Deer Hunting Tips - Using Scents For Post Rut Whitetail Deer1210046
A frequent query 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 usually only use sex scents like buck lure, doe estrous, and so on. throughout the rut when they normally occur.
Masking scents try to reduce 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 more all-natural to the atmosphere. LL Rue, the renowned photographer, naturalist, and writer often used fox urine about his blind to assist mask his personal scent.
Scents like this are not alarming to the deer simply because they happen naturally and foxes have a tendency to mark their locations 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, place a few drops of attractant on it and drag it behind you when you head to the blind.
- Put 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 very sensitive to odors and has been described as 100 occasions more sensitive than that of humans.
- Pay interest to your own smells - use good 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 normal deer scent or possibly a food - and that only if it occurs naturally in that region 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 as well all-natural!
You can use scents for whitetail deer hunting in the post-rut period but do it extremely lightly and only use those that are natural to the region that time of year.
