Scents for Deer
 

I just moved to North Carolina and I want to get started on scent hunting--never done it before.
Can you guys pick out a few good scents (a buck urine, a doe urine, and maybe some other lures) that I should use? And how should I use each?
(I'll also use this deer scent to cover my scent--applying Scent Killer Gold spray first. Should I also get an earth scent or is the Deer Dander + Scent Killer good?)

Thanks,
Wolven

I haven't had much luck with scents. If you have a local farm that has all natural doe urine you could use a drag with it to your stand location. Pure Whitetail has a few that might work for you also. The synthetic stuff in my opinion sucks. I scared more deer off using it than I ever brought in.


Real buck urine can be used as a cover or in mock scrapes, Doe urine on a drag. Doe estrus on a drag (during rut) put a few drops in an active scrape.


For scent away I use Primos control freak but anything is better than none in my opinion. I also use their deodorant and shampoo/body wash. Even with using the scent away type products hunting the wind is still the best option.

Kellyguinn's last sentence should have been the first when it comes to using scent covering products. Always sit with favoring winds no matter what the manufacturers of the product you have bought tells you, almost 100% of which will be outright lies. As far as attractants go, as Kellyguinn noted, 100% natural urine is the best to use but you have to use each at the correct time of year. As far as bucks go, I have probably had the most success hanging a urine soaked tarsal gland, that I recovered along with the bladder contents from the previous year buck, above a mock scrape. That seems to drive any and all reason out of their brains when they smell an encroaching buck on their territory. I've even had more success with that than using natural estrous doe urine.

Here's my 2 cents...I've had them work and friends have as well. I killed a beautiful 9 years ago that came in dead down wind sniffing the scent, right up to where it ended, and his day did too. I've also seen scents scare the crap out of deer, especially does, which is terrible in the rut when real does are live bait for bucks. So...do they work? Sometimes. Should they be the key to your strategy? No. Also, they have tested these scent elimination sprays using trained dogs, who have scent receptors similar to deer and they do not work. You are not invisible using any of the sprays out there if a deer is downwind. My view is this, keep yourself and your clothes clean. I try to smell like nothing...or as much of nothing as a person can smell like and I watch the wind carefully. If it's a bad wind for stand, I do not hunt it, period. Every once in a while you might get away with it, but for every time you don't I think you educate deer and telemetry studies clearly show deer avoiding stands by greater distances as the season goes on. Draw your own conclusions.

I use my own scent in a scrape, works amazing. Was unsure till I did it and put a camera up and it was used by several different bucks.

Thanks--I'll just go with 100% urines and estrus.