I agree mostly with what has been said. I want to dig a little further, what about sent free soap, you can't really use irish spring or ivory and what about deoderant. Just curious what everyone thought about this type of scent elimination.

like others have said, IMO, the key to hunting scent free is getting in and out without being detected. Forget while your hunting. If your hunting with a bad wind, you're screwed, a mature buck will bust you.

The key is to take every precaution to not ruin you stands by stinking up you arrival and departure paths. This means wearing rubber boots, having clean clothes, clean body, rubber gloves, etc.

Double Creek, In my opinion clean and scent free are different. I understand what you meant by clean but how do you clean your clothes or your body without scent free soap and still get them clean and remain scent free.

Rack-attack

no kidding iwoudl say more like 95% of the time for scent clothing! Just way too expensive & I just won't shell out the doe for that stuff! I question how well activated carbon can work since you can not get it hot enough to reactivate it in a dryer!

http://www.fastestbows.com/articles/...an/x-scent.htm

I might actually buy some of this stuff. Not any more $$$ than a good set of long underwear. So it can't hurt.. and if it helps me out a little then it's worth it.

While I clearly see your point, there's also the part about doing everything right, finally getting a crack at the big one and Mother Nature throwing a wierd wind swirl you're way and him packing, without your arrow in or through him...

Yes. You need to use solid fundamentals and woodsmanship to get shot opportunities. But for those who don't get to hunt as much as they'd like (fricking jobs), a blown opportunity or two can easily ruin a season.

I agree, hunt the "prevailing" wind direction. Problem is, it's rarely 100% consistent in it's direction. Have you seen the original tree lounge video where they documented some guys sitting around a campfire and the wind direction changed 57 times in one hour? Easy to tell from the visible smoke, if they'd been in a tree, their scent would have been blown 360* around them. Paying attention in stands, I find this holds true probably 85% of the time in areas I can hunt.

I don't forsee products that greatly reduce human odor as being the final nail in the whitetails coffin and threatening their extinction

Not my point at all.

My point had to do with deciding on how much challenge each wants to have. Some will prefer as little challenge as possible. Others will want to continually add to the challenge. You can shoot at sitting ducks in a pond or you can try to hit them on the fly. Either can bring home the meat, but one is far more challenging and rewarding than the other.

That's part of hunting. If it wasn't, it would be called shooting.

i will be watching this post closely. i have been a scent-lok hunter now for 4 years and before that i never really saw any deer. same area and everything that i was doing before. i was going to buy the whole scent lok jump suit liner but i am not sure. i shower every time before i go hunting and not having something like scent-lok on me kinda makes me feel naked. now this might have been advertising sunk into my brain but i don't know. the one guy said something about making a home made pine scent cover spray. i think this would be the key in my area because it is 75% pine thickets. keep this thread going cause i will be watching...thanks

I'm with Rack, but slightly not in some places!!

I think Carbon suits are a flat joke. They actually kill the product by themselves saying it "traps" odor. Doesn't kill it, just traps it. Hmmmm.. I guess when I run around in a Scent-Lok bubble it might work eh? Too many holes (collers, buttons, cuffs) for odor to escape.

Now this x-scent stuff.. now that might be getting somewhere. I'm cool with them trying to kill it first and applying science that has worked for years. I work with military folks and the U.S. military uses the x-scent sock to kill bacteria and avoid the famous "boot rot" they get. If you buy some, they are in green! Imagine that. Now with that said, I think it might help and I stink enough that anything that helps I'm cool with at a price. This stuff is extremely cheap and worth trying. Also, read the article and other carbon articles from the link above (by KBacon). Very good stuff in my opinion and will open carbon believers eyes I think!

Carbon suits are one of the many scams pulled on gullable hunters everyday. we have to be one of.......if not the biggest group of suckers walking the earth.

Guys will buy ANYTHING if they think it will better their chances in the woods.

The hunters market is an absolute DREAM for product pushers. The greatest thing about scent elimination is it can never be proven true or false. A guy who sits in the woods all day and sees nothing can easily think to himself "maybe I am getting winded and they are avoiding me"............maybe..........maybe not. In the same vein......a guy wearing scent lock everything may see a bunch of deer or a nice buck and love his suit to death even though he has no way of knowing if he would have seen the same deer if he smelled like a dead carp. It's like when Homer wanted to buy Lisa's rock that kept bears away..........there were no bears around.........the rock must work right??

It's just the nature of hunters. I know guys that have hunted and dropped estrous scent for 10 years trying to lure a buck to their stand........if one deer in 10 years even looks like he might have sniffed that trail they are hooked for life........forget the 99.9% of the time it did nothing or actually hurt their chances..........any sign of success and it's hook, line and sinker!!!

I saw a very interesting show on Mossy Oak Classics the other day on TV. A guy arrowed a big beautiful buck from a stand on the corner of a food plot. What was he wearing?? A full blaze orange vest. The guy looked like a pumpkin in his tree and arrowed a big mature buck that anyone would love a shot at. Makes you think sometimes about all these guys trying to become invisible by painting their faces and buying up the latest and greatest patterns.


Back on topic. Scent wise I will give scent eliminating sprays the benefit of the doubt because I had a rain suit last year that stunk to high heaven of rubber. I sprayed it down and instantly could not even get a hint of that smell that was very strong to start. Does that mean a deer couldn't smell it??.......doubtful......but it's better then it was.

I wash all my stuff in scent free soaps and store them in a large bag with earth wafers in it. I spray all my stuff with scent elimination spray and then earth scent or Kischell's golden rod (same thing). I will gather up some folliage from my usual spot shortly before the season starts and place it in with my stuff.........I figure it is what they smell every day so how can it hurt?? I shower with scent free wash and get dressed in the field.......gloves stay on until I am seated in stand. I don't see that as excessive but it is also not careless.......takes little effort on my part and I have never felt like scent was something holding me back............the vast majority of my gun kills are within 40 yards and many are well within bow range and I use no scent precautions during gun season........and wear orange from head to toe.

I guess the deer suddenly lose their eyesight and smell when the guns come out because guys seem a lot less concerned when they lock and load then when they grab their bows.


One last thing before I go...........I think the funniest/saddest thing I have ever wittnessed about scent is when I bought my bowtech the guy at the shop showed me something I bet most guys would never know. He had the limbs off a Mathews and let me smell the grease in the limb pockets......WOW!!! Talk about a stiff chemical smell. The bowtech grease stunk like crazy too. I wonder how many guys out there are freaking out about scent elimination down to the most obsessive details.............and then toting a bow in the woods with grease on it that smells like a chemistry lab??


I have to go now............my Deer View Mirror came in from Cabela's today and I just know it is gonna help me get a nice buck this year........can't wait to try it!!