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Hold your Breath

I use coffee as a cover scent to cover my breath and just in case they have associated coffee with humans, I use Hazelnut Creamer as cover scent for the coffee….because deer are used to the smell of hazelnuts . IMO unless you are going full John Eberhart to begin with, other than just brushing your teeth, your breath isn’t worth worrying about.
 
I'm not in the "scent control or die" entourage, but to the benefit of advantages... I do a saltwater gargle prior to hunting (but if it's an all day sit...), I guess you could substitute doe or buck urine given the sodium content haha! The other thing I do is use a chlorophyll gum. Chlorophyll help mitigate odor, and it's gum, so something to do and keep you busy lol. When I used to chew, I've never had deer spook on dip spit... So maybe even any gum...?
 
I’m not even close to being a fanatic scent control hunter. I take care to keep my gear and clothes from being saturated with human odors and also make sure to practice good daily hygiene. I focus on being aware of wind and thermals. I’ve not gone so far as to use activated carbon or get hyper concerned with being “scent free”. My primary reasoning has been that breath is a huge generator of human odor, and I don’t really see a reasonable way around it. Which is why I’m asking this question about breath management. I’ve been under the impression that if I couldn’t reasonably control the human odors generated by breath, why invest tons of money and energy into being “scent free”? It would be interesting to know if there is any research on this.
 
Jammintree said:
I’m not even close to being a fanatic scent control hunter. I take care to keep my gear and clothes from being saturated with human odors and also make sure to practice good daily hygiene. I focus on being aware of wind and thermals. I’ve not gone so far as to use activated carbon or get hyper concerned with being “scent free”. My primary reasoning has been that breath is a huge generator of human odor, and I don’t really see a reasonable way around it. Which is why I’m asking this question about breath management. I’ve been under the impression that if I couldn’t reasonably control the human odors generated by breath, why invest tons of money and energy into being “scent free”? It would be interesting to know if there is any research on this.
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You have to keep this in perspective.
We undoubtedly prove to ourselves (and others around us) that we can reduce all of our human odors. We bathe, we brush teeth, do laundry, and practice other things in order to reduce our odor. We can and do reduce odor.
Now, I'm not saying that we can ever become odorless to deer. With the current technology, odorless is not possible and I kinda hope they never find a way to skirt that aspect of a deer's defense.
We often hear guys compare deer noses to dog noses and that is valid...to an extent.
But even the best of dogs have limitations. They don't do as well under certain environmental conditions and they surely have limits on the distance they can detect odors or the time frame in which they can smell residual odors. Those are basic and undeniable facts. So why not improve our situation and reduce our odors at the source?
Yes, we are going to get busted under most conditions when deer are close and DIRECTLY down wind. But we can reduce detection on those deer in the fringes of our scent cone.
 
Allegheny Tom said:
You have to keep this in perspective.
We undoubtedly prove to ourselves (and others around us) that we can reduce all of our human odors. We bathe, we brush teeth, do laundry, and practice other things in order to reduce our odor. We can and do reduce odor.
Now, I'm not saying that we can ever become odorless to deer. With the current technology, odorless is not possible and I kinda hope they never find a way to skirt that aspect of a deer's defense.
We often hear guys compare deer noses to dog noses and that is valid...to an extent.
But even the best of dogs have limitations. They don't do as well under certain environmental conditions and they surely have limits on the distance they can detect odors or the time frame in which they can smell residual odors. Those are basic and undeniable facts. So why not improve our situation and reduce our odors at the source?
Yes, we are going to get busted under most conditions when deer are close and DIRECTLY down wind. But we can reduce detection on those deer in the fringes of our scent cone.
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I agree 100%. I’m willing to minimize my human odors to increase my odds of success. But if breath can’t be controlled reasonably, why go so far as to be obsessive with the other facets of scent?
 
My question is how do people actually know if what they are doing is actually working? Just because an odor seems reduced to us means nothing for a deer. All the products I’ve seen tested by dogs have failed. It all just seems like speculation.
 
I usually drink beer or whiskey to mask any mouth scent.

However, I always do that after I'm out of the woods (booze and guns/bows are a bad idea), so I'm not sure it helps much from a scent control perspective. :tearsofjoy:
 
Allegheny Tom said:
So what you are saying is "if I can't become 100% odorless, then there is no reason to reduce any odor"?
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What I’m saying is that I’m willing to be vigilant about minimizing my scent, but unless I can greatly control human odor on my breath I’m not willing to make the massive effort to be hyper vigilant in an attempt to be “scent free.” It seems like 2x the effort for a very small gain and your breath is still dumping odor into the air.
 
I am sure that this post will cause some folks to strongly disagree, but I will post it anyway.
I have watched and read studies where tracking dogs were used to find hunting clothes that were worn by a human. Some were scent lock clothes. some were treated with cover scent and some were left untreated. The dogs found them all in approximately the same time span by detecting human odor.. So apparently the scent lock clothes and cover scent did nothing to prevent detection. The use of ozone generators in an open air setting has also been debunked by experts that specialize in this type of equipment. You would need a huge machine to be effective in an open air environment according to experts in this field. Tests conducted with deer that were in a controlled environment have shown that they do not distinguish between human urine and wild animal urine. While there are always many variables, that are worth thinking about. I do wear freshly washed clothes that were washed in scent free detergent. I wash with non-deodorant, fragrance free soap and I try not to piss to close the area I hunt but that is the is as far as I go. At one time I used scent lock clothes and would wash with special soap that was suppose to destroy human odor but over time I have seen no difference when I don't use these products. You can go to extremes to eliminate human odor and then you jump into your truck and drive for an hour in a vehicle that is full of foreign smells. I think the best thing is to check wind direction and hunt accordingly. To each his own.
 
If you don't breathe you can eliminate mouth odor concerns, but it causes major health issues. Just being a wise guy Have a great day everyone.
 
John 35 said:
My question is how do people actually know if what they are doing is actually working? Just because an odor seems reduced to us means nothing for a deer. All the products I’ve seen tested by dogs have failed. It all just seems like speculation.
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neither side has done a decent, controlled experiment on this.....either out of laziness, not knowing, or don't wanna find out

the dog tracking tests do not replicate a hunting situation

John E criticized it by then going the extreme other direction with needing helicopters to drop you in a spot to have a good test (ridiculous.....and why would he want to make it seem impossible to carefully test this technology? as if it akin to interstellar travel at this point in history)

a way to get at it is very simple

many, randomly placed bait stations where everything (including how often you go to check things) are the same and they have game cameras on them to count deer visits, etc

one group of replications is just bait/cam....one adds a porous bag filled with human scent (dirty laundry mixed with human hair from a barber maybe), another is this human scent bag covered with a scent lok covering, another is scent lok bag with nothing inside....4 total controls/treatments....or maybe more

periodically replenish stink bags but on those same days walk to the spots without stink bags (keep as much as possible the same)

random things that folks will claim "ruin it because not everything is the same down to the iota" is averaged out by random locations and 30 or more replications per treatment....also anything that varies at individual locations and seen as important can be measured (like wind direction and strength in an area) and very robust statistical techniques can be used with this to inform the study.....any claim against this approach can be mitigated reasonably well because this is a very easy science experiment in comparison to others

it would actually make an excellent master's thesis in a wildlife program

make sure that scent lok doesn't fund it or the researchers are beyond reproach regarding ethcs

nobody's gonna do this because it would take a few years, it would cost maybe 250K with labor/etc, and (the big one) it would be seen as a somewhat definitive answer and if it went against scent lok could ruin their business.....dangerous knowledge that is better not known
 
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raisins said:
neither side has done a decent, controlled experiment on this.....either out of laziness, not knowing, or don't wanna find out

the dog tracking tests do not replicate a hunting situation

John E criticized it by then going the extreme other direction with needing helicopters to drop you in a spot to have a good test (ridiculous.....and why would he want to make it seem impossible to carefully test this technology? as if it akin to interstellar travel at this point in history)

a way to get at it is very simple

many, randomly placed bait stations where everything (including how often you go to check things) are the same and they have game cameras on them to count deer visits, etc

one group of replications is just bait/cam....one adds a porous bag filled with human scent (dirty laundry mixed with human hair from a barber maybe), another is this human scent bag covered with a scent lok covering, another is scent lok bag with nothing inside....4 total controls/treatments....or maybe more

periodically replenish stink bags but on those same days walk to the spots without stink bags (keep as much as possible the same)

random things that folks will claim "ruin it because not everything is the same down to the iota" is averaged out by random locations and 30 or more replications per treatment....also anything that varies at individual locations and seen as important can be measured (like wind direction and strength in an area) and very robust statistical techniques can be used with this to inform the study.....any claim against this approach can be mitigated reasonably well because this is a very easy science experiment in comparison to others

it would actually make an excellent master's thesis in a wildlife program

make sure that scent lok doesn't fund it or the researchers are beyond reproach regarding ethcs

nobody's gonna do this because it would take a few years, it would cost maybe 250K with labor/etc, and (the big one) it would be seen as a somewhat definitive answer and if it went against scent lok could ruin their business.....dangerous knowledge that is better not known
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Ok, when I own some property and go for my masters degree ill do this!
 
This seemed like a pretty good test of a variety of products but they never did a scent lok suit.

 
John 35 said:
My question is how do people actually know if what they are doing is actually working? Just because an odor seems reduced to us means nothing for a deer. All the products I’ve seen tested by dogs have failed. It all just seems like speculation.
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For me, and this is just my own personal persective here, is that I have seen a massive difference in real deer reactions in the woods. My first season on public land I was not using any form of scent control except wearing reasonably clean cotton camo clothes and rubber boots. I would spray down with scent killer, etc. before a hunt and wash with baking soda and water if I got really sweaty scouting mid-day and dump the sweat soaked clothes and put on new clean clothes prior to an evening hunt.

Around here, especially early season, the wind swirls mercilessly. It does not matter what wind you want for any particular stand, 99 out of 100 times the wind will switch up on you 6 or 7 times during a 4 hour sit and will blow all over the place. We are not even talking thermals here, just swirling wind. That first season I got busted by does just about every hunt. You just can't say this is a north wind stand and go hunt it with a north wind. It is also a south wind stand, a west wind stand, and an east wind stand.

Out of sheer desperation I bought Sentlok (on closeout for a great price) and decided that next season i was going to really give it a try. Maybe I am lucky, but that following season I did not get busted by a deer one time. I was hunting the same areas and the same deer. You know when they bust you. They stomp, snort and run off to a safe distance and blow for 20 minutes.

Now, I don't work for Scentlok, don't own shares in the company or care what anyone else does. I have seen a night and day difference in the reactions of deer in the areas I hunt them.

People always make it seem like it is so hard to have a scent regimen. It isn't. Deabsorb your clothes and put them in airtight bins in your vehicle. Change at the truck before you go hunt. Don't wear them to Walmart or a restaurant or pump gas in them. It takes 5 minutes to change at the truck at most. Wear clean rubber boots. Don't pump gas in your boots, It's not hard. Pricewise, Scentlok is cheaper than most of the "high end" hunting clothes out there and they are always putting their stuff on sale. Also, it is really good clothing in it's own right even if you totally discount the scent aspect. My 2 cents.

As to the breath thing, if you are close enough to a deer to French kiss it you should have shot it already, lol.
 
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John 35 said:
This seemed like a pretty good test of a variety of products but they never did a scent lok suit.

Click to expand...

What John E says here at first is mostly legit

Dog tests on scent control

Scent control and laughable dog tests There have been several tests pertaining to scent control where dogs were used to track down the individual wearing activated carbon lined garments and there’s one where the person is totally clad in an air-tight rubber suit with some form of a space suit...
saddlehunter.com

but then he goes off the rails regarding the helicopter and such (making it seem impossible to test something.....and he is a very literal person......thinking that you can only test something in the EXACT same way that it is used.....this is obviously false)

This is the post I was referring to in my previous one.
 
Go back and read post 6.
Both of these guys said they were still busted by deer. And they used rubber gloves to climb the tree.
When a deer smells you, they leave. But they do not always snort and run. If they are unsure of your location they are going to be careful.
I thing it works for John because he hunt high, 25 to 30 feet, maybe.
 
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