Hunting Scents Deer Lures and Attractants and Covers

On my first time out hunting deer as a kid back in South East Arkansas it was a foggy morning that I slipped from the trail and hid in a stand of brush. I had no sooner gotten still and the fog started to lift. As the fog lifted I saw three does walking toward me and I did not move a muscle (except for my heart). When the lead doe got to within about 30ft of me she must have picked up my scent. She stopped stomped her front feet turned to look me in the eyes and snorted, the poof they were all gone. I could tell she had seen me. Since that time I have not gone hunting without being in clean clothes and using some kind of cover scent.

I started by using a skunk scent that was packaged in a bottle and sealed inside a tin can full of newspaper. As soon as the can opener pierced the can you could smell it. I never even had to open a bottle bottle because the news paper packing smelled so strong of  skunk musk. After a hunt I always left the bottle in the woods because there was no way to seal it back up and keep it.

The skunk scent did a good job for me of confusing deer for about five years. I never again had a deer smell me while using it. About that time some chemist came up with a two part system that was packaged in two bottles which individually had no scent. You just just put a couple of drops from each bottle on a stone or stump in a semicircle on the down wind side of the stand and the combination would start generating the skunk smell. I decided to never carry both bottles in the same pocket.

I later graduated to other concoctions but still have never gone hunting without at least one cover scent and one food attractant scent and most of the time I take a homemade buck lure that gets their ire up instantly.  Even if hunting in a tree or tripod stand well above the ground I use cover, food and/or sex based scents near the stand.

  • I believe that controlling human scent is the most important component of the equation. There are unscented cleaning products for sale on the market that are more expensive than those that you can make yourself which are just as effective. In fact you may have many of them in your house now. Some bad experiences with factory prepared retail scents led me to making my own fresh food scents and cover and/or attractant scents. Most of the food scents I make come from food sources available in the area I am going to hunt. The same goes for the sex based  buck lures, I harvest the components myself and am assured of quality and freshness. Fresh

Why worry about body scents. How many times, when you were in the woods, can you remember that the first and last part of a deer you saw was the white of their tail getting smaller then disappearing? Deer have thousands of times as many scent sensing cells and nerve endings in their noses than humans. This is why they have long nasal passages, eons ago the animals with the most scent cells survived longer to reproduce. The short nosed animals died out unless they had some other advanced ability to protect themselves such as hands and feet to climb trees or use tools and weapons.

To control the human scent situation there are six phases to consider:

Getting clothes and boots human scent free before the hunt.

Getting equipment foreign scent free takes special efforts.

Once everything is cleaned and prepared storage is the next problem to solve.

Day of the Hunt

Getting there odor free.

It is usually harder to stay scent free during the hunt than getting that way. Cover lures and attractants help keep the game's noses confused.

At certain times during the season sex based lures will work to hide any light odors which escape and help bring the bucks in looking for a fight or amour.

Be a safe hunter first and enjoy the sport longer.