Deer smell ???

[702plmo]

Has any one every been hunting down wind of a thicket and thought you smelled the deer.   But never seen the deer?   Let me get some responses and then I will explain why I asked this question.

[snapper1d]

Well I                                                                                   have never done that.But one time I killed an 8 piont and he fell in his tracks.I started to go to him and I could really smell him.His front and back legs were yellow brown and wet with urine.It was terrible.I had to hang him up and wash him with a water hose.I ground up the meat and tried to eat it but it was horrible.I had a friend in the next town and we were talking about it.He says "I can eat it,I can eat anything".Well he got the meat and went home and cooked up some.That next week he said he had to throw it out because he couldnt eat it.The meat really didnt smell bad at all but it had a horrible taste.Thats one I will never forget.

[bowmofo]

I smell deer Quite often that is If they don't smell me first. Snapper your not supposed to eat the tarsal gland! Mike

[Full Quiver]

I have smelled a buck before I have seen it,(while feild dressing him I could still smell him), & since then beleive that I have smelled deer I did not see. Usually during little to no wind type conditions.

[Rico]

Yes several times I have smelled a rutting buck when conditions have been just right,but never has allowed me to get the upper hand on one.

[Danny Rowan]

Never smelled a whitetail but the sambar over here have a musky smell like elk and you can smell them before you see them.

Danny

[NDTerminator]

Have done it a number of times over the years out in the Badlands, but the air is very clear out there (unless you are downwind of an oil well)...

[Charlie Lamb]

Absolutely! I think most of us do, but either aren't paying attention or don't know what they are smelling or a combination of both.

It is a sense that we can train.

[Bill Carlsen]

Rutting bucks smell like old goats. Once you smell one you will always know it when you do. Other times I  have smelled deer I am pretty cetain that I move them out of bedding areas shortly before I arrived. Even though rutting bucks smell bad it is a smell I love to encounter..action is just around the  corner...sometimes.

[Bonebuster]

Charlie is right. Doesn`t have to be a rut stinking buck either.

[foxbo]

I've smelled many deer which I have killed, long before I actually found them during the tracking job. Some give off a real strong order during the mad dash. On a couple, the wind was just right and I actually smelled them when I got down from the tree.

[GingivitisKahn]

I've been smelling deer this year but I don't remember having done so in the past.  Maybe it has to do with the weirdly warm weather we've enjoyed most of this hunting season here.  When it's colder, I think my nose is usually running too much to smell much of anything.

[Stu]

I'm with Bill C. on this. I smell deer a lot. All deer give off some odor when passing. Rutting bucks have a certain & very distinct smell, and the more into the rut, the stronger the odor. A doe in heat is so obvious that only those with broken snifters would miss it. A wounded deer has a certain smell, depending upon the hit. A scared deer emits a different kind of smell when it takes off. My friends think I'm crazy, but I can smell deer and have tracked wounded deer this way. Bears have an entirely different "musky" (not dirty) smell. All of these odors are wafted in the breeze to those on the ground, not in trees, so I'm mainly talking about ground hunting or "sniffing".  

Where I hunt, rutting areas, when I start smelling does in heat, it is "time".

[buckeye_hunter]

Usually if I smell deer there is a fresh scrape around.

-Charlie

[**DONOTDELETE**]

if the deer come in to my area the right way I can smell them. Sometimes if the wind is right and I'm walking in/out I can get a wiff as well.

[Deadbolt]

when its nice and cold I will wind them from time to time.  they have a very distinct odor heh.

[Sharpster]

I have often smelled deer, both bucks and does.

Sometimes I'll just be sitting in my stand and, whew!... it's like someone just opened a bottle of doe urine right under my nose! Don't always see them but there's no doubt that they are closeby.

-Sharps

[ChuckC]

Yes...  It happens.  I find it especially in the marshy areas that are damp, and late in the day when the air cools and sinks (thermals).

Elk are worse by far though, they are easy to smell.  I have had one situation with elk where I was sitting at a crossing, my nose went up and couldn't believe how strong the smell was, yet...no elk.  Then, maybe 15 seconds later, there are the antler tips coming my way above the brush.
ChuckC

[Eric Krewson]

When I was young I had incredible eyesight, hearing and sense of smell. My dad would hold up a brood frame of bees in front of me and say"where is the queen" when he wanted to remover her to re-queen. I could always pick her out in the mass of dancing bees. My other senses were equally acute.

Fifty years down the road my eyesight is dependent on trifocals, years of power plant work has muted my hearing but my sense of smell is still the same as when I was young.

I can smell a rabbit in it's bed, but never could pick up the smell of a quail. I can smell almost any deer when it walks up wind and conditions are right.

I walk a long exercise trail several times a week and can often smell other people on the trail at more than 100yds away. I can tell what kind of fabric softener they use and if they fried bacon for breakfast. Stale tobacco smoke on the clothes of other walkers is nauseating because of my acute sense of smell and is detectable at very long distances.

[T.J.]

I smell deer all the time. I can also smell there beds and where they've peed. My hunting partner always says I'm nuts but I'm glad to see I'm not the only one.