ORIGINAL: BOWFANATIC
I was waiting for atlasman to chime in with his 2 pennies.
#2. I've found one thing that does bring bucks in during the early stages of therut , and it works great. That's the smell of another buck. Dominant buck lure.
If they are mixing sheep crap with water to pass as doe pee........how do you know you are not getting the same thing in your buck lure??
What makes it "dominant" buck lure??
#3. During the chase phase I concentrate on attracting does. Lots of doe during the chase phase = buck. I like to use the gland type lures for attracting doe. That's when I make my drag trails , and I've hadmany doe on many occassions hit my drag trail from cross direction and divert their direction right down my trail.
What type of product are you speaking of specifically...........and are you saying that the does are following your drag trail "looking" for bucks??
The biggest mistake people make when making drag trails is putting too much scent on their drag from where they start. That will make a deer follow in the wrong direction. You want to start with a tiny bit and put more and more on as you get closer to your stand.
The other mistake I see people make when putting out scent bombs is carelessly handling the product with no regard to contaminating it with their own scent. I use rubber gloves when handling both drag rags and scent bombs.
Maybe if ANY of these scent products came with even minimal directions this kind of thing wouldn't happen.
Ever notice how many scent products have no directions at all??.........Why do you think that is?? My guess is that they realize their product has no real attractant ability (at least no more then anything else) and it relies exclusively on the user being lucky enough to run into a very curious deer that day who would just as likely have stopped to smell and old sock as it would a scent bomb. So they figure they will just let people use them any old way they want to and hopefully something will "work"
If deer lures worked then wouldn't the obvious best thing to do be use MASSIVE amounts of the stuff and get that "lure" spreading through the woods so every deer within a square mile will come running?? That's what they do with sharks (chumming). The key difference being that blood in the water actually does attract sharks
I guess my biggest question about scents is if they REALLY worked........why don't they work EVERY time?? The reality is closer to anyone that says they have good success with scents is talking about one day when a deer reacted to it vs. the 50 days when it didn't work at all.
Scents, calls, decoys, etc all work based entirely on the mood of the deer at that given moment IMO.
We ALL have seen deer with our own eyes react to something like it was a magnet and then we do the same thing to another deer on another day and he doesn't even look in your direction.
I have stopped deer in their tracks with an estrous can and turned them around to come see what's up...........and I have also had deer not care one bit and just keep walking. Does that make the "can" good or bad??? Depends on the deer and the mood just like everything else.
Just my 2 pennies
I couldn't be happier that you have success with scents. You sure do seem to be in a huge minority though.