Originally Posted by
Muley Hunter
I never said it would cover your scent. I said it would dilute your scent.
Technically, the wind does not dilute your scent, it displaces your scent, which is far more effective than dilution. The AIR dilutes your scent, meaning it gets mixed in with the air molecules and the concentration gets weaker and weaker. The wind, the movement of the air particles, offers a directional flow of the scent (it does encourage dilution via mass transfer aka mixing).
As has been mentioned with the "food coloring in the moving stream" example: The WATER dilutes the food coloring, eventually diluting it below a detectable limit. The FLOW, on the other hand, moves the food coloring in a certain fashion. Regardless of the dilution factor or rate, there are certain areas that will NEVER make contact with the food coloring, specifically, the areas upstream of the source.
Many other industries rely upon this differentiation. For example, producing perfectly sealed and contamination free enclosures is very difficult in the biopharma or microbiology sectors. BUT, if you use a filtered air source fed into your enclosure and keep it at a positive pressure with positive airflow moving out of any openings, then no contaminating bacteria or particles can infiltrate the enclosure - ala the "laminar flow hood".
Lord knows I love arguing semantics, but in this case, it's particularly important and practically applicable, rather than simple theory.
Dilution: On a calm day, a deer 800yrds away can't smell you because your scent has been diluted below detectable limit by the time it ever reaches their position. BUT, if they get close to you from any direction, they'll pick up your scent.
Displacement: In any wind condition, a deer 10yrds upwind of you can't smell you because all of your scent is getting pulled downwind. BUT, if they move downwind, they'll pick you up.
Concealment via products is like the dog poop on the shoe vs. French fry on your shirt.
Elimination of emanation of scent, through any form of scent killer product, is impossible.
I say it every time this topic comes up: If there was a scent mitigation method that actually works to trick a deer's nose, then drug peddlers would be using it to trick K-9 Officers used for illicit drug detection. There simply isn't a PRODUCT that works.
The best way to hide something is to not have it somewhere it can be seen - or smelled, in this case. The wind does that.