In the 1980' s I did alot of camping and hunting, every weekend the entire season. We had the fire every night and it stunk up my clothes. I used ground blinds exclusely and had deer walk all over me. My scent didn' t seem to bother them at all. Whether that forms a hypothesis about smoke scent can be debated because they were use to our camp and our smoke.
There' s a guy that teaches a class on how to learn to get close enough to touch deer in the wild. We' ve discussed this in this forum last year or year before. His primary cover was dirt and mud if I remember right. He would cover his whole body in mud. His secondary cover if mud wasn' t available was wood smoke.

The wood smoke may work for me, I do a lot of my hunting about a mile or less from a HUGE charcoal manufacturing plant, lots of wood smoke a lot of the time. Ive never used the smoke as cover scent on my clothes, but the deer dont seem to smell me very often, maybe just coincidence, but they are definitely used to the smell. Even big bucks dont mind the smell.[]

for me it wouldnt work well......all deer season guys sit around and have a good time around the fire the night before hunting....they all smell like smoke...but i see how it would mask human scent very well......i think im going to try something with leaves and things like that for my bow hunting....i think natural and free is the way to go when it comes to alot of hunting......who knows what REALLY goes into them fancy plastic spray bottles!!

my opnion on scents is when you chew something mint to cover up garlic odor. you think your doing something but most of your friends will simply just smell mint and garlic together. the same with deer cover scents. i believe they can detect that the cover pine scent in the bottle isint the same as local pines. if drug dogs can detect these subtle differences i think a deer can do the same.in other words if you use skunk cover scent i think a deer just smells human mixed with skunk scent. i say no scent is the best scent and you should always hunt with the wind in your favor.

I' ve listened to several very experienced and successful bowhunters who like to hunt in wood-smokey clothes. From the West to the East and all points in between, it apparently works for them.

I' ve never intentionally " smoked" my hunting clothes, so I can' t speak from personal experience, though. I can say that I don' t use commercial cover scents anymore, prefering to rub down with black walnuts, damp leaves, and aromatic soil each trip afield.

When I lived in British Columbia for a few years in the bush I had no running water or electricity so makeing fires were a way of life for heating water and food being outside on the pitfire or on the wood burning stove, so I always smelt like a camp fire and personally I think it is one of the best cover-up scents ever made. I have stalked up on a lot of moose, elk and mulies smelling like a campfire. The real secret is to hunt with the wind in your favor, but its difficult at times, especially when the winds change on the hour, but I do think that it will buy you some time. Even here in Montana I do a lot of my hunting in the burns that were here a few years ago and the soot smell still lingers and by the end of a day hunting and stalking through there, I myself smell like soot at the end of the day.
Bobby

C903... that was in my young and stupid years. I don' t do it anymore, unless maybe it' s a couple apples when I know I' ll be hunting around apples(not often in Maryland but I do in NY) This was before the days of all these neat little bottles of fresh earth, scent eliminators and all that stuff.

David,

I still hunt the catskills with rifle a couple days a year at my uncles cabin. More for the tradition than anything else.

I also used to cut up some apples and throw them around me. Until one day after sitting for a few hours I realized I had forgotten my lunch[:' (]. I was starving so proceeded to crawl around picking up and eating my apple slices. I stoped crawling around and stuffing my face just long enough to see about 5 deer waving there flags at me

from then on I left the apples at the cabin