On the Down South Hunting podcast part 2 both Dan Infalt and John Eberhart are asked about dog tests were a Police dog is used to locate people using a variety of scent reduction methods. No effort at scent reduction, spray down / rubber boots and the full spectrum of scent reduction including scentlok. The results of those test were the Police dogs found the person using using the full spectrum of scent reduction first and the person who made no effort to control their odor last. It's my understanding that his was true for all the tests.
No amount of scent reduction will prevent a Police dog or deer from detecting some amount of human odor, but the results of the tests as they relate to deer hunting are misleading. First off you need to understand that a Police dog and a deer react to odor recognition completely different. A Police dog is trained to detect the smallest amount of odor, determine direction and follow it to its source. A deer detects odor, determines direction and then makes a distance calculation as to how far away the source of the odor is. Based on that distance the deer decides if it's in danger or not. The test measures how long it takes the Police dog to locate the source of the odor, something the deer is almost never going to do with a human.
No one believes a person that has more odor is going to be more difficult for a dog or deer to smell. So what happened in the test? A dog follows odor by detecting the smallest of changes in concentration. Almost like contour lines on a topographic map these changes in concentration essentially tell the dog what way is up and what way is down. If the levels of concentration have little change its more difficult for the dog to determine direction but this can have nothing to do with the amount of odor. Similar to us walking in an area where there is little change in elevation it can be difficult to tell what way is up or down.
A trained K9 will follow the difference in the amount of odor to the source. If there is a large amount of odor it can be difficult for the dog to detect the small variances to determine direction to the source of the odor. An example would be a narcotics detection dog and marijuana. If you bring that dog into a marijuana grow operation the dog will have a very difficult time locating the source of the odor. Due to the abundance of odor the dog will show odor recognition but will have a very difficult time following the odor to its source. A smaller amount of detectable odor can be be easier for the dog to source because the area that contains odor is so much smaller so the dog doesn’t need to go far to detect if the odor is increasing or decreasing.
The dog experiments when interpreted as they relate to hunting would be. The dog is able to detect the person with no scent reduction very quickly and from a greater distance but it takes the dog longer to work through the larger amount of odor to find the source. Conversely with scent reduction the dog was able to find the source of the odor quicker because the scent cone is smaller/tighter.
Dogs can tell us a lot about how deer recognize odor and how long odor persists in certain conditions. However any test that measures how long a dog takes to complete a task that would never be required of a deer will have misleading results.
No amount of scent reduction will prevent a Police dog or deer from detecting some amount of human odor, but the results of the tests as they relate to deer hunting are misleading. First off you need to understand that a Police dog and a deer react to odor recognition completely different. A Police dog is trained to detect the smallest amount of odor, determine direction and follow it to its source. A deer detects odor, determines direction and then makes a distance calculation as to how far away the source of the odor is. Based on that distance the deer decides if it's in danger or not. The test measures how long it takes the Police dog to locate the source of the odor, something the deer is almost never going to do with a human.
No one believes a person that has more odor is going to be more difficult for a dog or deer to smell. So what happened in the test? A dog follows odor by detecting the smallest of changes in concentration. Almost like contour lines on a topographic map these changes in concentration essentially tell the dog what way is up and what way is down. If the levels of concentration have little change its more difficult for the dog to determine direction but this can have nothing to do with the amount of odor. Similar to us walking in an area where there is little change in elevation it can be difficult to tell what way is up or down.
A trained K9 will follow the difference in the amount of odor to the source. If there is a large amount of odor it can be difficult for the dog to detect the small variances to determine direction to the source of the odor. An example would be a narcotics detection dog and marijuana. If you bring that dog into a marijuana grow operation the dog will have a very difficult time locating the source of the odor. Due to the abundance of odor the dog will show odor recognition but will have a very difficult time following the odor to its source. A smaller amount of detectable odor can be be easier for the dog to source because the area that contains odor is so much smaller so the dog doesn’t need to go far to detect if the odor is increasing or decreasing.
The dog experiments when interpreted as they relate to hunting would be. The dog is able to detect the person with no scent reduction very quickly and from a greater distance but it takes the dog longer to work through the larger amount of odor to find the source. Conversely with scent reduction the dog was able to find the source of the odor quicker because the scent cone is smaller/tighter.
Dogs can tell us a lot about how deer recognize odor and how long odor persists in certain conditions. However any test that measures how long a dog takes to complete a task that would never be required of a deer will have misleading results.
