Deer and Minding the Wind

[tradhunterRN]

I know most of us know how important knowing wind direction is in deer hunting but I just stumbled across these articles that really help drive home the importance of this aspect of hunting. A lot of you have probably already read these but just thought I would share!

 http://www.fieldandstream.com/articles/2014/07/sniff-test-scent-control-products-and-practices-vs-a-drug-dog

[Tradcat]

Good article

[Sam McMichael]

I think wind and deer is a variable combination. I may well be wrong, but here is my belief. Deer can tell if human scent is from somebody close at hand or at a distance. They react immediately to a close in encounter, and just proceed with a greater caution when the smell comes from further away.

[CoachBGriff]

When I first got into bowhunting I got really into scent control.  

Now I mostly just make sure I'm playing the wind to the best of my ability.

I do try to keep my clothes smelling like outside, and I use cover-scents usually.  But the wind is the main thing.

[carbonflyr]

about all you can do with scent control really is to try to fool a deer into thinking you are farther away than you actually are  just my 2cents

[huskyarcher]

Interesting article. I am hesitant to believe they are not pushing certain products. The only thing i have found to help is an Ozone machine. It definitely helps, but has definitely failed me too. I attribute that mostly to winds that never blow the same way twice here in the mountains. Hunting hogs however on flat ground and constant wind direction i have haf great results.

[ChuckC]

We all have "lines in the sand" drawn regarding what we think is right and wrong.  In my mind an Ozonics machine is over the line, as is carbon clothing.  As I get older, more and more things tend to shift over that line.

I am not sold on the facts for the Ozonics as it is anyways.  Yes, in a blind or box it may help, but you are not in a box most times using that but up in a tree.  Besides, ozone is really not so great for YOU either.  If it is in high enough concentration to actually do something to your scent, what is it doing to your lungs ?
ChuckC

[KSdan]

I always wonder how the scent product industry has come to "know" that a deer "thinks" you are farther away than you are.  How would anyone ever know what a deer is thinking?

My only evidence of what a deer thinks is the fact that the deer I hunt must "know" I shoot a trad bow and they are safe beyond 25 yds.  I sure have a lot of them stay just "out of range."  

Man deer are intelligent. . . I am guessing all the ones I have shot had some mental illness. LOL    

[Hickrylb]

Only product that I know that works is NOSE JAMMER ,shuts them down but you smell like you fell in a vat of Vanilla.

[Bowwild]

I don't use any scents, Ozonics, or carbon clothes.  I'm not saying they don't work, I just don't use them.  

I do know a very famous bowhunting guide who swears by the Ozonics and an Olympic archery coach (past) who says they are terrific as well.   I would feel strange using such a device though, not as much as if using cameras to scout (I have three of these in drawers. Haven't been in the woods for a few years).

I try to stay clean with unscented shower the morning of a hunt and don't work up a sweat.  I try to hunt the wind as best I can but on my property, deer can come from any direction at any time.  Food and cover in every compass direction.    I have rarely observed a deer catching my scent from 50-0 yards.  Of course I don't have idea if any beyond that distance have.

I don't worry about the wind near as much as lots of folks with whitetails.  But then again, I don't have a single Booner to my credit either.  So, maybe my tactics are advanced only enough for does and young bucks?

One day in the 70s, the year that I had two bows, both metal gripped.  I hate wearing gloves, but those metal grips is cold.  On one frosty morning, typically underdressed, I was looking for a comfortable spot to soak up some warming rays of the sun.  I hung my hand freezer on a branch with an arrow on the string and sat down get comfortable and smoke my pipe.  The ground was damp so I moved to a small log.   The smoke from my pipe was not rising, just slowly moving away.  I then noticed a set of antlers in the cedar thicket and a sniffing sound.  An eight pointer had his nose right in the smoke stream and heading straight at me.  Dang, I couldn't reach my bow and the eight pointer was only 12 feet from me.  He put his head down I made my move, got my bow in hand and heard a grunt behind me.  The area dominant buck was about 15 yards behind me in the sumac.  I could not get that four wheel hand freezer on target fast enough and when I turned to get on that big boy, I was fast enough either.   I learned lots of things that morning.  !. I needed to use a bow that I could shoot in less than four seconds.  2.  I didn't like hanging on to metal in the cold.  3.  Tobacco with deer tongue tobacco in it does not frighten deer.  4.  Never walk away from your bow.  5.  One can never tell when one stubbles into the the right time at the right place situation.  6. Scent does not travel in a straight line.

[ChuckC]

Pavan, I had a similar experience and friends who smoke almost all told me they had to put down their cigarettes at some point to shoot.  I watched a woman do just that on one opening morning gun season.

My "similar" scenario involved a friend that had some issues and needed to talk about stuff.  We each bought a good cigar and walked out to the woods I hunt.  It was late season, but season, 6" of snow on the ground and we just sat on some logs in a pine plantation setting.   Talking, puffing, we noted a doe followed by several decent bucks, bopping across a field, nearly right toward us.  

She ended up leading those bucks RIGHT past us, on a trail downwind at less than 15 yards.  One of those buggers actually stopped, head up smelling the air ( us, the smoke was obviously going right past him).  He stood there for a short time, then continued his chase.

What an eye opener.
ChuckC

[katman]

I need some of those cigars Chuck, what brand?

I find mature deer that smell you downwind slip away quietly hopefully for them undetected.

Also thermals and wind winding its way through the landscape does not always take your scent where you might think its going.

[mark Willoughby]

Idk gents I've always had good luck with the Walmart cover scent and making sure the wind was in my face and not there's plus a good cedar tree doesn't hurt Imho all my shots last year where from 13 yards or closer either way any of us go you can bet one thing were each going to do what we think is best but I'm always up to try a new trick this year I'm going to try some of the scented soap heard a lot of guys on here speak highly of it

[FlintNSteel]

Originally posted by ChuckC:
[QB] We all have "lines in the sand" drawn regarding what we think is right and wrong.  In my mind an Ozonics machine is over the line, as is carbon clothing.  As I get older, more and more things tend to shift over that line.

I agree.  I often wonder if someone developed a pill that took away one's scent, sound, and made one invisible how many hunters would buy it.  That result may well tell us if there is any future for the hunt.

Mike

[JohnV]

"I often wonder if someone developed a pill that took away one's scent, sound, and made one invisible how many hunters would buy it. That result may well tell us if there is any future for the hunt."

If you go to the mainstream forum on that other popular bowhunting website you will find wide acceptance for the Ozonics device as well as a general attitude that most posters are willing to use any and all devices that they think give them an advantage.  I wonder if they have a "Bowhunters do it the hard way" sticker on their bumper!?

[J-dog]

Great articles. Your not fooling that nose. I am always hesitant to believe the articles and TV shows "I wouldn't have killed this deer without using X product!" I mean it is almost comical that it gives me a chuckle. Or the scent package that says"100% doe urine!" - there are not enough does in the farms or wilds to fill every Walmart shelf in this nation!!

I do like trail cams? They are just fun but about as far as I go.

I mean use what gives you confidence? It is your money you worked for.

Me I just don't like to carry a bunch of stuff just to go get in a set for the morning or evening.

J

[Michael Pfander]

I think it helps to remember that for those deer where mt. lions have been gone for a long time we are the dominate selective pressure on the population.  For at least 100 years the bucks that fool us pass their genes along.  That's 100 generations of selective pressure.
MAP

[redfish]

I watch the wind.  Dental floss on each end of my bows.
That said, I used to smoke a pipe and walked up within 10-12 feet of two bedded deer while puffing the pipe. Of course they were up wind of me and it was a pretty stiff wind.

[ChuckC]

I wonder if, pipe, cigar, similar odors,  are unnatural odors in the sense that historically those odors are not present when a predator is lurking, so they are not, of themselves, bad or even startling, but maybe mildly attractive in the sense of curiosity for what is making them.

On the order of a person just walking " looking for the lost wallet" as G. Fred puts it does not normally look like a predator, but a person moving slowly and intently, maybe slightly crouching, represents a predator at work.

Hmmm the new skunk scent, carbon clothing and ozone generator wrapped into one..... Arango Sportsman 400 cigars !   I would use them, no matter how "cheating" that appears!
ChuckC