John kills big deer because he's the best whitetail hunter on the planet. He was proving that way before scent loc.
I like the Benoits.
No doubt John and Dan are excellent hunters....they aren't the only ones though. There are guys with unbelievable success who have no celebrity outside of local awareness.
I know of a guy who usually shoots 2 and sometimes 3 pope and young bucks in VA each year, not on private land. He's been doing if for years. It only impresses me because other hunters don't consistently produce like he does in the area, although some do pretty darn well often enough.
In some areas big bucks of P&Y caliber rarely exist, and guys taking 100 inchers consistently are darn successful and know how to hunt. Just because they don't seek out bigger antlered bucks doesn't disqualify their abilities in my book.
What impresses me about THP: the adaptability they've shown...not the bucks they've taken.
Anyway, what's the point?
I think if John says scent loc and his scent reduction efforts have increased his success exponentially, he's observed that.
And if Dan gets it done by playing the wind, he's confident in doing it that way because of his experience.
And if bazz77 says he sees just as many deer and of the same quality after giving up his scent regimine, that's his experience and I don't understand why anyone would question it.
At best we can qualify scent control's role in successful hunts, its unquantifiable in hunting situations. Posts like this are valuable, because a collection of experiences to draw from can provide info that hunters with limited time afield can draw on. Ain't never gonna be a consensus.