While I agree with your friend to a certain extent.....I DO store my clothes in earth scent wafers. "Scent Free" to me should be changed to "scent management". We'r enever going to totally eliminate it....and what we all should be striving for is diminishing the amount of human scent we put forth. So.....I don't think we're fooling the deer. I think Rob/PA gave me about the best analogy we as humans can understand when he explained it to me this way.

It's kind of like US smelling a skunk. If it's REALLY close....we can determine that ....HEY....there's a skunk, really close! What we attempt to do when we "manage" our human scent.....is to make the deer think we're further away from him than we really are. If we humans smell a "faint" smell of skunk.....we're LESS inclined to think he's right there with us. We likely won't give him too much thought.

WHERE you hunt will be a HUGE factor as to how much human scent a whitetail "might" tolerate. I hunt near humans.....within 1/4 mile of houses.....a barn.....etc... Iknow I get away with a little more scent dispersion than the guy who hunts big woods, but it doesn't stop me from trying my best to "manage" it.

Good luck.