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Save your money on “Scent Control”

What is hellfire? Or gusto?
Some people call them long distance call lures because they have an overpowering amount of skunk essence in them. Many canine lures have a hardly noticeable level of skunk essence on them. Gusto is more of a liquid lure made by the Cavens of Minnesota and Hellfire is a red smearable and is made by Jeff Dunlap out of Michigan. My booth I was at last weekend was sandwiched between both of those two, luckily nobody opened either of those.
 
Some people call them long distance call lures because they have an overpowering amount of skunk essence in them. Many canine lures have a hardly noticeable level of skunk essence on them. Gusto is more of a liquid lure made by the Cavens of Minnesota and Hellfire is a red smearable and is made by Jeff Dunlap out of Michigan. My booth I was at last weekend was sandwiched between both of those two, luckily nobody opened either of those.
You ever go to the Herkimer NYS trappers convention around Labor Day each year?
 
Nope. That's usually our club championship weekend and the Ohio State trappers convention is the 10-11. Usually only have time to go to the national and our states
 
My brother and I have raised and trained big game hounds our entire life, a good cat hound can take a track 12-24 hours old in -20 degree temps buried under 6” of snow, I haven’t watched the above video yet but I will, and I assume it will confirm my opinion on this subject. It’s super hard for us humans to grasp the power of some of these animals noses, a good strike dog will and can wind a track 8’ in the air while tied to the back of a dog box in a moving truck at 30 mph. What chance does a hunter have perched in a tree at 20’ fresh off of eating a bag of Doritos, none, zero.. Can scent be minimized, maybe, and that’s a big maybe, eliminated not a chance. Hunt the wind and most importantly plan your approach better, the 2 things we can somewhat control.
^THIS. I've said it elsewhere, but a good beagle can smell a 5-foot section of a rabbit track and tell which direction the rabbit was running because the scent is tenths of a second fresher--you ain't keeping that deer from smelling you no matter what you wear/spray/cover with. That said, maybe some of these products can reduce your odor enough to buy you a couple extra seconds while the deer is processing how close you are, and that might be the difference between getting a shot off vs. not. I use scent-free detergent and will occasionally spray my boots (or pits) in the early season for that reason. That minor difference is why I wear camo clothes. Sure, the deer can see my movement with or without camo, and they're unlikely to see me if I'm still (comparable to deer smelling you if downwind or missing you if upwind), but the camo might tilt the scales just a touch in my favor, which I'll take all day.
 
Or do as much scent control wise as possible and play the wind. Not sure where the anti-scent control people hunt but I've never hunted somewhere that the wind blows the same direction for the duration of a hunt. Why would you not do both?
I'm skeptical that most of the "wind guys" don't truly understand how complex wind patters really are. Patterns certainly are not static, meaning its not consistent across the landscape in relation to the prevailing wind.
Wind is incredibly dynamic and has a pile factors that influence what it's doing in a specific micro location, and the patterns in each location effect the pattern in an adjacent location. Its dynamic.

Add to that, there is a distance that wind dissipates our odor, and that distance fluctuates depending on environmental factors (humidity, temps, speed, sunshine versus clouds). Somewhere out there is an invisible line when odor goes from "alarming" to simply "existing" to completely undetectable. The less intense the source (us) is, the closer to us that invisible line will be.

And the final factor is that we are dealing with a critter that makes decisions when they encounter some sort of stimulai. Individual deer react in individual ways on any given day. What an individual deer accepts one day, may alarm it days or even hours later.

In most areas deer are detecting human odor on some level 24/7/365. If human odor ALWAYS caused alarm, then deer would live in a constant state of panic. Deer do accept a certain amount of human odor, so why not reduce our odor as much as we can?

My take on the subject...
It's not whether or not that I can become odorless because I know that is impossible, but can I improve my situation to any degree by reducing my odor? I'm 100% certain that I do up my odds to a certain percentage and most of what I do is either free or relatively inexpensive.

How do we measure effectiveness? It's pretty much impossible. But I do know that I get busted much, MUCH LESS, than I did during the 1st 25 years of my 50 deer seasons.
I watch the wind as best as I can, I minimize odors as best as I can, and I plan access routes as best as I can. It's a total plan, and it's undoubtedly helped me improve my situation.
 
Might try storing my outer layers this year in a tote about half full of Big & J rather than spraying with DDW or the like.
 
Does anybody have any experience with “smoking” their clothes? Seems to be an old way of masking scent. Was it successful for those that have tried it?


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I read somewhere a deer can differentiate up to 25 smells at once. So if you spray yourself down now they smell you and the cover scent. That means they still have room to smell 23 other things.

I guess if you use an scent eliminator it would be a little different but then again your body is just making more scent. So not sure it helps.

I will say this. I haven't used scent control the last 3 years and they have been the best 3 years of hunting I have ever had. Maybe because I am more experienced....maybe luck....maybe because I play the wind more than ever.....maybe a little of all of it.
 
So what do you “just hunt the wind” people do after a deer passes you? How do you always know exactly where the deer is coming from in order to always be downwind. Also please explain, if I’m hunting the wind, then the deer would have to be walking with the wind, otherwise he is already downwind of me.
 
So what do you “just hunt the wind” people do after a deer passes you? How do you always know exactly where the deer is coming from in order to always be downwind. Also please explain, if I’m hunting the wind, then the deer would have to be walking with the wind, otherwise he is already downwind of me.
... sometimes the bear gets you. Things don't always work as as planned or anticipated and you can't cover all eventualities
 
So what do you “just hunt the wind” people do after a deer passes you? How do you always know exactly where the deer is coming from in order to always be downwind. Also please explain, if I’m hunting the wind, then the deer would have to be walking with the wind, otherwise he is already downwind of me.

I try not to think to much about it. Play the prevailing wind in that precise location. It’s going to switch unless it’s howling anyway.
 
I listened to an excellent Stickboys podcast the other day with Ryan Rothaarr (Roger's son) and he was talking about something the Wensel boys talk about...
The best wind for a stand is when its "almost wrong for me and almost right for the deer". Deer are moving in relation to the wind in a manner that gives them a feeling of safety. Our most effective stands are the ones right on the fringe of us being wind busted. We are flrting with disaster because just a few degrees of wind shift can screw us, but the older, smarter deer are moving along those currents because they feel safe. They are often in the fringes of our scent cone.
Minimizing odor or reducing it or whatever you want to call it does help our odds.
 
2 Things

It depends on your deer. If your hunting dumb deer you most certainly can fool their nose. Without a huge paragraph I went well over 5 seasons at more than 60 sits a year without hearing a deer snort....ever. I was probably the only guy hunting within a mile and when I had a nosey doe find me she died.

2nd Deer are far from the IQ of a dog but they most certainly can learn. They generally are tracking the disturbance you are leaving not your scent specifically. You'll get 2 totally different reactions from a deer that cuts your trail in the daylight versus 1am. I know it sounds crazy but anyone that has ever put out snares knows that a good way to avoid deer is to not walk down a trail towards your snare.

In the end you are generally buying seconds not a whole afternoon for god sakes.
 
I think Hellfire is a bit louder
Yeah my wife and kids complain everytime I open the garage door. Caven's Gusto's is strong. There's another guy that's making a dynamite fisher call lure out of PA or OH and man that stuff has got to be almost pure quill.
 
So what do you “just hunt the wind” people do after a deer passes you? How do you always know exactly where the deer is coming from in order to always be downwind. Also please explain, if I’m hunting the wind, then the deer would have to be walking with the wind, otherwise he is already downwind of me.
keep shooting at it until its dead. :tearsofjoy: :eek: :tearsofjoy: ;)
 
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