I totally agree with the gentleman who said scouting was the most important element in being successful!Scout,scout,and then scout some more,but I have also shot many bucks who have come in on a string to various lures.If you stay clean and as scent free as possible,scout your tail off and use a good lure properly,you are going to kill deer.

Vannilla as a cover scent?Now there's a natural smell of the woods. I've used vannilla , peanut butter , you name it , as attractant scents. Works good for getting up the curiosity of those yearlings.

So Jack , how many of those Pope & Young bucks came in to check out your vannilla before you shot them?

The scent that works best is sheep crap mixed with water...........the bad part is they don't tell you which bottles it comes in......could be any one of them depending how short their supply is that year. There aren't close to enough does to produce as much "estrous" in a bottle as is on the shelves every year so the vast majority of people are just plain getting ripped off.

If P.T. Barnum was alive today.........he would be selling to the hunting crowd


There is no substitute or short cut for scouting and doing your homework......putting in a lot of hours on stand and being in the right place at the right time........sit still, be quiet and try to see them first and you will have much more success then any bottle of liquid BS on the market.

The one thing that I think a lot of people overlook is you HAVE to seal the deal when you are presented with a chance.......period. I talk to guys every year that whine about not getting anything and how they haven't killed a deer in a few years and so on...........then as the story unfolds you find out they missed 4 times and got busted 10 more.

The only spray I think is worth getting is fresh earth........never hurts to smell like dirt

I've messed around with just about every urine and heat scent on the market since I killed my first buck in 1993. He walked directly to a canister of Trails End 307, and licked the canister, grunting, just long enough for me to arrow him. 12 years later, I've yet to have another buck come close to reacting to scent, and I've take 16 of them in 3 states. I've it all, drag trails, scent bombs, mock scrapes, even burned those sticks ot in the woods. No reaction from any passing bucks whatsoever. I will say this, I have hadlots of does bolt out of my location when they got near the scent, oftentimes taking a buck with them while he was trailing her. And since one of the best ways to kill a buck in november is hunt the does, guess what I don't carry in the woods anymore?

I was waiting for atlasman to chime in with his 2 pennies.

I'll give anyone who'sinterested my strategy with scent bombs and drag trails. Take it for what it's worth. If it hasn't worked for me on numerous occassions I wouldn't be wasting $6 on a bottle every year, and I certainly wouldn't be defending it here when it seems I'm the odd duck.

#1. Forget the doe-n-heat crap! There are plenty of doe in just about every state. What's your buck to doe ratio?So it's not something that's gonna bring them running , even if you buy the hot stuff straight from the farm.

#2. I've found one thing that does bring bucks in during the early stages of therut , and it works great. That's the smell of another buck. Dominant buck lure.
#3. During the chase phase I concentrate on attracting does. Lots of doe during the chase phase = buck. I like to use the gland type lures for attracting doe. That's when I make my drag trails , and I've hadmany doe on many occassions hit my drag trail from cross direction and divert their direction right down my trail.
The biggest mistake people make when making drag trails is putting too much scent on their drag from where they start. That will make a deer follow in the wrong direction. You want to start with a tiny bit and put more and more on as you get closer to your stand.
The other mistake I see people make when putting out scent bombs is carelessly handling the product with no regard to contaminating it with their own scent. I use rubber gloves when handling both drag rags and scent bombs.

If they are mixing sheep crap with water to pass as doe pee........how do you know you are not getting the same thing in your buck lure??

What makes it "dominant" buck lure??


What type of product are you speaking of specifically...........and are you saying that the does are following your drag trail "looking" for bucks??



Maybe if ANY of these scent products came with even minimal directions this kind of thing wouldn't happen.

Ever notice how many scent products have no directions at all??.........Why do you think that is?? My guess is that they realize their product has no real attractant ability (at least no more then anything else) and it relies exclusively on the user being lucky enough to run into a very curious deer that day who would just as likely have stopped to smell and old sock as it would a scent bomb. So they figure they will just let people use them any old way they want to and hopefully something will "work"


If deer lures worked then wouldn't the obvious best thing to do be use MASSIVE amounts of the stuff and get that "lure" spreading through the woods so every deer within a square mile will come running?? That's what they do with sharks (chumming). The key difference being that blood in the water actually does attract sharks


I guess my biggest question about scents is if they REALLY worked........why don't they work EVERY time?? The reality is closer to anyone that says they have good success with scents is talking about one day when a deer reacted to it vs. the 50 days when it didn't work at all.


Scents, calls, decoys, etc all work based entirely on the mood of the deer at that given moment IMO.

We ALL have seen deer with our own eyes react to something like it was a magnet and then we do the same thing to another deer on another day and he doesn't even look in your direction.

I have stopped deer in their tracks with an estrous can and turned them around to come see what's up...........and I have also had deer not care one bit and just keep walking. Does that make the "can" good or bad??? Depends on the deer and the mood just like everything else.

Just my 2 pennies


I couldn't be happier that you have success with scents. You sure do seem to be in a huge minority though.