Deer Hunting Tips - Utilizing Scents For Post Rut Whitetail Deer9848358
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 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 usually only use sex scents like buck lure, doe estrous, and so on. throughout the rut when they usually occur.
Masking scents attempt to decrease the scent of some thing else. A good 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 environment. LL Rue, the renowned photographer, naturalist, and writer often used fox urine about his blind to help mask his own scent.
Scents like this are not alarming to the deer 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:
- Never place attractants on your clothes 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 few drops of attractant on a cloth or wick and hang it on a limb inside shooting distance of your blind
- Use less than you think. A deer is extremely sensitive to odors and has been described as one hundred occasions much more sensitive than that of humans.
- Spend attention to your personal smells - use great scent reduction methods such as soaps for you and your clothes, only wear 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 regular deer scent or possibly a food - and that only if it occurs naturally in that region 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 as well all-natural!
You can use scents for whitetail deer hunting in the post-rut period but do it very lightly and only use those that are natural to the area that time of year.
