daveco

I found this article interesting. I never use scents or scent reducing sprays.
http://www.fieldandstream.com/articl...reducing-produ

rockport

That article is worthless to a hunter. That is not hunting it is being hunted which is a very different task. Had the dog been task with avoiding humans he would have just left right off the start.

It makes no sense what so ever. Deer don't hunt people and that is what they tested.

daveco

I disagree; I found the article of value. You make a good point that a dog is a predator, and deer are prey, but I found the fact that cover scent was effective at masking human scent to ANY degree, informative. I always figured cover scent did nothing. An unanswered question is if a dog had the same number of receptors in its nose that a deer has, would the test have had the same results.

rockport

The article does not show us that cover scent was effective at masking human scent. It shows us that a dog reacted differently to the addition of more scents. Something that makes no difference to a deer.

The dog was trying to distinguish between multiple boxes that all smelled like human and or human+skunk etc and determine which box the human was currently in.

Deer smells human and doesn't care which box its coming from.

The test does not relate to hunting a deer....it relates to being hunted by a dog.

The only real relevance is no matter what they did the dog always knew there was a human and that is all a deer needs to know.

Think about what they did and the difference

The dog was task with deciding which of multiple boxes with varying degrees of human odor currently housed a human......the deer are task with do you smell a human or not?

Its apples and oranges.

Ive done my own experiment over the course of the last 20+ years and it just doesn't work.

MZS

I was not finding what they had to say about scent killer type sprays? Perhaps it was there but I missed it.

I guess my problem with cover scents is that it might draw a deer's attention. The dog was not worried about predators - he only wanted to find the guy, so that was his only objective - the cover scent did not draw his attention. But a deer is different - it seems any new scent will draw a deer's attention - I will even find all kinds of deer tracks right after I treat an area with Roundup. If I draw a deer's attention, it is generally always a bad thing, even if they do not smell a bit of my scent. If I use scent products, I am careful to bag them up good and only apply them far enough away from me.

rockport

Here are my results of many years of hunting with and without cover scents and scent eliminators.

Deer that are downwind smell me and deer that are not downwind don't.

daveco

MZS, the scent killer test was only referenced. Here's the link:
http://www.fieldandstream.com/articl...e-a-difference
Unlike the cover scent test, there was no difference in each arm of the test.

MZS

I see! 13 seconds, and that was WITH carbon clothing as well!
Hunt the wind, hunt the wind, hunt the wind!

rockport

And that is with using human scent in other locations to try to throw the dog off exact location which obviously makes no sense at all when it comes to hunting.

iowa whitetail

If you think your fooling a deers nose by using any scent spray or cover scent your getting busted by deer and don't even know it. If you want to kill a big buck scent killer or cover scent will not help you in any way. Deer can smell several diff scents at the same time and know exactly ware it came from. I've killed non of my buck using these scams.