Cover Scents

Cover scent? I've pretty much given up on the idea, except that I'll probably throw some cedar boughs in the trunk that holds most of my clothes. If the deer are going to smell anything on me, cedar is probably the best choice for my woods. Mind you a do this very conservatively.

I am about ready to start processing my hunting clothes for bow season. I've got about 2 loads to do. The rest are all still bagged up from last season, and will not require any work. These are the few pieces I left out for Turkey Season.

After tonight, Girlfriend will be done with the washing machine until Friday. I'll start by running a full cycle with nothing but a handful of baking soda. That will get everything rinsed out.

Although I agree with those who say hunt the wind, and you won't need anything else, here's what I do additionally to cheat:

1) I wash all my clothes in nothing but baking soda. Nothing. Ever. When I'm washing, I run the washer once with nothing but baking soda to clean out whatever stink has accumulated in thh machine.
2) I wash the outer camo layer separate from the inner layers (underwear, etc.)
3) I air dry all my stuff-- almost always on a clothesline outside. Nothing ever sees the inside of a dryer.
4) I pack it all in a trash bag or plastic bin with a handful of baking soda thrown in. I do this sparingly, so there's not all that much to shake out. Inner and outer layers get packed seperately.
5) When I'm hunting, I shower before going out with baking soda. I also use an unscented deoderant.
6) I hunt with an outer layer of camo that never sees the inside of the house.
7) When I'm done hunting, my clothes go back in a separate bag for dirty clothes.
8) I never hunt in the same clothes two days in a row.
9) In warm weather I change the outer layer between the morning and afternoon hunts.

When I'm meticulous in this method, I can be within 20 yards upwind of a whitetail deer, and they won't bust me. If I screw up and wear the same shirt two days in a row, I can be busted from 70 yards down wind or 20 yards upwind of my stand. The deer always let me know when I've screwed up.

The key to this is finding a source of sodium bicarbonate in large quantities. I order it in 80 lb sacks from a chemical supply house. It's cheaper than laundry detergent, and it does as good a job on my hunting clothes.

The reason I've given up on cover scents overall is that I began to question their efficacy. Let's say you bought an innocuous bottle called "Apple Scent." You're hunting an orchard, so it makes scence to cover yourself with apples. How can you be sure that bottle of "Apple Scent" smells the same to a deer? To the big buck you're after it might just smell like some cheap industrial imitation.

I've grown up in Cincinnati. Cincinnati is dominated by a valley filled with big industrial plants like Procter and Gamble. It also has related industries like Fries & Fries, the flavor company. All my life, I've known when P&G or F&F were flushing their tanks. There is just nothing in this world like walking out your door in the morning and getting hit with a wall of BLUEBERRY!!!! or hit over the head with FRESHBAKEDBREAD !!! Don't get me wrong. I like berry smell and I like the smell of fresh bread baking, but CHEEZEANDRICE!!!

I suspect that the same thing can happen to a deer. Deer have the ability to track the scent on your boot, and also determine which way you came. With that level of sensitivity, they should also be able to descriminate anything odd in the environment from anything natural. If all of a sudden DOG or GASOLINE or CHEAP IMITIATION BERRY SCENT starts wafting in, they will know it. When I show up on my stand, I generally want to be invisible to the deer.

This is not to say I don't have years of experience with scents. I pretty much gave up on them for a few reasons:

1) Expense.
2) Unreliable effect on the deer -- a $7 of miracle scent might make one deer dance a jig and another deer run like a scalded cat.
3) Difficulty.

It just added another dimension to the hunt, and it was not a dimension that gave me confidence in success. In the days when I hunted with cover scents and the like, I always saw deer, but they often seemed more wary.

Last year, around Halloween, I had the perfect example of what it was I was trying to achieve when I made the leap of faith and went scent invisible. It was a bright crisp cloudless morning. Along about 10 AM a nice young buck came out and hung out below my stand. He had a nice rack, but he was still immature, so I decided up front to pass on him. He stayed for the better part of a half hour. During that time, I was in plain sight in my treestand. At times, were were eye-to-eye at less than 20 feet. I found that I could move naturally, and he would not spook. I even drew on him twice. No response. My guess is that he just did not have enough data on me to assume I was a threat. Having a negligble scent signature probably helped that immeasurably. I was just a freaky part of the tree.