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Scent control regiment and FACTS about activated carbon

BassBoysLLP said:
I believe in activated carbon clothing. I've repeatedly demonstrated it with thistle, milkweed, etc. It isn't fool proof, but the clothing provides a reduction and I have a lot less strong busts. I've demonstrated the reduction personally in a lab setting and have even developed my own suit. I work with activated carbon regularly on the job (as an engineer).

There is a threshold at which whitetails find human odor alarming. They have the ability to smell to non-alarming levels. Activated carbon pushes you closer to those levels. Hunting high and the dispersion it provides helps a lot. This dispersion can be modeled.

I went no scent control for a while after practicing for a long time. I'm never going back to no scent control. It simply works.

Just saying you did an experiment and it worked doesn't really tell me much. What was your experimental design? Was the carbon pitted against an animal's nose? Did you use controls, if so, what were they? How many times was the experiment repeated? Where can I find the data? Were the results published? I provided a paper where the clothing was pitted against a dog's nose and it failed. The authors noted that wind affected search dog effectiveness more than the suit (i.e. the dogs could find the test subject better if they were down wind regardless if the subject was wearing a carbon suit or not). I think those results alone speak volumes about how well the stuff actually works.

A "soft" bust is still a bust, and many times you get busted and never see or hear the deer even when you are wearing scent control products. I have seen GPS collared deer data where hunters should have seen the deer, but never did, and they never heard it bust but if you see the GPS "tracks" and look at the wind direction, you can clearly see the hunter got busted, and yes, they were wearing "scent reducing" clothing and they "sprayed down." The Excel graph attached is from a study where I looked at timing of GPS locations within 100 yards of tree stands. Weeks 1 and 2 represent nighttime deer usage of the location before hunting season opened. On week 3 the season opened. All the hunters indicated that they wore scent protecting clothing and "sprayed down." As you can see, their efforts to elude my collared deer's noses was pretty unsuccessful. Within just a couple of weeks (about 4-5 hunts at this stand) my GPS collared deer no longer used traveled within 100 yards of it during daylight hours.

I do agree that there is likely a "threshold" at which deer find human scent alarming, but I do not agree that activated carbon pushes your odor farther from those thresholds. I believe that the "threshold" is different for every deer depending on their experience and interactions with humans. For example, my father can put some corn on the ground, bang on a bucket and wild deer come running to him and feed 10 feet away regardless of which way the wind is blowing, and he stinks to high heaven! They do not perceive him as a threat, and therefore they tolerate his stench. A 4.5-year-old buck on public land probably isn't going to tolerate much human scent at all, because bucks don't get that old on public land by ignoring even the slightest whiff of human scent.

To each their own when it comes to using scent control, but I think open discussion of the subject always leads to the same conclusion...the primary defense against a deer's nose is playing the wind...the "scent control" stuff, if it does indeed work, serves as a back-up but is not absolutely vital for a hunter to be successful. Agreed?
 

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About 15 years ago while in grad school I did a series of closed room tests where I captured VOCs on CarboTrap and Tenex with and without activated clothing. The clothing demonstrated a sigificant reduction just by looking at peaks on a GC-MS. I don't and will never have the time nor resources for collar studies and other qualitative measures of deer reaction. I am only relying on a measurement of volatile odor, ignoring skin rafts. The clothing works but it does have its limitations. Some organics (e.g. LMW alcohols) have a relatively poor affinity and you will get some break through. Did you ever fart in a scent lok suit? :lol: But the big markers like 3-methyl-2-hexenoic acid (a big human odor component) is effectively eliminated.

Unlike John, I don't advocate completely ignoring the wind, but if you hunt really high with the clothing you can really push your scent to rediculously low levels due to combined suppression and dispersion.

Go with what you have faith in. I'll always be a scent control guy.
 
bioguy said:
A "soft" bust is still a bust, and many times you get busted and never see or hear the deer even when you are wearing scent control products. I have seen GPS collared deer data where hunters should have seen the deer, but never did, and they never heard it bust but if you see the GPS "tracks" and look at the wind direction, you can clearly see the hunter got busted, and yes, they were wearing "scent reducing" clothing and they "sprayed down." The Excel graph attached is from a study where I looked at timing of GPS locations within 100 yards of tree stands. Weeks 1 and 2 represent nighttime deer usage of the location before hunting season opened. On week 3 the season opened. All the hunters indicated that they wore scent protecting clothing and "sprayed down." As you can see, their efforts to elude my collared deer's noses was pretty unsuccessful. Within just a couple of weeks (about 4-5 hunts at this stand) my GPS collared deer no longer used traveled within 100 yards of it during daylight hours.

I love these kinds of studies showing deer behavior as it relates to hunters and pressure. I'm watching this scenario play out right now on a friends lease where some big buck sign was found. A bunch of human activity in that spot pushed the deer travel route about 150 yards over, completely out of sight of where the activity is. Very interesting to watch it play out. If only the people creating all the pressure understood what effect they're having :)
 
BassBoysLLP said:
Some organics (e.g. LMW alcohols) have a relatively poor affinity and you will get some break through. Did you ever fart in a scent lok suit? :lol: But the big markers like 3-methyl-2-hexenoic acid (a big human odor component) is effectively eliminated.

BB- Could you elaborate a little more on this, in particular what type of bodily organics are likely to get through and why your farts get through? An argument a lot of people use against it is that your farts get through and I'd like to know more about why. Thanks!
 
brydan said:
I love these kinds of studies showing deer behavior as it relates to hunters and pressure. I'm watching this scenario play out right now on a friends lease where some big buck sign was found. A bunch of human activity in that spot pushed the deer travel route about 150 yards over, completely out of sight of where the activity is. Very interesting to watch it play out. If only the people creating all the pressure understood what effect they're having :)

This why I use a mobile set-up...I rarely hunt the same stands more than 2-3 times a season. Here's an article where the author collected observation data at his stand. As you can see, it was a pretty hot stand early in the season, but as it got hunted more the number of sightings declined: https://www.qdma.com/articles/tanners-t ... this-stand

Here is a study that also describes deer behavior relative to hunting pressure: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 9/abstract

Here are a couple of other articles...QDMA covers a lot of the ground-breaking research with GPS collared deer. Their magazine "Quality Whitetails" is, in my opinion, the best deer and deer hunting magazine out there and the magazine alone is worth the price of QDMA membership.

https://www.qdma.com/articles/how-fast- ... g-pressure
https://www.qdma.com/articles/33-fascin ... r-research
 
BassBoysLLP said:
About 15 years ago while in grad school I did a series of closed room tests where I captured VOCs on CarboTrap and Tenex with and without activated clothing. The clothing demonstrated a sigificant reduction just by looking at peaks on a GC-MS. I don't and will never have the time nor resources for collar studies and other qualitative measures of deer reaction. I am only relying on a measurement of volatile odor, ignoring skin rafts. The clothing works but it does have its limitations. Some organics (e.g. LMW alcohols) have a relatively poor affinity and you will get some break through. Did you ever fart in a scent lok suit? :lol: But the big markers like 3-methyl-2-hexenoic acid (a big human odor component) is effectively eliminated.

Unlike John, I don't advocate completely ignoring the wind, but if you hunt really high with the clothing you can really push your scent to rediculously low levels due to combined suppression and dispersion.

Go with what you have faith in. I'll always be a scent control guy.

10-4. My degrees are in Wildlife Science and Natural Resource Management with a strong focus on white-tailed deer. If anyone is going to find out how good these products work against a deer's nose, it'll be the University of Georgia. At their deer pens they have trained deer to answer simple questions by making a selection on a food-reward training device. The device is designed to answer vision based questions, but I think with some slight modifications it can be used for scent as well.
 
Re: RE: Re: Scent control regiment and FACTS about activated carbon

redsquirrel said:
BassBoysLLP said:
Some organics (e.g. LMW alcohols) have a relatively poor affinity and you will get some break through. Did you ever fart in a scent lok suit? But the big markers like 3-methyl-2-hexenoic acid (a big human odor component) is effectively eliminated.

BB- Could you elaborate a little more on this, in particular what type of bodily organics are likely to get through and why your farts get through? An argument a lot of people use against it is that your farts get through and I'd like to know more about why. Thanks!
The suits don't have a lot of capacity for odorous parts of farts.... sulfides and mercaptans. They also don't have a lot of capacity for low molecular weight (LMW) alcohols, LMW ketones, LMW aldehydes, LMW acids, sugars, LMW aliphatics. While these compounds are breaking through, many are found everywhere in nature, so not overly concerning. Most of the volatiles and semi-volatiles that are relatively unique to people adsorb well. There lies the strength of the suit. It won't make you invisible, but it will reduce your footprint.
 
Re: RE: Re: Scent control regiment and FACTS about activated carbon

BassBoysLLP said:
The suits don't have a lot of capacity for odorous parts of farts.... sulfides and mercaptans. They also don't have a lot of capacity for low molecular weight (LMW) alcohols, LMW ketones, LMW aldehydes, LMW acids, sugars, LMW aliphatics. While these compounds are breaking through, many are found everywhere in nature, so not overly concerning. Most of the volatiles and semi-volatiles that are relatively unique to people adsorb well. There lies the strength of the suit. It won't make you invisible, but it will reduce your footprint.

Thanks! A few more questions:
Are those parts of farts and the LMC alcohols that it doesn't have a lot of capacity for just too big? What are examples of where they are found in nature?
What are the volatiles and semi-volatiles that are unique to people that absorb well?

Thanks again! Very interesting and helpful! :D
 
BassBoysLLP said:
I'll address this after the season. This is a very long answer

Ok, thanks. I am very interested and glad you are willing to share!
 
Bioguy I agree that playing the wind is always a good idea and that you don't need a ScentLok suit to kill deer, heck I know guys that smoke on stand and still killed deer, I wouldn't do that but they claim it doesn't bother the deer at all and the fact that they killed one proves their point. However in most cases this was done during gun season and the deer for the most part were young and I think were pushed past those hunters by others during gun season.

While there is plenty of evidence that we can't completely eliminate our scent I do believe we can reduce it by using these products and perhaps keep the deer from getting enough of a olfactory clue that we can get a shot. The problem with strictly hunting the wind is the wind rarely blows in a constant direction for any length of time and structure, terrain, thermals and many other factors change the direction our scent cone goes in. Just like sitting at a campfire one minute the smoke blows in your face and you move and then you barely get seated and it's in your face again. I don't know about anyone else but many times I've had a perfect wind at the start of the hunt only to have it change a short time later to a less than perfect direction. If possible using scent control and hunting the wind is the best that you can do but if the wind changes on me I personally have more confidence wearing ScentLok than not. I can't scientifically prove it works but I think anything that gives you confidence will make you hunt harder, mind over matter I guess but it works for me, and even if say it's only a 10% reduction in my scent I'll take it everytime.

While I think this is a fascinating subject and enjoy people making intelligent arguments on both sides I think it will always boil down to what someone has consistant success with and regardless of how much evidence there is disputing what should and shouldn't work people will stick with what works for them and produces results. Also until we can prove how a whitetail thinks and processes visual and olfactory stimulie we will always be making educated guess as to how they react to these things. Hunters have been struggling from the dawn of time to fool animals noses with various amounts of success and failure and I think even with all the advances in science it will still ultimately come down to what works for that individual, for some it will be scent control, for others it will be to hunt the wind, and it's hard to argue with success.

Good Hunting,

Roger
 
Waymore said:
Red,

You seem highly interested in fart control. You got a gassy stomach :D

:lol: :lol:

In all seriousness though I have been wondering why you can smell farts through scentlok and I'm looking forward to knowing why! Knowledge is power!
 
Re: RE: Re: Scent control regiment and FACTS about activated carbon

BassBoysLLP said:
redsquirrel said:
BassBoysLLP said:
Some organics (e.g. LMW alcohols) have a relatively poor affinity and you will get some break through. Did you ever fart in a scent lok suit? But the big markers like 3-methyl-2-hexenoic acid (a big human odor component) is effectively eliminated.

BB- Could you elaborate a little more on this, in particular what type of bodily organics are likely to get through and why your farts get through? An argument a lot of people use against it is that your farts get through and I'd like to know more about why. Thanks!
The suits don't have a lot of capacity for odorous parts of farts.... sulfides and mercaptans. They also don't have a lot of capacity for low molecular weight (LMW) alcohols, LMW ketones, LMW aldehydes, LMW acids, sugars, LMW aliphatics. While these compounds are breaking through, many are found everywhere in nature, so not overly concerning. Most of the volatiles and semi-volatiles that are relatively unique to people adsorb well. There lies the strength of the suit. It won't make you invisible, but it will reduce your footprint.

This paper does a good job of highlighting key odor components.

http://www.annexpublishers.com/arti...ents-in-Human-Odor-Detection-Technologies.pdf
 
redsquirrel said:
In all seriousness though I have been wondering why you can smell farts through scentlok and I'm looking forward to knowing why! Knowledge is power!

Too much, too fast. If you tried to "dutch oven" a one piece suit that was fully enclosed, you would eventually be able to open it and not smell the fart. But if the air moves thru fast, the carbon molecules can't absorb it as fast as the air moves.
 
Love this site ! Am new here, but looking forward being here awhile
 
Question, so are you guys literally just throwing your garments in your regular dryer where all your other regular clothes are being washed?
does this not add unwanted odors to the scentblocker garments due to dryer sheets and detergents from previous loads of regular clothes?
I am just curious here , hopefully someone can answer this for me. Whats the process?
 
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