cover scent questions
 

i am in southeast michigan and i was wondering what type of cover scent is best used here...i know fox urine is a popular one but not to many foxes here so i don;t want to spook the smart ones....so i guess i am curious as to what might work good and how do i use a cover scent?

RE: cover scent questions
 

If I hunt in a tree I use coon scent.If I'm on the ground I use Walmart doe pee,not doe in heat just doe pee.Vanilla extract works if you want to go cheap.
I put the vanilla on me,the coon and doe pee I spray around me.

RE: cover scent questions
 

i hunt in a tree stand and in a ground blind made out of plywood...it's basically a little house with sliding windows...i should just spray coon scent around the blind...and then where do i spray it when i am up in the tree stand?

and what does vanilla smell like to the deer?

RE: cover scent questions
 

Since the ground blind stays there it should smell like what it is , a building . Once they're used to it they ignore it . One of the best scent covers that I can think of is Fresh Earth , it really works . I also like Deer Dander , and HS Scent discs in Fresh Earth , or acorn .

RE: cover scent questions
 

I will have to disagree with all of these. I go as scentLESS as I can. I rather the deer not know I was there at all. All scents even the natural ones can put a deer on alert.

Also, the doe pee and stuff like that shouldn't be worn. I mean, think about it. If the smell is on you...what way are the deer going to be looking (smelling)? You just put added pressure on you and make you easier for them to spot. If you use this stuff, but it on a tree, stump, ground. Something to take the deer's eyes and nose off of your direction.

I really like Hunters Odor Nix. It supposedly breaks down the bacteria, stopping our smell. I don't know what it does, but I do know that I haven't been winded by a deer (that I could see) since I started using it. I have worked in the woods all day then sprayed it on my shirt just to see if it worked. In about 10mins,youcould not smell my sweat at all. So I hold faith in it.Most odor killers are made from baking soda as a main ingredient. I am not sure what this stuff is made of.

Just go scentless and you won't have to worry about alarming the deer.

RE: cover scent questions
 

No scent is the best scent. If you try fooling a bucks nose with something you are far more likly to draw his attention and spook him. Clean and scent free. All of the pro hunters on TV that tell you to use that crap are being paid a sponorship to tell you that. I know of several guys that always said the same thing I am telling you right now, but as soon as they got offered a sponorship and $$$ they said what ever they were told to say. Look at it like this, If a deer is stolling though the woods and suddenly he smells a coon, he will take a good whiff of it to identifie it. When he does, he is concentrating on the smell and will pick up on every tiny little molicule of smell while doing so. I never use cover scents or attractants.

RE: cover scent questions
 

i hunt in south central michigan and use coon pee on my boots and the hs scent waffers ( acorn and fresh earth) as these are the most common smells in the woods during bow season,especially in october. I have taken 3 to 5 deer every year for the past 10 years using this combination.

RE: cover scent questions
 

what about making your own? how would making a cover scent out of materials that are already there like branches and leaves cause the deer to see what the smell was.

RE: cover scent questions
 

I am sure that you could make your own. I just rather go scentless. JMO

RE: cover scent questions
 

I had this argument with a guy on the bowhunting forum. He thinks you can "flood" or "overpower" their nose. I said you can't. I used facts from a dogs sense of smell but a deer is very close to the same. Dogs are just easier to study than deer. Read this and you will see you can't cover one scent with another.


A Dog's Nose Knows

If there's a scent to be found, a dog's nose knows!
The canine species has an incredible sense of smell. Historically, humans teamed up with certain specially bred dogs so they could follow the scent of the targeted animal in hunting forays. Even though people think primarily of modern dogs as being family companions rather than hunting dogs, the canine species has not lost its superb sense of smell.
There are many sniffer dogs that devote their lives to serious work like tracking down escaped criminals, or missing (or drowned) persons for the police force. Dogs can effectively identify bombs, firearms and drugs by sniffing for tiny odour traces at international borders and in airports. They are loyal crime fighting partners, performing tough tasks as only our best friends can! Firefighters even call in dogs for criminal investigations of fires where arson is suspected, because dogs can pick up scents that are left behind. The oil and gas industry employs dogs to identify pipe leaks up to twenty feet underground! And if that isn't enough, dogs have even been known to accurately identify cancer lesions on people. Though the mechanism by which some dogs can identify cancers, including human melanoma (a skin cancer) is still poorly understood, it could be their acute sense of smell working once again for our benefit!
In Canada, trained teams of dogs are used for avalanche victim recovery and are provided by the Canadian Avalanche Rescue Dog Association. Around the world, dogs have been active search and rescue team members during natural disasters (volcanoes and earthquakes), and in man-made disasters like the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York. Sniffing out land mines in far away lands like Afghanistan is yet another duty in the long list of the accomplishments of the sniffer dog.
When veterinary scientists mapped out the function of the canine brain, they found that a very large olfactory lobe had evolved to process a large amount of incoming smell information from the sensitive nose. The lobe is four times larger than in humans, even though our overall brain is much larger! With such a large proportion of their brain devoted only to odour processing, it can be assumed that smelling is a sense of great importance to the canine species. The sensory tissues deep in the nasal cavity also have a very large surface area compared to humans, and the receptors that process the molecules carrying odours are significantly more sensitive than those of humans. Dogs seem to be able to discern a mixture of scents and pull out key traces of compounds of interest to them, and also to follow concentration gradients of the scent molecules. It is estimated that the ability to distinguish between different scents and to pick up scents is about 10,000 times to millions of times better than humans. A typical German shepherd, known to be a top scent tracker has 220 million sensory cells compared with a humans measly 5 million! Cats have about 10 times as many scent receptors as humans, so they also have a distinctly better sense of smell than people, but theirs is not quite as advanced as a dog’s.
Once scent molecules reach the dog, moisture in the nasal cavities (mucus) and a moist nose may help to trap these molecules for processing. The nasal cavities inside the muzzle are formed into complex coiled caverns called nasal labyrinths and these are lined with special sensory cells called olfactory epithelium. A dog’s sniffing behaviour involves taking short deep inhalations. This alters the direction of flow of air in the nose so that it impacts on the main smell sensory tissues. From here, the nerve endings in these specialized receptors transmit information about the odour to the olfactory lobe of the brain via the olfactory nerve.
It is said that animals can supposedly smell fear, but this does not make sense since fear is an emotion. Research has identified some interesting facts to note. When animals or people are afraid, stressed or excited, changes occur in the body. This may include production of an altered type of sweat that has a different odour. In people, special sweat glands (apocrine) release this high odour sweat. Higher body temperature and perhaps bacterial breakdown of this secretion produces the scent of alert that a dog would possibly sense as a fear state. The skunk family also has a particularly evolved form of apocrine-type gland that releases their notorious skunk odor when they are approached!
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RE: cover scent questions
 

Being scent free is not possible , no matter how meticulously you wash or what you wear you're not going to eliminate all odors . The best you can hope for is fooling the deer into thinking that you're farther away than you really are , and therefore not an immediate threat .

I honestly believe that cover scents , especially food scented ones , can and do help . I've seen it too many times to discount it . I spray my pop-up with acorn scent a lot , and I've seen deer , does mainly , come in to investigate . Only a few have snorted , and I think it was due more to the strange object than an errant odor . If they were smelling a threat I never would have seen them .

RE: cover scent questions
 

How many of us take the total scent elimination to the mark? I was getting ready Saturday for a day of hunting and it made me wonder.
1. I showered head to toe with scent elimination soap but then dried off with my daily towel. [:@]
2. I washed all of my hunting clothes with scent elimination soap and put them in a plastic bag. I put on my hunting pants and shirt but then sat in my van seat that I sit in everyday. [:@]
3. I sprayed my clothes and all of my equipment with scent elimination spray but how good does it do on a stand, or a backpack or your bow? [:@]
4. I walk to my stand and sweat so I spray my head and my shirt again with more spray. [:@]
5. I also spray on some "earth" scent (nothing more than dirt) to try and cover up anything I might have missed.[:o]
So how do you do? Are you missing some of the small things like I did or are you better at this? And I'm just a smuck? [&o]

RE: cover scent questions
 

I like to use coon urine but I think fox urine works well too. I spray it on my boots and on the backside of the tree I’m in. The logic behind these types of cover scents is that fox and raccoon are meat eaters but they aren’t a threat to deer. So, any predator smell that might leak out of your scent control program will mix with the scent of the urine and, hopefully, will not be picked out by the deer as being a threat. It’s along the same lines as the folklore that we’ve all heard that the Indians used to not eat meat for days before a hunt to minimize their predator odor. I don’t think it’s a good idea to use an attractant as a cover scent. Acorn, vanilla, etc. are more lures than cover scents. I think you want a scent that blends in with the forest, not one that causes a deer to focus in on you or your trail. Scents like coon and fox urines, Fall Essence, pine, cedar, earth, etc. are better choices for cover scents.

Of course, being as scent free as possible is the first step. No cover scent will make up for a poor scent control program but I disagree with the guys that say a good scent control program with a cover scent is somehow worse than a good scent control program without a cover scent. Just MO.

RE: cover scent questions
 

I also agree with you,Kevin!

RE: cover scent questions
 

This is the truth. What I do is grab fresh leaves that fall early off of the trees and take them to my old blender. I addthree cups of water and mix it up. Once I have that mixed, well I boil it for a couple of minutes. I read some lines from Macbeth perferably the part when the witchcasts her spell. I strain what I have into a bottle that I take with me on hunts. Have never had a problem and it seems to work.

RE: cover scent questions
 

To me its kinda like this. Put a dead dog in your living room. Give it a week or so. Then when you can't stand the smell. Get out a couple cans of air freshener and spray. I am pretty sure that no matter how much you spray, what scent you use, your house is still going to smell like a dead dog.

Now, do the same thing, but when the dog starts to stink, TAKE IT OUT OF THE LIVING ROOM! No dead dog, no more smell.

No, you can never be totally scent free b/c billions of cells fall of of your body everyday. As I type this, hundreds of thousands are falling off. BUT, I like using scent ELIMINATORS instead of COVER scents.

Although you can never kill all of the scent, they do a pretty good job of cutting it down.

1. I wash with scentless soap in the morning.
2. I put my clothes on that have been washed with baking soda and air dried.Along with a hat that has had the same thing done to it.
3. I put my rubber boots on.
4. I sit in the same seat that i sit in everyday...didn't think about that one.[:@]
5. When I get to where I am going, I spray down with Odor Nix. The big bottle..
6. When I get out, I check the wind.
7. When I get to my stand, climb in it, I spray a little around me. THe little bottle.

I do not want to use ANYTHING that will get the deer looking for ME. I have enough problems keeping still. I sure as hell don't want them looking in my direction.

RE: cover scent questions
 

I'VE BOW HUNTED HERE IN ALABAMA FOR 20 YEARS ...THE BEST THAT I HAVE FOUND IS "SURE KILL" CEDER OR PINE SCENT ... VERY EFFECTIVE ...

DD

RE: cover scent questions
 

Hey Doc, can't count the many times I have roll my hunting clothes in
lighter pine! Ever done that?