Originally Posted by
DROX
Since that time, I purchased a small farm and have come to understand that these whitetail deer live in my and my neighbors' back yard! They smell humans and human activity all day long! There are times the deer will come and eat the bird seed out of the bird feeders located a mere five feet from my kitchen window. In fact, there are sooo many deer living in the urban areas of Northern Virginia the State has to hire professional hunters to thin the herds. Yup, monster bucks living in the back yards of 123 Main Street!! Smell doesn't seem to bothering them!
The point being I do not use the scent control clothing anymore and have harvested plenty of deer. I keep my hunting clothes and boots behind the seat of my pick-up; not even in a bag, mind you. I am, however, convinced these local deer are more dependent on their vision for survival rather than scent.
I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything, I'm only sharing my experiences and opinions.
My vote? CROCK!
I have had similar experience and also a not so similar experience. I hunted an area where a guy would feed the deer a lot and there were a lot of deer at the time. These deer did not mind human scent too much. Since then, the population is way down, the guy feeding moved away, and there is more hunting pressure. Now, in the same area, the deer are much more wary.
That said, I think the scent control industry has our pocketbooks in their cross hairs. There are a lot of "free" things you can do to minimize scent, the biggest being hunt down wind. I am not about to fork over the money they want. I do use Scent Killer spray (cheap), hang my clothes in a shed (no gas motors and if I am real gung ho store my clothes with pine boughs, apples, etc), and shower before using non-scented laundry soap (cheap). Not that sure all that helps, but it can't hurt. I DO know that when the wind shifts and blows scent their way the deer get wary and take off (my own experience) - and this happens even though I take all measures and even happened when I was 18 ft up in a stand.