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Buck smell

mschultz373

mschultz373

Well-Known Member
SH Member
Joined
May 9, 2023
Messages
404
Location
SE LA
Can you smell if a buck is bedding near or around a certain area?

Not smelling a scrape or rub up close, but just general walking around and suddenly getting a big whiff of buck?

Curious because as I was leaving my spot last night in the dark, I tried to navigate thru a thicket and got back in there, turned around, and got hit with a pungent animal smell. Really present and identifiable scent. It was dark so I didn’t get a good look around, but I marked it as a spot to return to another time.

It’s early season of course. I don’t know how bucks might be behaving differently now as opposed to the rut and in. But I wondered if there might be one in that thicket, bedding down.
 
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Dmathews87 said:
sure it wasnt hogs? The ones i saw yesterday i def smelled them before i saw them...
Click to expand...

This is a good question and one I pondered. This Bucky smell was about 100 yards south east of my spot I hunted, and two hogs came up to my tree from the south during my hunt. So it could be hogs - I don’t know what the different scent of buck v. hogs might be. I’ve been within 8 yards of em on the ground though and not noticed this strong pungent odor.


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they tend to have that same muddy barnyard smell you'd recognize on a farm with pigs and the boars def give off some muskiness with it...
 
not to try to split hairs, but maybe to indulge my poetic sensibilities just a little -this was a pungent, musky odor that kind of smells closer to cat pee than barnyard. but not putrid and rank like cat pee per se, it was more like a perspiration body odor scent. a damp, maybe even slightly tangy odor? i don't know if i'm getting to it with my words.

watch me bust back there, saw briars slicing me like i've got the 40 lashes minus one, only to kick up a stupid pig...
 
mschultz373 said:
not to try to split hairs, but maybe to indulge my poetic sensibilities just a little -this was a pungent, musky odor that kind of smells closer to cat pee than barnyard. but not putrid and rank like cat pee per se, it was more like a perspiration body odor scent. a damp, maybe even slightly tangy odor? i don't know if i'm getting to it with my words.

watch me bust back there, saw briars slicing me like i've got the 40 lashes minus one, only to kick up a stupid pig...
Click to expand...

only one way to find out for sure lol...
 
They most definitely smell this time of year. Usually the old ones seem worse to me. I can tell the second I run into that smell in the woods, there is a buck close. I have setup on that smell alone and seen the buck. I kind of explain it as a piss/battery acid smell. But I agree its a hard smell to describe to someone.

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Many times I've walked through a thicket and smelled a rutting buck. I do it all the time pheasant hunting. It's usually accompanied by scrapes and rubs within the thicket.
What your smelling is probably from the tarsal glands. On the inside of their back legs. It is a very pungent odor
 
I first noticed “buck stink” about ten years ago. In swampy areas I’d kinda turn my nose upside down all of a sudden and musky pee mixed with horse dander would fill my ol’ factories. but it took me a few years to figure up the courage to ask someone who knows better. A resounding “oooohhh yeah” hit the archery shop walls and then a slough of buck-stink stories ensued.
 
mschultz373 said:
Can you smell if a buck is bedding near or around a certain area?

Not smelling a scrape or rub up close, but just general walking around and suddenly getting a big whiff of buck?

Curious because as I was leaving my spot last night in the dark, I tried to navigate thru a thicket and got back in there, turned around, and got hit with a pungent animal smell. Really present and identifiable scent. It was dark so I didn’t get a good look around, but I marked it as a spot to return to another time.

It’s early season of course. I don’t know how bucks might be behaving differently now as opposed to the rut and in. But I wondered if there might be one in that thicket, bedding down.
Click to expand...
100%. I can smell deer all the time. I was scouting yesterday and jumped one and as soon as I got to the spot he was I could smell him.

Now I'm not saying I can hang in the tree and get a whiff of him walking by, but definitely if they've been there on the ground.
 
mschultz373 said:
Can you smell if a buck is bedding near or around a certain area?

Not smelling a scrape or rub up close, but just general walking around and suddenly getting a big whiff of buck?

Curious because as I was leaving my spot last night in the dark, I tried to navigate thru a thicket and got back in there, turned around, and got hit with a pungent animal smell. Really present and identifiable scent. It was dark so I didn’t get a good look around, but I marked it as a spot to return to another time.

It’s early season of course. I don’t know how bucks might be behaving differently now as opposed to the rut and in. But I wondered if there might be one in that thicket, bedding down.
Click to expand...
Yes!
 
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