I feel the same way you do on this issue. If I can avoid walking on any of the area that I expect a deer to come from I will. It isn' t always possible to avoid a shooting lane but your way ahead of the ball game if you can. If you spread your scent around your asking for trouble rubber boots or not.

Often times atmospheric conditions will help or hinder a deer' s keen olafactory senses. Sometimes a guy can do everything humanely possible to keep his hunting site from being contaminated but gets busted anyway. Now and then by the " luck of the draw" a person kills a big buck in spite of numerous mistakes. There are those who cannot tell the difference between the two.

As far as judging a deers smarts by the size of it' s rack, well, IMHO that can be very deceiving. I have seen a number of free ranging P&Y bucks that were not as wary as some fork horns I have run across. The difference was hunting pressure. The forkies had got educated by hunters who made mistakes. The bigger fellas I' m referring to lived in an area where they didn' t encounter that kind of hunting pressure hence as far as deer goes, were on the naive side.