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?