Deer Hunting Tips - Utilizing Scents For Post Rut Whitetail Deer4852894
From Data Realms Wiki
A frequent question by many who are pretty new to deer hunting is "What scent should I use?" This is particularly 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 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.
Nevertheless, there are other masking scents that are more natural to the atmosphere. LL Rue, the renowned photographer, naturalist, and writer often used fox urine about his blind to assist mask his own scent.
Scents like this are not alarming to the deer simply because they happen naturally and foxes have a tendency to mark their areas 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 clothes or boots. Use a drag cloth, put a couple of drops of attractant on it and drag it behind you when you head to the blind.
- Place 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 one hundred occasions more sensitive than that of humans.
- Spend attention to your personal smells - use good scent reduction techniques such as soaps for you and your clothes, only put on your hunting clothes in the field and keep 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 example - 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 area that time of year.
