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SCENTS
Make Scent Work for You
Do commercial deer attractants
really work? Without a doubt, they do. Deer lures
aren’t magic, but if used right it can sometimes
seem like they are.
To begin, you must understand what
you’re up against. You’ve probably heard
statements similar to “a whitetail lives by its
nose .” It’s a fact—their sense of smell is the
only sense that they trust completely. The part of
the brain that measures and computes smells
(called the olfactory region of the brain), in a
whitetail, is said to be approximately one
thousand times larger that ours. There are also
numerous other physical facts that accelerate the
whitetail’s ability to substantially outperform
our sense of smell. There’s no question, they
trust their nose—so if you can learn how to
deceive it, scent can be one of the most important
tools in your arsenal.
USE THE RIGHT SCENT AT THE RIGHT
TIME
There are three basic categories
for lures; sexual attractants or deer smells, food
lures and curiosity scents. For food lures, or
curiosity scents other than plain urine, timing
typically isn’t as crucial.
- When using natural deer
smells or sexual attractants including urine,
musks, or gland-type lures, time of year can
play a crucial role as to what scents will be
effective and when. You may see a positive
reaction to an estrus lure throughout the
season. However, it’s probably best to use
something different opening weekend of bow
season.
A good rule to go by is “use the smells when
they are natural to be there.” You can fudge
with that rule a bit when it comes to estrus
urine. Sometimes, nothing can work better than
smelling like the first doe to come into heat,
or later, the aroma of the last doe yet to be
bred.
- When we say “food lure” we’re
not talking about baiting. They would be smells
such as essence of apple, acorn scent, etc.
Smells from things deer like to eat, but not
actual food.
- Curiosity lures are smells
that are pleasing to a whitetail’s nose. They
will usually come to investigate these smells in
an inquisitive way. They can be plant
derivatives, food extracts or possibly synthetic
smells.
PAY HEED TO “SCENT
TRANSFER” AND FOLLOW DETAILS
You may have made the scent
trail technically correct, but when you hung the
drag on the branch, you touched it with your
bare sweaty hand. Your mock scrape may have been
perfect except for the fact you stepped in it
with the same leather boots you wore inside for
breakfast that morning. You must make your
set-up seem as natural as possible. This is the
area where most mistakes are made. Scent
Killer®, elbow length rubber gloves, and a very
clean pair of rubber boots are probably going to
be your three most important tools when using
scent. You must keep “scent-transfer” to an
absolute minimum. If the great smell of the lure
is there, but a “danger” scent is there too,
you’ve goofed. Their instinct for survival out
weighs all else.
This starts with a stringent
system of scent elimination. (See the section on
Scent Elimination, pgs. 70, 71 for more on
this.) Having no danger smells or foreign odors
around your scent set-up will boost your odds
significantly.
DIFFERENT APPLICATION
METHODS
Possibly as important as using
the right scent at the right time, is knowing
how to get the smell to the whitetail’s nose. We
have drags, boot pads, scent drippers, wicks and
other scent dispensers. Think about the scenario
that you’re trying to sell to the deer, and then
which application would be best.
Scent trails are one of the
most popular ways of applying scent. Boot pads
work great; however, a preferred method of
laying a trail is to use a Pro-Drag®. This
device absorbs a lot of scent, but the best
thing about it is it comes affixed to a string
that you can attach to a stick. This enables you
to drag the trail off of the exact path that
your feet are taking. By dragging the trail off
to one side you are able to leave the cleanest,
most pristine trail possible. Obviously, in
thick brush or timber you can’t drag off to the
side; but wherever possible, it’s best.
Another plus to this type of
drag is it’s much easier to control, for
instance, through wet areas, around obstacles,
over fences and through tall grass or weeds.
A dripper is another tool that
is used a lot, especially when creating mock
scrapes. However, the Ultimate Scrape Dripper®
is a great tool for dispensing lure at sites
other than mock scrape locations. This
temperature-activated unit dispenses scent
during daylight hours. It can help condition
bucks into showing up during legal shooting
light and spending more time in your area. The
other nice thing about the dripper is that one
ounce of scent will last about five days. This
unit freshens your set-up each day, priming the
location for you.
An easy method to effectively
lure in deer is simply hang scent-soaked wicks
or scent infused Trophy Leafs™ out to both sides
of your stand location as you face downwind. Set
them up at your maximum confident shooting
distance.
The reason we say “maximum
distance” is because you are trying to lure in
deer from downwind. The closer it is to you, the
better the chance of a deer getting downwind of
your human scent. You want the lure to pull the
buck in before he gets directly downwind of you.
USE COMMON SENSE
Take cover scent as an
example. You can’t go into an OAK WOODS reeking
of CEDAR COVER and expect to fool an animal with
a sense of smell far superior to yours. Think!
Our “brain” is an area where we’re one up on a
whitetail. Don’t be in a hurry when creating
your scent setup. Think it through. Keep it as
natural as possible. Keep foreign smell out of
the picture, and results will follow. No, scent
doesn’t work all the time. But it’s definitely a
tool you want to use sometimes.
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