“All natural” COVER SCENTS and MASKING AGENTS…

It’s now raining outside this morning which kinda killed my plans big-time today, so I figured I’d pass a little time on the keys.

Having grown up in the backwoods of Pennsylvania I was always fascinated at a very early age with observing whitetail deer in the wild. After 45 years in the woods I still archery hunt for deer, and every now and then I manage to get lucky enough to take one with the bow ! Over the years I have had much more success simply getting close to deer than I have releasing the arrow. (And yes… I do get busted by the deer… ALL the time). Of the deer I have actually taken with the bow, none of them have ever been farther than 20 yards away. The largest buck I have ever arrowed and harvested was a nice 9-pointer taken only 8 yards away, and have over the years observed a significant number of deer within 10-15 yards of me. I also once took a small 6- pointer at 7 yards. I guess the only point here worth mentioning is that all my close encounters were while I was camo-ed on the ground…and not in a tree stand.

As we all know it’s so hard to get really close to a deer while on the ground. Believe it or not, for me (being an exclusive ground hunter) my biggest obstacle many times is trying to go undetected by motion or sound, rather than worrying about smell. It’s for this reason I thought I might share my pre-hunt ritual that I do to “mask” any of my human-ish smells/odors in order to help me get close to deer without alarming them. In some instances the deer were well aware of my presence, but were not alarmed or spooked by a “strange” or “foreign” smell. Deer are curious-oriented animals. Putting sight and sound aside, unless I’m sweatin’ because it 55 degree out, I have managed to be relatively successful in dealing with the most powerful sense of the whitetail. Just this past 2008 archery season, using pure farm doe urine as a primary attractant, I once again managed on the ground to be within 9 yards of a wide-racked, six-pointer. The buck came to ME twice within a 3 ½ hour period and clearly knew “I” or “something” was there in the bush, but was not spooked. So how did I mask my scent?

Starting from the inside out, I shower daily with antibacterial soap and avoid scented deodorants and shampoos all during hunting season, and I never wear the same garments that touch any part of my skin more than once without first washing them. If you use antibacterial soap daily your skin will form a barrier against a lot of stuff that causes body odor. Everything else (outer clothing, boots, gear, etc.) all gets lumped into the same type of mask treatment. My secret ingredient is “pure cedar oil”. My outer clothing is stored between hunts in a plastic garbage bag with a few drops of cedar oil placed on then after each hunt. When I take them out of the bag to use there is a “slight” aroma of cedar oil on them. I have found that the smell of cedar oil does not alarm most deer, and many times they (often spike-horns) are stupidly curious enough to approach the source of the smell, even if the source of the smell has “slow” movement.

I also use cedar oil as a masking agent during gun season. So if you’re having trouble getting close to deer give the cedar oil a try. Pure cedar oil can be “Googled” and bought in quantities of 8 ounces or more on the internet. A little goes a long way. I have had the same 8 ounce bottle for years.

When the ground is not frozen, another trick I sometimes do near my ground stand is to take my boot toe and heel and literally kick-up and scatter the first 2 inches of the dark topsoil by clearing an area about the size of a scrape (1 foot by 2 foot) 20-30 yards upwind of my stand. For what ever reason deer are also curious about the fresh smell of topsoil. I found this out one October while fall archery hunting in Pennsylvania. So that I could approach my ground stand quietly that evening, that early afternoon I had thoroughly cleared all the leaf litter off my approach path for 50 yards with a hard tooth rake. When I returned only a few hours later the path that I had cleared was literally covered with fresh deer tracks. Every now and then you’ll see the stores carrying “fresh” ? soil scent in a bottle. There’s nothing fresher than creating that smell yourself in the woods.

I’m just sharing my field experiences, and I certainly don’t claim to be any expert by any stretch of the imagination. We all have our own proven, sacred hunting rituals. I also do a tremendous amount of bass fishing, and have found that bass get wise very quick after seeing the same‘ol lure thrown at them day in and day out.. But NOW… throw them something or some color they have never seen before, or put a few drops of anise oil on that soft plastic… and simply get ready to set the hook. I also never buy local deer lure off the store shelf. I buy all my deer lure from out-of-state deer farms.

If you have any unique methods of hunting deer you’d like to share that has worked well for you… of course I’m all ears. I promise I won’t use them where you hunt ! There may be a certain place however for it in my woods of Massachusetts.