per minute. Those skin cells also rise until the temperature stabilizes, then begin to fall. That is the human odor dogs (and deer and pigs) can detect. Add a little wind and the odor drifts before it settles. The odor dissipates with time, and is spread further with wind, reducing how strong the odor is.

Now think about this. You know what it smells like when you walk outside right after your lawn has been mowed? If I walk across your yard your dog smells that same odor. It's called ground disturbance. When you walk across the ground you are crushing and damaging vegetation and moving dirt that allows odors beneath the surface to escape.

Now, imagine walking across a concrete parking lot. The only odor a dog can detect is the human odor, there is no ground disturbance.

From my reading and experience what I have found is that when a person walks across a field, the odor a dog can detect is 95% ground disturbance, 5% human odor. Human odor is much more difficult for a dog to consistently track. This can easily be shown with K9 tracking as many dogs that are outstanding trackers on vegetation are completely lost on concrete and cannot track.

How does this relate to hunting? Glad you asked. :-)

If you put on an astronauts suit with self contained breathing apparatus and walked to your blind, my dog could easily track you for several hours due to ground disturbance odor. When you walk to your blind there will ALWAYS be odor that can disturb the wildlife. Whether or not it does will greatly depend on their experience with odor. Does wearing rubber boots help reduce human odor? I think so, but it does not effect ground disturbance odor.

I think the key is knowing a little about odor and how it is spread. You can reduce your odor with clothing, scent free soap, etc, but short of a rubber suit with self contained breathing apparatus, you cannot eliminate it. Reduce what you can, and always hunt the wind.

Interesting

[JSBrit]

Very interesting stuff through this thread

[HenryP01]

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[Mudslinger]

I have been doing this bowhunting thing a little over 40 years and have found 3 things that seem to work for me, make that 4.

For me hunting in an area that has no big trees, hunting out of a bind, either a pop up or something like a Maverick or krivoman has helped tremendously in controlling scent.
Next would be 3 items, 2 you can buy and one use just by some ingredients and use.

Smoke, a proven fact that smoke kills the bacteria that produces odor. When I used pop ups, i would smoke all my clothes inside the pop ups, thus smoking my clothes and what i was going to sit in. This worked extremely well and I used it for several years.

Cattle scent. A product you an buy in spray bottles and sold by Pete Rickards. Again it worked extremely well as long as you do not spray it on your pop ups! Where in most leases in TX do not have cattle. i know some don't, but a bunch do and that scent is very common.

Earth scent. This is what I have used for the last 2 years. I wash my clothes in unscented detergent and keep them in an enclosed container with the scent wafers mixed in. I also hand scent wafers around any window I have open in my blinds when I am sitting. I have had deer walk completely around my blinds with the wind blowing right to them at less than 20' and have not had any deer blow at me.

My 2 cents worth on scent control.

[..Ambush..]

Great info, thanks for sharing..
Scent elimination is a complete myth, nothing more than a sales pitch for companies to Peddle their Wares. You absolutely 100% cannot beat a deers nose PERIOD. Even if you cover your entire body in a rubber suit, you're still emitting scent from the eye holes required to see. The closest thing out there would be an Ozonics unit and even those are not foolproof.
That said, Ive had success with vanilla for whatever reason. Not sure what effect it has but I certainly noticed a difference in how often I got busted even with deer downwind. I do not believe it covers your scent though. As mentioned deer can decipher multiple aromas at a time. Doesn't matter if you doused your entire body in diesel fuel. The deer will smell diesel fuel and he will smell YOU right along with it.
Be smart, hunt the wind and stop wasting your hard earned money on so-called scent elimination products that just simply do not work.

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[Smart]

Scent control explained- long read

Great info, thanks for sharing..
Scent elimination is a complete myth, nothing more than a sales pitch for companies to Peddle their Wares. You absolutely 100% cannot beat a deers nose PERIOD. Even if you cover your entire body in a rubber suit, you're still emitting scent from the eye holes required to see. The closest thing out there would be an Ozonics unit and even those are not foolproof.
That said, Ive had success with vanilla for whatever reason. Not sure what effect it has but I certainly noticed a difference in how often I got busted even with deer downwind. I do not believe it covers your scent though. As mentioned deer can decipher multiple aromas at a time. Doesn't matter if you doused your entire body in diesel fuel. The deer will smell diesel fuel and he will smell YOU right along with it.
Be smart, hunt the wind and stop wasting your hard earned money on so-called scent elimination products that just simply do not work.

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Ive said it time and time again here when folks tell us to ignore scent REDUCING products. Hunting the wind is just as bogus at times in West and South Texas. Deer come into a feedpen 10 different ways in a 2-3 day weekend of hunting and most of them circle around and check the whole pen. I had hell defeating the nose of the deer in my avatar as he was a circler. Hunting the wind is only good if you can get them past you to the feeder, handcorn or shooting lane of your choice. Or can get outside their circler which is a crapshoot with deer without defined patterns. I think it was TuthDoc that said... you can't eliminate your scent entirely but you need to reduce it to an amount where they think you have come and gone... or aren't there anymore. That is what we try to do when use some of those products as well as hunt out of well built boxes with very little draft and have been successful.

The deer in my avatar was a circler and after several close calls walking in from the North into a South wind after circling from the South we had to change something . I had a north wind the next hunt and figured I had a better chance if he followed his same routine, but nope, he circled to my South this time and was working the North wind. I literally closed all my windows on the suggestion of guys during camp talk when I first saw him head that way at 80 yards out, until he luckily, walked all the way around to my handcorn north. He made a mistake of walking behind a cedar he didn't need to and I opened my shooting wind and got into position. I guess you could say I played the wind but nothing like the typical playing of the wind. If I'd have done that, I'm probably still chasing after him.

[..Ambush..]

Ive said it time and time again here when folks tell us to ignore scent REDUCING products. Hunting the wind is just as bogus at times in West and South Texas. Deer come into a feedpen 10 different ways in a 2-3 day weekend of hunting and most of them circle around and check the whole pen. I had hell defeating the nose of the deer in my avatar as he was a circler. Hunting the wind is only good if you can get them past you to the feeder, handcorn or shooting lane of your choice. Or can get outside their circler which is a crapshoot with deer without defined patterns. I think it was TuthDoc that said... you can't eliminate your scent entirely but you need to reduce it to an amount where they think you have come and gone... or aren't there anymore. That is what we try to do when use some of those products as well as hunt out of well built boxes with very little draft and have been successful.

The deer in my avatar was a circler and after several close calls walking in from the North into a South wind after circling from the South we had to change something . I had a north wind the next hunt and figured I had a better chance if he followed his same routine, but nope, he circled to my South this time and was working the North wind. I literally closed all my windows on the suggestion of guys during camp talk when I first saw him head that way at 80 yards out, until he luckily, walked all the way around to my handcorn north. He made a mistake of walking behind a cedar he didn't need to and I opened my shooting wind and got into position. I guess you could say I played the wind but nothing like the typical playing of the wind. If I'd have done that, I'm probably still chasing after him.

If you're hunting a destination, whether it be a food plot, feeder or even a bed, mature deer will almost always Circle downwind. Even so, every setup has a wind that works better than others. If possible I like to use terrain features to set up where the deer cannot get downwind, be it a river, a bluff an open field Etc.
I do the same with the windows on my pop-up blind. Everything is sealed up except a tiny hole to fling and arrow from. Less scent Escaping The Blind is always going to improve your chances. Everyone hunts differently, but when I speak of playing the wind I guess I'm mainly referring to hunting Trails, funnels and travel corridors where the deer are simply passing through. As long as you don't walk across any trails and your scent is not blowing to where they are coming or going you're golden.

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[ultrastealth]

There is another source of human odor not mentioned, and that is body odor which is produced by bacteria. This is the odor that you primarily eliminate when you shower and use antibacterial soaps. Also, the ground disturbance odor only tells a deer that something recently passed through, but they cannot specifically identify it as human, and, unlike a tracking dog, they are not following a trail and should show little concern that another animal has passed by, because that is something that they encounter all day every day.

[flywise]

Whats going on when a human who has been working on a tractor all day, getting sweaty and covered in hydrolic fluid sits in a brush blind with a sweriling wind does not get busted by any one of the 6-8 deer with in 15 yds?

[..Ambush..]

Whats going on when a human who has been working on a tractor all day, getting sweaty and covered in hydrolic fluid sits in a brush blind with a sweriling wind does not get busted by any one of the 6-8 deer with in 15 yds?

Deer pick up our scent by the skin cells we shed, which happens at a rate of 40,000 every 60 Seconds. In theory, if a man were to go out hunting while sweating the skin cells would be more likely to stick to your body rather than float off if you were clean and dry.
It's been proven in some of the k9 testing the first man they pick off is the guy who washed down with scent detergent and went through all the processes. The last man they normally find is the one who is dirty and sweaty and took no precautions. Pretty interesting I think..

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[flywise]

Deer pick up our scent by the skin cells we shed, which happens at a rate of 40,000 every 60 Seconds. In theory, if a man were to go out hunting while sweating the skin cells would be more likely to stick to your body rather than float off if you were clean and dry.
It's been proven in some of the k9 testing the first man they pick off is the guy who washed down with scent detergent and went through all the processes. The last man they normally find is the one who is dirty and sweaty and took no precautions. Pretty interesting I think..

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very interesting indeed

[flyby]

Also, the ground disturbance odor only tells a deer that something recently passed through, but they cannot specifically identify it as human, and, unlike a tracking dog, they are not following a trail and should show little concern that another animal has passed by, because that is something that they encounter all day every day.

I'd slightly disagree with this. While technically correct, we are still leaving human odor walking to the stand, but it would be minimal if good scent control is used. This can be shown with well trained tracking dogs, which can track on vegetation and follow a specific person when multiple cross tracks are laid by different people. There is still human odor that the dogs can detect and even differentiate from one person to another. The only other thing I would think is that a 200 lb man walking would probably leave a stronger ground disturbance odor than a 35 lb coyote or most other animals. Would the deer be able to detect that and associate it with a person? Possibly.