Deer Hunting Tips - Utilizing Scents For Post Rut Whitetail Deer7771015
A frequent question by many who are fairly new to deer hunting is "What scent should I use?" This is especially true for those who hunt in the post-rut season.
First, some background info - 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. during the rut when they normally occur.
Masking scents try to decrease the scent of some thing else. A great instance 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 much more natural to the environment. LL Rue, the renowned photographer, naturalist, and writer frequently used fox urine about his blind to help mask his personal scent.
Scents like this are not alarming to the deer simply because they occur naturally and foxes have a tendency to mark their locations all the time.
Right here are a couple of other tips to assist you with scents in the field:
- Never put 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 few 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 extremely sensitive to odors and has been described as one hundred times much more sensitive than that of humans.
- Pay attention to your personal smells - use good scent reduction techniques such as soaps for you and your clothes, only wear your hunting clothes in the field and maintain them in a bag or sealed container when not in use.
The only one I would use post-rut would be a regular 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 too all-natural!
You can use scents for whitetail deer hunting in the post-rut period but do it very lightly and only use those that are natural to the region that time of year.
