Deer Hunting Tips - Using Scents For Post Rut Whitetail Deer6726177
A frequent query by many who are pretty new to deer hunting is "What scent should I use?" This is particularly true for those 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, etc. during the rut when they normally occur.
Masking scents try to decrease the scent of something else. A great example is the typical 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.
Nevertheless, there are other masking scents that are more all-natural to the atmosphere. LL Rue, the renowned photographer, naturalist, and writer frequently used fox urine around his blind to help mask his personal scent.
Scents like this are not alarming to the deer simply because they occur naturally and foxes tend to mark their areas all the time.
Here are a few other tips to assist you with scents in the field:
- Never put attractants on your clothes or boots. Use a drag cloth, put 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 less than you think. A deer is very sensitive to odors and has been described as one hundred times more sensitive than that of humans.
- Spend attention to your personal smells - use good scent reduction methods 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 area 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 all-natural to the area that time of year.
