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Thought this was a really interesting podcast on scent

It was a good one. I think I've heard him talk before. I videoed a buck doing exactly what he talked about when I used a product that shuts down a deer's ability to smell anything. That buck walked into the scent cone, came to a stop, and licked his nostrils and just stood there forever trying to smell something. He finally just turned around and went back the way he came.
 
I saw it too but thought it was a pretty one sided argument from the dog trainer's perspective. He did touch on the ground disturbance aspect of scent, being that this is what I feel is being keyed in on by a dog in the dog tests. Just as anyone who can see can easily follow a trail left by a person walking through a dew covered field, a dog will follow a track of ground disturbed scent regardless of an actual human scent trail. Just because I can visually see a trail left in dew by a person's boots disturbing grass does not mean I can smell where the person walked but I can still follow their trail.

I'd love to see a dog test that had one person wearing properly cared for Scentlok clothing and clean rubber boots depart from a location as one of several individuals leaving from the same point with all participants branching out in different directions. I feel that we would see a different result. If you just use one person the dog will obviously know he is supposed to track and will hit that ground disturbance and off he goes.

All in all it was an interesting podcast and the guest did say do what you feel works for you.
 
GeoFish said:
The 1 hour mark, interesting about Scentlok.
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Lol. They tied dope up in a coat, most likely after handling the dope with their bare hands, then tying it up in a coat with bare hands getting residue on the outside then letting a drug dog look for it. Yeah....definitive. I laughed when he said that.
 
NMSbowhunter said:
Lol. They tied dope up in a coat, most likely after handling the dope with their bare hands, then tying it up in a coat with bare hands getting residue on the outside then letting a drug dog look for it. Yeah....definitive. I laughed when he said that.
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I think they know enough to not do that.
I did it with a Milk Bone dog biscuit. washed hands twice after touching biscuit.
Same results has him.
 
GeoFish said:
I think they know enough to not do that.
I did it with a Milk Bone dog biscuit. washed hands twice after touching biscuit.
Same results has him.
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Thats cool. If you don't believe it works, I am good with that. I personally have seen my encounters with mature deer skyrocket since going to scentlok. So, I will keep using it. I also hunt sometimes just playing the wind. Mostly I do this when I trad hunt off the ground. If you live somewhere where the wind is steady and predictable, then playing the wind can work. Here, you don't so much play the wind, it plays you. Here the wind swirls mercilessly in any place a deer would be. That is why they are there. We have very low deer density also. There are maybe 5 to 6 deer per square mile, or 640 acres. You just can't afford to blow chances at deer. If you do get winded it may be a week of hard hunting before you will see another of any sort.
 
I will also add that I won't go to the trouble to climb a tree anymore and set up if I'm not wearing Scentlok. If I am hunting off the ground and can move locations maybe 5 times in three hours to keep up with the switching and thermals then I will play the wind. I play the wind mostly when I am still hunting through a large area and can adapt and tack into the wind.

If you pay attention to the expert in this video, that is the way he hunts. He says he still hunts and moves. At 59:05 he says" I've never killed a deer from a stand, I've done it on my hind legs".
 
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Short and dirty of my take away was that you arent 100% beating a deer's nose. Of all the stuff on the market, ozone is the one for sure thing that could make a significant difference. Other than that, our ability to understand to the best of our ability how the air will move in our hunting area is going to be the most important aspect. Of course that like trying to understand some kind of black magic voodoo at times when you take into consideration wind speed, terrain, changes in canopy density, nearby water esp. flowing, thermal movement, barometric pressure, etc.

In virtually all of the places I hunt on public, it is not possible to get to the tree and then up the tree without sweating at least a little, no matter the time of season. So, to me, this podcast just highlights the importance of continuing to study how the air moves everywhere I hunt and try to correlate as many aspects as possible to give myself the highest odds of keeping the majority of the air movement in my favor which means I am trying to give the deer the wind they are comfortable with and my scent cone being just barely off that line. 20% of the time it works every time.
 
I’ve heard several podcasts with scent guys, am pretty skeptical that anything is effective. AND YET I’ve been in ScentLok for two seasons now, three incidents last season where it sure seemed to work. I had deer in milkweed proven dead down wind positions at a range of 5-50 yards, no busts. I tried it because I hunt a swirly river valley, and mostly work a private parcel, want to ruin it as little as possible through the season. I think the most useful debate on Scentlok would be had by a group of hunters, believers and not, who have used it diligently for 2-3 seasons.

I’ll provide one example, I’ve been using a shallow river for access a lot, a good way to minimize ground scent access disturbance. I cut just into the timber and set up, in the mornings the river is pulling my scent, I checked and indeed this was happening, very little wind that morning, nice steady slow suck to the river bottom behind me. Well sure enough a group of does appeared behind me on the rocky / brushy river bed, maybe 15 yards wide from me to the water. I was bummed to educate the gang, and waited for the bust. They were milling around behind me as close as 5 yards and out to maybe 25, browsing and playing in the water. Probably 5-10 minutes, no bust. I’m going to keep wearing the stuff until field experience proves to me it’s useless.
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NMSbowhunter said:
I saw it too but thought it was a pretty one sided argument from the dog trainer's perspective. He did touch on the ground disturbance aspect of scent, being that this is what I feel is being keyed in on by a dog in the dog tests. Just as anyone who can see can easily follow a trail left by a person walking through a dew covered field, a dog will follow a track of ground disturbed scent regardless of an actual human scent trail. Just because I can visually see a trail left in dew by a person's boots disturbing grass does not mean I can smell where the person walked but I can still follow their trail.

I'd love to see a dog test that had one person wearing properly cared for Scentlok clothing and clean rubber boots depart from a location as one of several individuals leaving from the same point with all participants branching out in different directions. I feel that we would see a different result. If you just use one person the dog will obviously know he is supposed to track and will hit that ground disturbance and off he goes.

All in all it was an interesting podcast and the guest did say do what you feel works for you.
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The comparison between dogs and deer isn't relevant. One is trying to avoid the source of the scent, the other is trying to move toward the source.

Imagine you're part of a crew fighting wildfires. You got dropped off at the wrong point, and your communication equipment has failed. Someone says "I'm not sure, but I think I smell smoke." So the group moves upwind and the scent becomes stronger and you keep moving toward the fire.

Now you're in charge of a summer camp for kids in the woods. You know there are fires 50 miles away, and occasionally you smell a little smoke. But it's just a mild smell, so you pay no attention. It's only when it becomes strong enough that you become concerned and call the local authorities to see if you should evacuate.

I think deer will tolerate some human scent. If it's below a certain threshold, they don't pay any attention, as it's likely too far away, or from a place where there is always human scent. They can smell the guy hunting a half mile upwind of you, they just don't care. Scent control methods don't 100% eliminate scent. They just reduce it to a tolerable level.
 
So here is my take. My German Shepard is border trained to alert me if my autistic son gets a certain distance from my house. I can also tell her to go find him, and she will go come back, and lead me to him. Anyway, in the process of teaching her to do this, she would come find me, my wife, or my other son, then we transferred her over to my oldest. I experimented with scent lock once. She came right to me. I’ve tried scent killer on clothing and rubber boots, same thing. The thing that gave her the most fits was Nose Jammer. She still found me though. I have to put her up when I’m hunting at my house, if not she finds me and sits at the base of the tree until someone calls her back. If it gives you the confidence you need to sit in the stand, use it. But, I am not a believer in any scent cover device to completely remove scent. I will say I’ve sat in a ground blind with an Ozonics running, and the deer have walked in on me from the down wind side. I had one of those Nanny’s that you expect to ruin your hunt come in once while running ozone. She practically poked her head in the blind, and did not blow. I do not own one however, so I never tried it with the dog.


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shmelton said:
So here is my take. My German Shepard is border trained to alert me if my autistic son gets a certain distance from my house. I can also tell her to go find him, and she will go come back, and lead me to him. Anyway, in the process of teaching her to do this, she would come find me, my wife, or my other son, then we transferred her over to my oldest. I experimented with scent lock once. She came right to me. I’ve tried scent killer on clothing and rubber boots, same thing. The thing that gave her the most fits was Nose Jammer. She still found me though. I have to put her up when I’m hunting at my house, if not she finds me and sits at the base of the tree until someone calls her back. If it gives you the confidence you need to sit in the stand, use it. But, I am not a believer in any scent cover device to completely remove scent. I will say I’ve sat in a ground blind with an Ozonics running, and the deer have walked in on me from the down wind side. I had one of those Nanny’s that you expect to ruin your hunt come in once while running ozone. She practically poked her head in the blind, and did not blow. I do not own one however, so I never tried it with the dog.


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I have found ground blinds work great at certain times and not so much others. I do have some faith in ozone but not an end all for sure.
Good to hear you have a dog looking out for your son.
 
My buddy that runs (think he still does) the chase team at Angola said youre not fooling the dogs unless you can fly and even then good luck. I don’t think any scent control works to any degree on animals. Even if you take away their sense of smell completely, a deer is prey, they are aware and in tune with their environment in such a way none of us can really wrap our heads around it. And for the scent lock guys that have had deer touch them and all that just blah blah blah I’ve had deer do the same and I garuntee you I smell like Marlboros, I’ve come to think more that there’s sometimes deer literally just don’t care about you, we know they will tolerate some human scent, maybe someday they really just want to FAFO. But here’s the thing, unless a deer tells you what it can and can’t sense then it’s all heresay. Even with all the real world experience it’s circumstantial at best. It’s like people who claim to know what happens after death, yeah you don’t and you can’t it’s all guessing. BUT! Peace of mind is everything so if that suit makes you think you don’t smell to the deer WHOSE LITERAL LIFE REQUIRES IT TO BE EXCEPTIONAL AT SMELLING, then I say fair wind and following seas.
 
I think what’s getting conflated and lost here is human odor vs. scent from disturbance.

If not in this episode, in a previous episode of the southern outdoorsman, Dr Brownlee says human odor only lingers in the air for about 10min before it’s completely consumed by bacteria. Whereas scent from disturbance to vegetation lasts far longer, a matter of weeks and months.

I could be convinced that scentlok and other mitigation methods decrease one’s overall saturation of human, such that, at 20yards, the deer 'smells' you at 500yards. If that makes sense. I don’t think we ever could definitively prove this as a phenomenon... But it seems plausible to me. this would even be interesting from the perspective of each individual person's scent saturation.... we are all surely familiar with this concept; but even genetically - certain Southeast Asian populations carry a mutation where they sweat less and expire less odor than other populations in the world. Not a dubious line to then deduce that each person's scent footprint may be easier or harder to mitigate, mask, de-saturate, etc.

also worth noting that we're comparing dogs trained for work vs. wild deer and surmising that wild deer have an equal or greater capability because of the number of OSNs in its nostrils. But dogs are more intelligent than deer; those same dogs are also trained to identify and distinguish unique individual humans' odor and to track as a predator. whereas the wild deer are wild, untrained, and prey animals. basically, dogs have been bred to do work with their noses; all deer have to do is not get eaten. Is one greater than the other? not necessarily, but they are different in kind (in my view)

TL;DR no one is beating a deer's nose - but you might dupe him every now and then, or catch him on an off day, or just get lucky.

and to the haters, yeah I own some ScentLok (that I haven't used) and scent-free soap and deodorant.... may thy knife chip and shatter.
 
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Going to listen with as much of an open mind as I can try to but I have preconceived doubts on a fair judgement of Scentlok gear since they are sponsored by competing gear. Something tells me you don’t invite the CEO of Coke on to tell you Pepsi tastes better.
 
Is it possible to discuss scent control without focusing solely on the merits of ScentLok?
 
Ok. I don't think that Ozone is all it's cracked up to be! Bear with me. Long story. Here's my example. My brother shot a 9 pointer last year and we didn't recover it until the next day only to find out that his arrow ended up coming out back in the guts which plugged the hole thus making it too difficult to find the night before. We thought we would be able to save the meat. We were wrong. We have to bring them out whole in most of our spots near here because it's an urban type hunting area. I had just bought a new Hawk Crawler deer cart a couple of weeks earlier per some member recommendations from here. Love the cart by the way. Anyways, I tell my brother this will be a great test for my new cart. After getting the deer out I put the cart back in my gear shed that I bought an erected specifically to store all my hunting gear outside away from any odors. Didn't realize at the time that my brothers 9 pointer had stunk up my new cart "BIG TIME" Most of you have gotten a good whiff of gut shot deer. Not a pleasant smell at all. So now my huntin shed smells like puke. What to do? I'm on Craiglist a week or so later and some dude in the next town is selling a commercial grade Ozone machine he bought for his business a couple of years before and he wants $100 for it. He used it twice and said it worked fantastic. I had to run that damn machine for AT LEAST 40 hours to get rid of that smell and I can still smell it on wet days. Tell me again how great ozone works for hunting. lol. Not a big believer.

As a side note. I actually had to put my foot on the hind quarter of that 9 pointer to pull the guts out of the wound channel on that deer. That is how plugged that hole was with guts. Made me realize why sometimes we get no blood at all to follow even on a dead deer. On this particular one he got both lungs but the deer was angled towards him and he thought it was broadside. It only went about 125 yards.
 
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