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Different perspective on scent control

Rangermatthews

Active Member
Vendor Rep
Joined
Jun 3, 2019
Messages
153
Location
Chassel MI
I have been an avid bowhunter for the last 30 years. Currently I train dogs for law enforcement. The dogs are trained in narcotics detection, tracking and other methods to locate humans. These two areas of knowledge give me a unique understanding of how dogs and deer utilize their sense of smell. Dogs possess up to 220 million olfactory (scent) receptors and can detect some odors in parts per trillion. A dogs sense of smell is 10,000 - 100,000 times greater than ours. “let’s suppose they’re just 10,000 times better,” says James Walker, former director of the Sensory Research Institute at Florida State University, “If you make the analogy to vision, what you and I can see at a third of a mile, a dog could see more than 3,000 miles away and still see as well”. Conversely a deer has up to 297 million olfactory receptors compared to humans having only 5 million. Books on training dogs date back to the mid1800’s and our ability to observe dogs recognition and response to odor is invaluable as it relates to how a deer utilizes its sense of smell. That being said it is important to understand that deer and dogs approach odor recognition from completely opposite ends of the spectrum. Dogs are trained to located the lowest detectable amount of odor (absolute threshold). Dogs then are able to determine direction and follow the odor to its source by following the slightest change in odor concentration (just noticeable difference JND). Deer detect odor and then have to make a determination wether or not they are in danger. This decision is based on past experience and is the equivalent to a subconscious distance calculation based on the amount of odor detected.



The key element of the “scent control” discussion is recognizing that scent control is a tactic not a hunting philosophy. It is a tactic similar to the use of a grunt call. You don't need to use a grunt call but In some situations it may be beneficial. For the purpose of this discussion I will refer to “scent control” as measures to reduce human odor. This would include washing and maintaining clothing, sprays, oral use of chlorophyl and Scentlok clothing/activated carbon. The use of cover scents and ozone would fall in separate categories. The problem is that scent control constantly gets debated on wether or not it works. Of course it works. I think everyone recognizes that we can reduce human odor. The argument is that with deer having such an acute sense of smell attempts to do so are futile and a waste of time. The issue is further muddied when proponents of scent control allude to the goal of being “scent free”. This is where the scent control argument is completely lost. Hunters on the side of scent control and Scentlok have countless instances of “proof” that it works and the hunters who don’t use scent control have the guy who farts in his Scentlok bibs and a wall full of bucks to say it's a waste of time.



The fact is that deer smell all kinds of things and through life experience assign a level of danger to that odor. A deers sense of smell is its greatest sense and it uses it similar to how we rely on our eye site. Deer clearly show odor recognition by licking their nose and head movement as they determine direction of the odor by interpreting the slightest variance of odor concentration (JND). More importantly a deer uses its sense of smell not only to identify odors but to calculate distance to that odor. This can clearly be observed in tracking dogs as they clearly exhibited changes in behavior as they get closer to the source of the odor. I have no doubt that they can tell exactly how far away the source of the odor is. A certain amount of odor particles correlates to a certain distance. 24/7/365 days a year deer utilize their sense of smell to compute distance. Very few deer have never smelled a human so every deer has a distance it will tolerate in a variety of locations it travels. It is not that it doesn’t smell human odor it is that based on its past experience in that location it is not in danger or has a lower level of concern. This directly relates to hunting pressure and the tolerance of deer to human odor in an urban environment. Deer will have no problem with people moving around in their backyards but if those same people take one extra step into the woods it is a different story.



Scent control is not the act of having no human odor. It is more of an optical illusion. A human smells a certain way at a certain distance. This is based on the deers past experience with human odor related with its daily exposure to all different kinds of odor molecules. A certain level of odor concentration equals a distance. It is a subconscious calculation made by the deer. Similar to us passing a car on a divided highway. We use our sense of sight to make a complex mathematical calculation involving the closing speeds of three vehicles moving at different speeds over an unknown length of roadway. Think how fast we make this decision. Very few of us could actually do the calculation on a piece of paper but we do it all the time. Now imagine that I narrowed the approaching road and put a smaller car approaching in the opposite lane. All our previous calculations were based on what we believed the width of the roadway is and what the size of a car normally is. How much of an impact would that have on the accuracy of that calculation? This is the essence of scent control. If you can lower the amount of human odor you can represent to the deer that you are located further away than is actual. Scent control can give you that “one more step” that is so critical when it comes to bowhunting. It would also be important to say that hunting height has a huge impact on the deers ability to calculate distance and that height alone can reduce odor in a variety of situations.



Scent control is a simple cost vs benefit calculation. The cost of scent control is the effort and time it takes to maintain your clothing, equipment and personal hygiene. It also includes how all that work affects where you decide to hunt. Hard core scent control enthusiasts are far less likely to hike 3 miles to get to their stand because it would require a complete overhaul of their equipment following the hunt. Everything would need to be rewashed because it would be extremely difficult to control sweating with that type of physical exertion. Scent control as a tactic is not necessary or even practical when used in a variety of different hunting strategies. Gun hunters worry very little about scent control because they are normally located at a distance that is outside the area of concern for the deer. Western hunters have little interest in scent control because it is impractical when combined with walking up and down mountain ridges. You would be unable to maintain the clothing or human body odor levels where the cost would be worth the benefit.



The bottom line is scent control is an effective tactic in a variety of situations. Its a tool in your tool box. You can choose to use it or not. In some situations it can be very helpful and in others it isn’t. It can give you that “one more step” opportunity that you otherwise wouldn’t get. It can also prevent you from pushing deep into a swamp or a large area of public land. The big thing is it doesn’t have to be an all or nothing approach to your entire season. Use scent control in situations you think it would beneficial but don’t limit yourself with that one tactic. Use the wind because the reality is that if the air current that contains your odor never makes contact with the deers nose they will not smell you (not withstanding ground disturbance and contact odor). Choose your strategy, try different things and implement what tactics you feel are going to help you accomplish your goals.
 
In before two things happen:
1. How does training dogs give you insight to deer?
2. Scent lock will be saturated instantly when you pun it on.
Lol that’s usually how these post (arguments) go.
That was a great read. Well thought out and I appreciate the time you spent sharing with us. I look forward to more of your posts.


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Good read. I've given up on most scent control. I take a shower in scent free soap/shampoo and use ozone for my clothes, but no more spray and definitely no stressing about carbon suits, reactivating stuff, and obsessively washing my gear. For me, the biggest reason I stopped was because my scent control obsession made hunting miserable.

It's much more fun to hunt the wind and not worry about the rest.
 
Good read. I've given up on most scent control. I take a shower in scent free soap/shampoo and use ozone for my clothes, but no more spray and definitely no stressing about carbon suits, reactivating stuff, and obsessively washing my gear. For me, the biggest reason I stopped was because my scent control obsession made hunting miserable.

It's much more fun to hunt the wind and not worry about the rest.

Right there with you brother! Just today I threw away a bunch of scent away spray containers and cover scents.
 
Thanks for giving your perspective

With scent reduction I’ve always figured that the deer will smell me. Hopefully if my odor is reduced enough, it will give the impression of me being further away or that the scent is older and has already dissipated somewhat. Therefore, I’m not an immediate threat/close by.

So I try to reduce scent some & of course play the wind.

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Last edited:
Nice read.

I'll add scent control worked better for me on mid to low pressure deer. Ive hunted a high pressure area the last decade for the most part. Other than rubber boots Ive about given up on the rest.
 
In before two things happen:
1. How does training dogs give you insight to deer?
2. Scent lock will be saturated instantly when you pun it on.
Lol that’s usually how these post (arguments) go.
That was a great read. Well thought out and I appreciate the time you spent sharing with us. I look forward to more of your posts.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The dogs sense of smell is closer to a deers than ours. Watching how the dog reacts to odors gives an understanding of a variety of things. the dogs are trained to locate people in wooded enviroments. Basically reverse deer hunting where the dog either tracks ground disturbance or uses the wind the locate the person. The dog and the handler are essentially the deer and the person we are looking for takes the place of the hunter. This shows from the deers perspective how far away the dog can be down wind in a variety of enviroments and still show odor recognition. If the person you are looking for in the woods is armed it gives you a real understanding of where the deer is vulnerable. The dogs give insight into cross tracks, entry exit strategies, how weather relates to odor dispersal, thermals, wind direction and tree stand height.

I am not making an argument about Scent lok. This is about odor and efforts to reduce odor. Scent lok was only included in a list of several ways to try to reduce odor.
 
The dogs sense of smell is closer to a deers than ours. Watching how the dog reacts to odors gives an understanding of a variety of things. the dogs are trained to locate people in wooded enviroments. Basically reverse deer hunting where the dog either tracks ground disturbance or uses the wind the locate the person. The dog and the handler are essentially the deer and the person we are looking for takes the place of the hunter. This shows from the deers perspective how far away the dog can be down wind in a variety of enviroments and still show odor recognition. If the person you are looking for in the woods is armed it gives you a real understanding of where the deer is vulnerable. The dogs give insight into cross tracks, entry exit strategies, how weather relates to odor dispersal, thermals, wind direction and tree stand height.

I am not making an argument about Scent lok. This is about odor and efforts to reduce odor. Scent lok was only included in a list of several ways to try to reduce odor.


What would be an interesting test study would be to have a guy go sit hidden in the woods with a full scent control regimen. Then, have one of these trained dogs go in to find him. As the dog approaches the scent control regimen guy, read the dogs body language of excitement to see if this level of reaction is the same as if the guy hidden there had zero scent control regimen (Compare the two levels of reaction).
 
What would be an interesting test study would be to have a guy go sit hidden in the woods with a full scent control regimen. Then, have one of these trained dogs go in to find him. As the dog approaches the scent control regimen guy, read the dogs body language of excitement to see if this level of reaction is the same as if the guy hidden there had zero scent control regimen (Compare the two levels of reaction).
The problem with that the dog is looking for detectable traces of an odor. How the dog reacts is going to be interpreted however the handler wants it to be.
 
The problem with that the dog is looking for detectable traces of an odor. How the dog reacts is going to be interpreted however the handler wants it to be.

I thought the ranger matthews said as the dog got closer his level of excitement changed.
 
I have been an avid bowhunter for the last 30 years. Currently I train dogs for law enforcement. The dogs are trained in narcotics detection, tracking and other methods to locate humans. These two areas of knowledge give me a unique understanding of how dogs and deer utilize their sense of smell. Dogs possess up to 220 million olfactory (scent) receptors and can detect some odors in parts per trillion. A dogs sense of smell is 10,000 - 100,000 times greater than ours. “let’s suppose they’re just 10,000 times better,” says James Walker, former director of the Sensory Research Institute at Florida State University, “If you make the analogy to vision, what you and I can see at a third of a mile, a dog could see more than 3,000 miles away and still see as well”. Conversely a deer has up to 297 million olfactory receptors compared to humans having only 5 million. Books on training dogs date back to the mid1800’s and our ability to observe dogs recognition and response to odor is invaluable as it relates to how a deer utilizes its sense of smell. That being said it is important to understand that deer and dogs approach odor recognition from completely opposite ends of the spectrum. Dogs are trained to located the lowest detectable amount of odor (absolute threshold). Dogs then are able to determine direction and follow the odor to its source by following the slightest change in odor concentration (just noticeable difference JND). Deer detect odor and then have to make a determination wether or not they are in danger. This decision is based on past experience and is the equivalent to a subconscious distance calculation based on the amount of odor detected.



The key element of the “scent control” discussion is recognizing that scent control is a tactic not a hunting philosophy. It is a tactic similar to the use of a grunt call. You don't need to use a grunt call but In some situations it may be beneficial. For the purpose of this discussion I will refer to “scent control” as measures to reduce human odor. This would include washing and maintaining clothing, sprays, oral use of chlorophyl and Scentlok clothing/activated carbon. The use of cover scents and ozone would fall in separate categories. The problem is that scent control constantly gets debated on wether or not it works. Of course it works. I think everyone recognizes that we can reduce human odor. The argument is that with deer having such an acute sense of smell attempts to do so are futile and a waste of time. The issue is further muddied when proponents of scent control allude to the goal of being “scent free”. This is where the scent control argument is completely lost. Hunters on the side of scent control and Scentlok have countless instances of “proof” that it works and the hunters who don’t use scent control have the guy who farts in his Scentlok bibs and a wall full of bucks to say it's a waste of time.



The fact is that deer smell all kinds of things and through life experience assign a level of danger to that odor. A deers sense of smell is its greatest sense and it uses it similar to how we rely on our eye site. Deer clearly show odor recognition by licking their nose and head movement as they determine direction of the odor by interpreting the slightest variance of odor concentration (JND). More importantly a deer uses its sense of smell not only to identify odors but to calculate distance to that odor. This can clearly be observed in tracking dogs as they clearly exhibited changes in behavior as they get closer to the source of the odor. I have no doubt that they can tell exactly how far away the source of the odor is. A certain amount of odor particles correlates to a certain distance. 24/7/365 days a year deer utilize their sense of smell to compute distance. Very few deer have never smelled a human so every deer has a distance it will tolerate in a variety of locations it travels. It is not that it doesn’t smell human odor it is that based on its past experience in that location it is not in danger or has a lower level of concern. This directly relates to hunting pressure and the tolerance of deer to human odor in an urban environment. Deer will have no problem with people moving around in their backyards but if those same people take one extra step into the woods it is a different story.



Scent control is not the act of having no human odor. It is more of an optical illusion. A human smells a certain way at a certain distance. This is based on the deers past experience with human odor related with its daily exposure to all different kinds of odor molecules. A certain level of odor concentration equals a distance. It is a subconscious calculation made by the deer. Similar to us passing a car on a divided highway. We use our sense of sight to make a complex mathematical calculation involving the closing speeds of three vehicles moving at different speeds over an unknown length of roadway. Think how fast we make this decision. Very few of us could actually do the calculation on a piece of paper but we do it all the time. Now imagine that I narrowed the approaching road and put a smaller car approaching in the opposite lane. All our previous calculations were based on what we believed the width of the roadway is and what the size of a car normally is. How much of an impact would that have on the accuracy of that calculation? This is the essence of scent control. If you can lower the amount of human odor you can represent to the deer that you are located further away than is actual. Scent control can give you that “one more step” that is so critical when it comes to bowhunting. It would also be important to say that hunting height has a huge impact on the deers ability to calculate distance and that height alone can reduce odor in a variety of situations.



Scent control is a simple cost vs benefit calculation. The cost of scent control is the effort and time it takes to maintain your clothing, equipment and personal hygiene. It also includes how all that work affects where you decide to hunt. Hard core scent control enthusiasts are far less likely to hike 3 miles to get to their stand because it would require a complete overhaul of their equipment following the hunt. Everything would need to be rewashed because it would be extremely difficult to control sweating with that type of physical exertion. Scent control as a tactic is not necessary or even practical when used in a variety of different hunting strategies. Gun hunters worry very little about scent control because they are normally located at a distance that is outside the area of concern for the deer. Western hunters have little interest in scent control because it is impractical when combined with walking up and down mountain ridges. You would be unable to maintain the clothing or human body odor levels where the cost would be worth the benefit.



The bottom line is scent control is an effective tactic in a variety of situations. Its a tool in your tool box. You can choose to use it or not. In some situations it can be very helpful and in others it isn’t. It can give you that “one more step” opportunity that you otherwise wouldn’t get. It can also prevent you from pushing deep into a swamp or a large area of public land. The big thing is it doesn’t have to be an all or nothing approach to your entire season. Use scent control in situations you think it would beneficial but don’t limit yourself with that one tactic. Use the wind because the reality is that if the air current that contains your odor never makes contact with the deers nose they will not smell you (not withstanding ground disturbance and contact odor). Choose your strategy, try different things and implement what tactics you feel are going to help you accomplish your goals.
Very well written, I'm going to say no matter what scent control protocol you use, for stand hunters success will always be greatly enhanced based on your entry and exit from a stand location. I know this to be very true and relevant. I could really do a deep dive here but you've made some very good anologies and we've gained a little more knowledge..thanks for sharing
May The Magic of The Whitetail Forever Enrich Your Life
 
Yes he did. If you feel strongly about something you’ll see what you want to no matter how objective you try to be.
 
I've listened to Dan Infalt talk about scent control a bunch and one thing I found really interesting is that deer have something with their nose where they can filter through multiple scents at once...basically saying if you try and cover yourself in a cover scent, they can still detect your human odor no problem.

Example, if a human goes downwind of a hunter and a skunk sitting near each other...we would only smell the skunk (cover scent). If a deer is downwind of a hunter and a skunk they are able to detect both the hunter and the skunk.
 
Works for me...

Tried again, weird
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This was a good read. I've studied scent control quite a bit the last few years. I've watched lots of videos, listened to podcasts and read several books to try and become more educated on the subject. I think the more someone can understand a whitetails number one line of defense (his nose) the better off you are. My attitude is this, no matter what I do I can't beat his nose, but the precautions that I take to try and help could be the difference in whether or not that deer feels comfortable enough to come into bow range. Meaning that if I can smell like I'm 400 yds away when I'm actually less than 40 I'm in the chips. I'm not as big of a freak as some people, for one I can't afford to be. I can't justify an ozonics unit or an ozone closet. Next year I would like to add a scent lok suit. For now I'll just keep washing my clothes in scent free detergent, spraying down before I enter the woods, and playing the wind.
 
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