Compared to most of you here on the platform, I'm a rookie hunter with only about 5 seasons under my belt. Like
@Bowmanmike, I grew up in Germany, where hunting is not as accessible to the regular population as it is here in the US. Here are a couple of my observations in the last 5 years.
- I'm using leather boots most of the time, either Timberland light hiking boots or laced up snake boots. When processing my deer, I put aside the fat and cook it out to make "deer lard", which I use as leather treatment for the boots and all other leather items for hunting. One evening hunting, I walked a fire lane down to the stand. I had put on my boots at home, had them on in the car and kept them on for the hunt. About 30 minutes later, a doe and two youngens crossed the fire lane and my "scent track". The doe didn't hesitate for a moment, scent checking the trail and calmly moved on without any sign of alarm.
- talking to my doctor who is also a hunter about scent, we agreed on the following on sweating. Fresh sweat on its own does not smell, unless one has had a heavy load garlic or similar in last 24 hours. But then the sweat will have garlic smell. What we call body odor is a result of the protein in the sweat breaking down, which takes about 6 - 8 hours. We all have noticed bo in our arm pits, because there it is warm and the skin can't really air dry. Smell on your forearm, it has rarely bo, even 24 hours after your last shower. So, sweating on the walk in is not so bad, old sweat in your clothing might be the issue here. Ergo, if I go hunting, I take a shower with scent free soap, put on fresh cloth, all washed in scent free detergent and air dried and get into my "hunting truck" which I periodically air bomb with an ozone machine. Outer layers are stored in plastic bins in the car and washed periodically.
- Determining hunting days, I look at the forecast, looking for days where the air pressure is high, humidity is low. I have seen the most deer when I go out at around 8am after a cold night and when the temperature is rising. Watching my milkweed on those mornings, as soon as the air warms up, the thermals kick in and the weed goes up with the wind, what ever direction the wind is blowing. Important is the fact it goes up, not down. Taking thermals into consideration more than wind direction has proven more sightings and hunting success for me. Hunting in the evenings always involves taking thermals into consideration, being aware cooling air goes down and takes your scent to the ground.
- The other morning, I took my GSP out for a walk and play on a nearby field. She usually has no problem to find her dummy bird in tall grass. However, that morning the field had been freshly cut the day before. She had the most difficulties to find the bird dummy, although it was in plain sight. That was the moment when I realized that the dog is not smelling the item, but the disturbance of the smell of the field where the bird dummy hits the ground. The whole filed was disturbed with the mowing. Imagine your lawn in the morning with dew on it. As we humans can see someone walked on the grass because the wet grass is disturbed, the dog, and probably the deer as well, can smell the disturbance on the ground. Only if the disturbance smell is considered a "dangerous" smell, the deer spooks. So in the case of my leather boots, she smelled the disturbance, but it did not register as a dangerous one.
Doing all of the above after picking up Saddlehunting in 2018 was the ticket. I love the mobility, flexibility and freedom of walking the woods, looking for signs and picking a tree with good cover with my little set of knowledge and experience. Hunters up north deal with different challenges as we down here in the south. I guess there is no "one approach works for all" solution. But we can take this site to share experiences and knowledge so we all can learn and through trial and error, become better hunter.
Cheers!
