870 ExpressMag

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?

FlDeerman

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.

870 ExpressMag

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?

kevin1

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 .

StrutnBPS

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.

Bukmastr

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.

truk

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.

blancohunter09

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.

StrutnBPS

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

Kybuckhunter

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!
[align=right]
[/align]