ORIGINAL: wicchunter
Scentlok Designer... peace. Time for all of us to agree we disagree. And you are right, there are many things on the hunting market that are very difficult to prove that they do what they say also. My biggest problem with scent blocker type clothing(not just scentlok)is the hassel I would have to go through to use it properly. As I posted earlier ... I am about to buy a new camo outfit... it would cost me about another $150 or so to make the entire outfit a scent blocker type... but to me that is a waste of money. Why? Because I know that I personally would not faithfully and regularly go through the ritual required to keep it properly activated... assuming my dryer is hot enough to do the job. That's just me... I know there are plenty of guys who would do that faithfully. I also think that scent blocker type outfits also fall into the same category as many other hunting products... the category where the claims are very difficuly if not impossible to prove. Why, because to prove it we would need a large sampling of a scentlok group and a control(placibo) group that doesn't have scent blocker clothing(but they think they might)... then you would need a controlled environment where both groups encounter the exact same conditions and also encounter the same variances in conditions over time. That's almost impossible to control when you are talking mother nature, lay of the land(mountains, river bottoms, swamps, ridge, ravenes etc), thermal currents, humidty, air pressure, etc etc. The next variable is the deer you encounter... everyone is different and each can react differently to human scent.
I can tell you one thing... if you guys had a decent open camo pattern I may have bought it... why? You do have some nice stuff... regardless ofwether it hasscentlok or not.
The main issue is being clouded here..............no one is debating whether carbon clothes work in the field. That is absolutely impossible to prove because the independent variable of a whacky whitetail can never be quantified.
The issue is the claims of the performance of carbon as an adsorptive material and it's longevity as such a medium. Carbon DEFINATELY adsorbs odors, cleans air, water, etc.........it's an amazing filter media........with limits. It "fills up" and then is useless........it also requires the product being filtered to be forced over and through the carbon so it's vast surface area can filter out polutants. This causes problems on 2 levels for carbon suit companies. First of all the laws of physics prove that air and every other substance will follow the path of least resitance. Air will not just "flow" through your jacket like some semi-permeable membrane.......it will get forced out through motion of the garment against your body as you move or shift around.......the path of least resistance will be out the neck, sleeves, and waist..........not through the material. This fact removes much of the usefullness of any filter media in the jacket.........it's like putting a carbon filter on the table in a camp full of cigar smoking, chili farting hunters and wondering why it isn't removing the stink..........it doesn't work that way............put that filter in the furnace where ALL the air gets forced through it mechanically and now you have a functioning product. The second isuue is the regeneration myth..........carbon exists in tons of products out there...........except they all understand the limits of carbon and when it gets used up it has to be thrown away or regenerated........if not it is just a useless pile of small rocks..........the catch comes in the fact that carbon products are usually not very expensive and therefore people don't mind tossing them out and buying another (Odor eaters, Britta water filters, aquarium filters etc).......since no one is going to buy a $500 carbon suit every couple weeks a story had to be invented to make buyers believe they could renew the adsorptive ability of their product, and a household dryer conveniently fit the bill (it delivers heat, is used for clothes, and everyone has one)............this is where anyone who knows better asks for proof.........and it is never given. Ask Odor eaters or Britta if you can put their products in the dryer and make them work again. When they stop laughing the answer will be no.
There are other problems as well.............but these 2 are BIG ones.