Can someone please explain something to me? If I have descented my clothes, showered/deoderized with scent eliminator, and I am 18 feet in a tree stand, does wind direction still really matter?
Yes it does matter, although I reccomend you still take all the above precautions you are never totally gonna get rid of your human scent and not only that but a whitetails nose is no joke always use the wind to your favor. Also some times being 18 ft up in a tree doesnt matter you gotta watch your thermals depending on what kind of terrian you hunt. To keep it simple thermals rise in the morning and push back down in the evening when conditons are right. So if your in hilly terrian I ridge top would be ideal in the am, but in the pm lower is better. Im no expert...just my opinions / observations here
Yes it does, especially during your entrance and exit to your stand. The last thing you want to do is bust deer on the way to your stand and wonder why your not seeing that many deer. Always hunt the right stand locations according to wind direction regardless of what brand garment you wear and scent cover products.
You can never fully eliminate your scent. You can reduce it, but its always there. You start "creating" scent the second you get out of the shower. If you do all the right things can you hunt a bad wind? ....Sure, but I only do it under extraneous circumstances. I've never been sorry that I've hunted the right wind, but I have been sorry for hunting the wrong wind.
Just to reiterate, you should worry about wind direction more than you do scent control. If you're down wind of a deer it will be blowing your scent away regardless. Hoyt 'N' it has it right too, wind should factor into how you approach the stand as well. On a side note, a light rain that deer are still willing to move in is great cover. Not only will their be extra background noise from the rain falling, but rain will help cover your scent as well.
my opinion masking your scent wearing the high dollar cloths is about 5% of it, hunting down wind of the deer is 95% of it.
Take a milkweed seed or some sort of floater and let it go the next time you're in stand... something that won't disappear within five feet like those powders. You'll watch it go out, lift up, swirl around... but before long, it's gonna fall closer and closer to the ground... may be 15 feet, may be 20 feet... may be 40, heck, who knows? But one thing's for certain... that wind WILL come down... and if a deer's in the path of it downwind from you, it WILL smell you.
Somebody else posted the idea of thin string attached to the end of the stabilizer. I thought this was a pretty good idea and was planning on implementing it this season.
Scent control means keeping your wind from reaching the deers noes and not walking where the deer will walk. The rest of scent "elimination" and "reduction" is a bad joke that is put on by all the people in the industry trying to be sponsored or sell scent elimination products. You can't fool a deers nose. I don't think anyone is wrong in trying to stay clean... It can't hurt. ( unless your trying to cheat the wind with a false belief you can get away with it) I just believe it don't help much if any. I believe the smell that concerns deer the most is the skin cells we shed. This is a constant thing. I hear the argument constantly that deer sometimes hang out down wind and know something is up but because of my lack of odor don't spook or offer me a shot before spooking... Well, sorry to tell you I get the same reaction often while hunting in my sweaty work clothes. Plain simple fact, they get down wind they smell you. Im not talking about sweat, oil, gas, etc... Your skin cells. You guys are taking an animal that smells millions of times better than us, and can decipher the different scents and your talking like they smell like a person. I personally believe they can age scent also and tell about how far away you are by the break down of the scent.
Deer have 297 million olfactory receptors in the nose, plus a vomeronasal organ... YOU have 5 million olfactory receptors in the nose, and no vomeronasal organ... I believe they can process the scent age by breakdown and know about how fresh it is. Saying less scent will spook less seems like a false statement to me... Wearing rubber boots and spraying your self with scent remover may reduce your scent to you... But to a deer that smells 100 million times better than you with a vomeronasal organ to break it down the minimized scent is still incredibly strong and reveals you were there... Its equivalent to getting all out sprayed by a skunk at point blank range and then taking a wet rag and trying to wash the scent off you... When you get home, your wife is still going to smell it. We are not talking about an animal that can smell "a little" better than us... We are talking about an animal that smells millions of times better. You could take away a deers sight and hearing and it would survive. Take away his nose and he would perish. They rely on there nose more than there eyes, and ears combined.
Well I am glad I posted this thread. I hunted the same stand every time last year and the wind would always blow north east, and the deer would come from the north east, but they always seemed to just go around me during bow season...that explains that. Is there a way to determine wind direction before I get out there?
The problem is that the place I hunt is 35 minutes away. I just found a great website that really helps though!
I check the internet But always have a plan B stand close by I have found the wind to be different in different areas of my land. But now that I know that it's easier to pick stands
my problem is that the deer on my land go from south to north and east and west depending on the food source so the only real time that I am in the clear is when the wind is blowing north. I was told that I should get my stands hung soon, but their patterns will change in the fall.....so why should I hang them now? Shouldnt I wait until late august when the time gets a little closer?
On the op's question, do you hold your breath? I use the long string (10 inches) on my stabilizer for in an hunt indicator.
