Scent control ?

[BGbowhunters]

I've always wanted to know how well scent control products work. For years I've never used it with deer, but that's because I would rifle hunt for deer and they would be dead before they could even get a whiff of me. But now I'm archery hunting and the range for archery is the range that an elk can smell you. There are hundreds of products out there that say it covers you scent, but do they work. On hunting shows it seems they always sponsor a scent control product, or show themselves putting some kind of scent control spray on. But once in a while in those shows when they get busted by a deer or an elk they say it's that they got smelled. So what's your option, do scent control products work, or are they just a scam? If they have worked why do you think they work. Thanks for any help

[ctdad]

I don't use them. The way I smell after a day in the mountains, I don't believe it is possible to cover up that stink. But I also don't use them for deer while hunting in tree stands either so I'm just not a believer.

[Swede]

I believe it is a good idea to minimize human scent. You don't need to drown yourself in expensive products. Good personal hygiene, including an unscented deodorant, and unscented soap/shampoo will help if used often. Nothing is perfect. You bathe and use deodorant to minimize you human smell when you are around people. The best comparison for downwind deer and elk is to say it is similar to the difference between whispering in the forest, and shouting. I know it is not perfect.
Some people say they only watch the wind and don't pay attention to body odor. That is okay, but I keep my scent down as much as I reasonably can.

[mandrroofing]

you caint get sent free but i believe wearing merino wood base layers helps

[spookinelk]

An elks nose is on par with a bloodhound, minimizing scent you leave behind makes sense but I don't think any product is going to fool an animal with olfaction that sensitive if it gets downwind of you. Besides, they'd probably smell my snuff anyways

[phall]

always hunt the wind no matter what while at the same doing what you can afford and/or carry in the back country setting to minimize your scent...for backcountry backpack elk its tough i go merino wool, scent free rinse free soap and wipes. i dont even bother with the scentblocker until im in the deer stand. do all the various brands of scent clothing work? i would say it helps. also field and stream has been testing the effectiveness of many scent control products with a k-9 dog. sorry i dont have a link but from what i recall most all had minimal effect on the time it took to find the person. but ozone delayed the finding of the specific person the longest

[Lefty]

Maybe I'm nuts but it seems to work, I use silver based sprays,soaps , deodorants, zeolites in my box blind floor and have a ozone generator

Depends on the product. this is what I know
Overall most products kill bacteria which smells, and prevents it from growing, mostly mineral , and sodium based
When our skin dies bacteria feeds on the dead skin, aided by sweat that helps feed bacteria, Bacteria is what stinks.
Some products are designed to sock up the odor, like charcoal based, I just saw someone finally figured out Zeolite which is more microporous than charcoal. Both Charcoal and Zeolite are used to absorb all sorts of odors and impurities.
Baking soda ( and other sodium based) works a number of ways, first it is alkali, many bacterias cant live on an alkali, environment, Second is works as a cleansing agent third it does have proprieties that absorb some odors, used in about all products, underarm deodorants, , personal wipes, and soaps
Other mineral based such as charcoal and zolite absorb odors.
Silver based( may include zinc and aluminum too) , such as nano silver, integrated silver bacteria cannot live in a silver environment, good example is silver "thread such as some Under Armour clothing,..

I have silver/ wool socks, all day hunt and they have little odor.

Hydrogen peroxide products, plain kills bacteria, and for a while bacteria cannot survive,
Same as iodine, peroxide is cheap at Costco same stuff they use at the docs office

Im not sure how oxidizers work such as hydo and ozone something to do with breaking the cell down

I also gobble alphafa pills they have been used in nursing homes for decades so your $5i1 doesn't stink ( as bad) . Not sure how it works but I dont eat much meat in
Im sure there is plenty I dont know, but I use scent control the best I can and I know it helps,.. yes I still hunt the wind, but Ive had too many elk not bust me down wind within shooting range or at least not break hard. Ive had deer and elk walk right up to me and sniff me, so I must not have smelled too human
A shower every day, new clothes every morning, Deodorant etc It works and its cheap

[Lefty]

scent control products with a k-9 dog. sorry i dont have a link but from what i recall most all had minimal effect on the time it took to find the person. but ozone delayed the finding of the specific person the longest

http://www.fieldandstream.com/articles/ ... iffing-dog

You’ve had your head in the clouds if you’ve missed the de-scents-itizing hype of companies selling ozone-generating products. Ozone, they claim, contains an extra oxygen molecule that attaches itself to other molecules—say, b.o. molecules—and changes their structure. I’m eager to examine any deer hunting trend and, if necessary, flip it on its head. So I enlisted Chance, a highly trained police dog, to test ozone’s effectiveness. I’ve watched Chance’s nose zip through every sort of no-scent solution and was fully prepared for an ozone rout. But that’s not exactly what I got.



As a refresher: Our scent tests* are set up just like the training exercises used by K-9 officers. In the box test, police dogs are taught to find a “bad guy” hiding in one of six square boxes, spaced evenly across a large field. First, I sat in each box for a full minute, leaving behind a trace of human scent. Then it was up to Chance to find the member of my test team (hunting buddies Bob Borowiak, Tony Houdek, and Tom VanDoorn; and my father, Marv) who had climbed into one of the boxes. To start each trial, the handler took Chance off the leash, then ordered: “Find him!” At this command, I started my stopwatch and timed how long it took Chance to bust the hunter.

Test No. 1
Setup As a control test, Houdek jumped in a box, wearing street clothes.

Result Chance barked at his box after only 14 seconds.

Analysis Dogs performing this drill are marked down if they bark at the wrong box, so it’s not unusual for them to check every one—even if they get a strong whiff at one of the first. Chance’s head snapped around as soon as he passed Houdek’s box, but he checked every box before racing back. Had he reacted immediately to that first scent (as a whitetail would have), Chance could have cut this time in half.

Test No. 2
Setup To assess how a classic scent-control method would fare, ­VanDoorn, an expert whitetail hunter who swears by baking soda, took a shower in no-scent soap mixed with soda and then dressed in clothes washed in a similar combination, plus powdered with soda. He then rubbed more of it in his hair, on his socks, and in his boots.

Result Chance found VanDoorn in 19 seconds.

Analysis Chance showed no noticeable reaction the first time he ran past VanDoorn, and he checked all six boxes. Even though VanDoorn’s trusted in-the-field system cheated Chance’s nose for a few extra seconds, the difference wasn’t pronounced. I was a little surprised by this, given ­VanDoorn’s success at fooling deer—but not as surprised as VanDoorn.

Test No. 3
Setup Before the test, my dad took a no-scent shower and placed a ScentPurge 50, an ozone-generating unit designed to infuse clothing with ozone (whitetailr.com), into a plastic tub that held his hat, boots, and two layers of camo clothing for 30 minutes. Dad dressed in these treated clothes just before entering the box.

Result Chance needed 42 seconds to find my dad.

Analysis The dog ran the entire course twice before marking Dad’s location. Though he did a slight head bob toward the correct box on the first lap, it was clear that the smell of ozone was confusing Chance. This was one of the most dramatic delays of Chance’s success in all the years we’ve conducted these tests.


Test No. 4
Setup Borowiak took a no-scent shower and dressed in hunting clothes that he’d washed in no-scent soap. He carried an Ozonics unit ­(ozonics​­hunting.​com) meant for mounting near a treestand or in a blind, ran it for a minute inside the box before the test began, and left it on throughout.
Result It took Chance 50 seconds to find Borowiak.
Analysis

Even the handler was stunned at how long it took Chance to find Bob. Again, the dog ran two full laps before choosing the right box, and his first bark was tentative—like a guess. This was the most shocking result in four years of testing. We’d put Borowiak’s other no-scent regimens under Chance’s scrutiny before, and the dog had found Bob almost immediately. Yet the addition of ozone confused that nose for nearly one minute, which amazed everyone.

Nothing—not even ozone—will completely cover human odor. But if you can muddy the olfactory water for 50 seconds, that’s plenty of time for you to get a shot at a monster buc

[Lefty]

I believe it is a good idea to minimize human scent. You don't need to drown yourself in expensive products. Good personal hygiene, including an unscented deodorant, and unscented soap/shampoo will help if used often. Nothing is perfect. You bathe and use deodorant to minimize you human smell when you are around people. The best comparison for downwind deer and elk is to say it is similar to the difference between whispering in the forest, and shouting. I know it is not perfect.
Some people say they only watch the wind and don't pay attention to body odor. That is okay, but I keep my scent down as much as I reasonably can.

Well stated

[Gselkhunter]

So let me pose the question, if you can make an elk believe you are 100yds out instead of 10yds who has the edge?

[foxvalley]

Thanks for the info lefty, very informitive.It just goes to show that nothing will totally eliminate your scent,but as Gs. just mentioned, if you can fool the animal in thinking you are 100 or 200yds. away, when in reality only 20, it's much less likley that the animal will bolt.Also having just a few seconds more may offer you the shot.
I go thru the whole scent control thing every evening first by washing all my cloths,and have at least two pair of everything so I have a clean dry set every day. I take a shower every day by heating water, and adding it to my solar shower that has been in the sun all day,which gets up to about 90 degrees by itself. I use scent control spray during the day, and brush my teeth after lunch.
We smell ten times worse to an elk than the worst skunk smell by letting ourselves get ripe, and it's not only us that stink,but also the TRAIL that we leave behind, and everything we touch, that can last for hours, and any elk that comes across that path is instanly alerted
Being the first one to encounter an elk that year,before the elk has encountered any sign of human, including smell,you catch it completely off guard, and is by far the best time to kill him. After that,he is much harder to kill, cause he knows hunters are there.

[twinkieman]

I would agree that all we can do , can't hurt. I wash my clothes, spray them down with scent killer, and take a shower. 10 minutes up the first steep climb, I know That I already stink, again. I play the wind and always try to keep it in my favor. I have always thought that I was doing my scent prevention for me, (trying to make it where I don't have to smell myself), but Gselkhunter has me thinking, maybe it has had a difference. Thanks for that thought Gs

[elkmtngear]

Body hair traps the waste products from normal flora bacteria, which results in lingering odor that's hard to resolve, especially after 10 days of hard hunting and trying to eliminate it with baby wipes.

If you do not believe this, try shaving your armpits...you will notice a huge difference.

And, I won't even get into the whole manscaping argument

[BRazz]

Body hair traps the waste products from normal flora bacteria, which results in lingering odor that's hard to resolve, especially after 10 days of hard hunting and trying to eliminate it with baby wipes.

If you do not believe this, try shaving your armpits...you will notice a huge difference.

And, I won't even get into the whole manscaping argument

Looks like I need a few new razors before the season starts...

[Swede]

lingering odor that's hard to resolve

I have observed that "lingering odor" is as much of a problem at times as direct scent especially early morning and late afternoon through the evening when the thermals are descending. Basins and draws are especially troublesome. Again you can minimize all odor and it will dissipate quickly.
During the mid day, I have had deer and elk walk down the same path I walked only a couple minutes earlier. There was no problem. I have a friend that smokes, and rarely cleans up good during a hunt. He sits in similar stands, and in some of the places I have hunted. Over the years he has never had a shot at an animal that I know of. I believe he was dealing with a big scent issue. I have not seen him out for several seasons, so I would guess he may have quit hunting.

[Lefty]

So let me pose the question, if you can make an elk believe you are 100yds out instead of 10yds who has the edge?

Or something similar, Instead of a strong wiff of human, or danger or unknown: you might not put an elk on full alert or bust him , or have just a bit of time to make the shot

[POk3s]

I used to go by the "i stink after a day anyway" rule also until a buddy of mine told me a few of his stories and said, "I don't care if you try it but I have all the stuff so you might as well." It was the third week of archery season. Every time the wind hit me on the back of the neck I had been busted. 3 long weekends of the same song and dance with swirling mountain winds.

On the first morning my buddy was up there I wiped down with scent wipes, applied scent free deodorant, and even applied scent killing lotion all over....as well as spraying down. Three hours later I made a cold calling setup and saw a raghorn about 150 yards through the trees on a b-line. A few seconds after I saw him the wind hit me in the back of the neck. The bull stopped, sniffed the air (I'm thinking well that's it. It's already happened 2,000 times this month).....put his head down and kept coming. At 70 yards the wind swirled again. Again the bull lifted his nose, sniffed the air, and kept coming. I killed him at 40 yards. Since then I've been hooked. I don't know about any tests or anything else. All I know is I 100% fooled an elk's nose TWICE that day. I see no reason to remain as scent free as possible. Even if it takes that elk 5 more seconds to smell you as he passes by. That may be the 5 more seconds you need to settle that pin.

[jmez]

No matter what you do you smell like a human. Sometimes animals care and sometimes they don't. Has nothing to do with scent control products and measures IMO.

[WapitiTalk1]

No matter what you do you smell like a human. Sometimes animals care and sometimes they don't. Has nothing to do with scent control products and measures IMO.

Agree with jmez. I do take a certain measure of scent free, scent disguising precautions but nothing disguises human scent....period. You could bath in scent control/eliminating products and walk slowly w/o perspiring to a setup and still be busted if "he" catches your scent. Concentrate on working the wind/thermals when in close first and foremost and you increase your odds of success. Just my meager .02.