Deer Hunting Tips - Utilizing Scents For Post Rut Whitetail Deer3710562
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 accurate for these who hunt in the post-rut season.
First, some background information - 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. during the rut when they usually happen.
Masking scents try to decrease the scent of some thing else. A good example is the common 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 much more natural to the atmosphere. LL Rue, the renowned photographer, naturalist, and writer often used fox urine about his blind to help mask his personal scent.
Scents like this are not alarming to the deer simply because they occur naturally and foxes tend to mark their areas all the time.
Right here are a few other tips to help you with scents in the field:
- By no means put attractants on your clothing or boots. Use a drag cloth, place a few drops of attractant on it and drag it behind you when you head to the blind.
- Put a few drops of attractant on a cloth or wick and hang it on a limb within shooting distance of your blind
- Use less than you believe. A deer is very sensitive to odors and has been described as 100 times much more sensitive than that of humans.
- Pay attention to your personal smells - use great scent reduction methods such as soaps for you and your clothes, only put on 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 regular 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 all-natural!
You can use scents for whitetail deer hunting in the post-rut period but do it extremely lightly and only use these that are all-natural to the region that time of year.
