My question is how do people actually know if what they are doing is actually working? Just because an odor seems reduced to us means nothing for a deer. All the products I’ve seen tested by dogs have failed. It all just seems like speculation.
neither side has done a decent, controlled experiment on this.....either out of laziness, not knowing, or don't wanna find out
the dog tracking tests do not replicate a hunting situation
John E criticized it by then going the extreme other direction with needing helicopters to drop you in a spot to have a good test (ridiculous.....and why would he want to make it seem impossible to carefully test this technology? as if it akin to interstellar travel at this point in history)
a way to get at it is very simple
many, randomly placed bait stations where everything (including how often you go to check things) are the same and they have game cameras on them to count deer visits, etc
one group of replications is just bait/cam....one adds a porous bag filled with human scent (dirty laundry mixed with human hair from a barber maybe), another is this human scent bag covered with a scent lok covering, another is scent lok bag with nothing inside....4 total controls/treatments....or maybe more
periodically replenish stink bags but on those same days walk to the spots without stink bags (keep as much as possible the same)
random things that folks will claim "ruin it because not everything is the same down to the iota" is averaged out by random locations and 30 or more replications per treatment....also anything that varies at individual locations and seen as important can be measured (like wind direction and strength in an area) and very robust statistical techniques can be used with this to inform the study.....any claim against this approach can be mitigated reasonably well because this is a very easy science experiment in comparison to others
it would actually make an excellent master's thesis in a wildlife program
make sure that scent lok doesn't fund it or the researchers are beyond reproach regarding ethcs
nobody's gonna do this because it would take a few years, it would cost maybe 250K with labor/etc, and (the big one) it would be seen as a somewhat definitive answer and if it went against scent lok could ruin their business.....dangerous knowledge that is better not known