Deer Hunting Tips - Using Scents For Post Rut Whitetail Deer2936004
From Data Realms Wiki
A frequent question by many who are pretty new to deer hunting is "What scent should I use?" This is especially true for those who hunt in the post-rut season.
First, some background info - you can lump all scents into two classes:
1. scents that attract, and
2. scents that mask other smells
Attractants are scents like deer odor, sex or a food scent, like apple or acorn. You would normally only use sex scents like buck lure, doe estrous, etc. throughout the rut when they normally happen.
Masking scents attempt to reduce the scent of something else. A great example is the typical cover scents you can buy in the spray bottles to spray your clothes, boots, pack, and other gear to kill the human and other smells.
However, there are other masking scents that are more all-natural to the atmosphere. LL Rue, the renowned photographer, naturalist, and writer often used fox urine around his blind to help mask his personal scent.
Scents like this are not alarming to the deer because they happen naturally and foxes tend to mark their locations all the time.
Here are a couple of other tips to help you with scents in the field:
- By no means put attractants on your clothing or boots. Use a drag cloth, put a few drops of attractant on it and drag it behind you when you head to the blind.
- Put a couple of drops of attractant on a cloth or wick and hang it on a limb within shooting distance of your blind
- Use much less than you believe. A deer is extremely sensitive to odors and has been described as 100 times much more sensitive than that of humans.
- Pay interest to your own smells - use good scent reduction techniques such as soaps for you and your clothes, only wear your hunting clothes in the field and maintain them in a bag or sealed container when not in use.
The only one I would use post-rut would be a normal deer scent or possibly a food - and that only if it happens naturally in that area at that time. For instance - an apple smell in late season in the North when the temps are in the teens and there is snow on ground is not too natural!
You can use scents for whitetail deer hunting in the post-rut period but do it very lightly and only use these that are all-natural to the region that time of year.
