Scent, schment?
My hunt this year has made me question my previous assumptions about the importance of eliminating and covering scent. I still believe that it’s important to hunt the wind and to avoid being upwind of deer, but…
I spent every morning this past rifle season carefully avoiding sweating, using scent eliminators, not smoking in the woods, etc. And then one morning… a morning that will live in infamy… everything changed. We got started late, so I didn’t use scent eliminators. In fact, I didn’t even shower that morning. Then the biscuit one of my hunting buddies gave me that morning started to seriously disagree with my stomach. I mean… seriously disagree. By the time I was 20 yards from my stand, it took me 15 minutes to get from that point to actually being seated in the stand because I had to stop every 10 feet to pause and engage in all-out war with my butthole! I wondered how I was going to get through the morning.
Now I usually carry my heavy coat in my bag and just wear my woolen undershirt into the stand so that I’m not sweating. As soon as I’m seated, though, I’ll put the jacket on. Well it was about 30 or below that morning, and I never put my coat on because I was sweating constantly 30 minutes later due to the this epic battle with my GI tract. I was beginning to worry about getting deathly ill at that point; sweating in your underpants in 30 degrees is not good. Wave after wave of battle ensued… each time, I just barely held the line and prevented the levies from breaking. Finally, I realized it was hopeless. I climbed down from the stand and did my business not 20 feet from the stand. Decided to just kick the TP under a log. One of my greatest accomplishments in life so far is the fact that I didn’t get any dirtiness on myself, my boots, or my clothes that morning. I don’t know how I did it.
The relief was tremendous, but so was the understanding that I was totally busted. It was broad daylight at that point. So I said, “Screw it, I’m busted.” I didn’t make any particular effort to be quiet when I climbed back into the stand and put my coat on. Leaned back and even lit a cigarette, fully intending to ride the morning out without seeing a single deer. And then… an hour later, I got my only buck of the season… with a cigarette hanging out of the side of my mouth and my business lying on the ground not 20 feet from where I was.
Scent, schment?