Question: “I started bowhunting this season and deer are smelling me! Whitetail deer hunting is definitely a different game when you try to go close range. It’s just amazing that I was rarely detected while gun hunting from a blind, but now that I am bowhunting the deer just keep picking me up. I need a scent eliminator/killer suggestion and a procedure/recommendation from the deer hunting pros in a hurry. I’ve got a wall-hanger 10 that needs to be on the ground.”
Deer Hunting Pros: Here is a little known deer hunting secret, hunt the wind. Okay, I lied. It’s not a secret but a simple piece of advice that is 100 percent true. Don’t fight the wind because the deer will smell you and you will lose. Scent killers are not totally effective and I would argue may not even be half effective for whitetail deer or anything else.
I do use scent eliminators for washing my hunting clothes. I also spray down with them, but I by no means depend on them. This is just extra precaution for the extra bit of scent-killing-ability that they provide. I also keep clothes in an air tight container. This is not just to keep human odor off them, but the smell of air fresheners, oil, coffee, anything that is not natural to a deer.
In short, a hunter cannot completely mask human odor and whitetail will smell you if you are up wind of them. My recommendation when it comes to deer hunting is to use common sense in regards to scent. Save your money on the scent elimination clothing as they, in my opinion, do not work effectively enough to justify spending an extra money.
At best, try masking your scent using coon or fox piss or skunk, but that is just an attempt to cover up human scent. Deer will smell you if they are downwind. The best thing you can do is shower using scent-free soap, was your cloths in scent-free detergent that lacks UV brighteners, and get as high as you can and hunt only when the wind is to your advantage. Follow these deer hunting tips and you will get busted a lot less. Notice that I didn’t say that the deer would never smell you.
I have found that smoking your clothes helps mask your odor, the deer will smell the smoke but not the human, at least that seems to be the case. I learned this from an Apache, he killed deer every year with his bow.
Don, smoked hunting cloths really do work? Another advantage to hanging out around a campfire. I read an article about this subject about a decade ago and it opened my eyes to alternative methods for scent control.