Scent Whitetail Deer

Learning to think of scent and the direction that it travels is the single most important change to your thinking you will have to make if you hunt successfully.  Deer can easily smell humans at a distance of 300 yards.  This is hard to imagine but their sense of smell is that good.  Dress up in the best scent elimination clothing and they will still smell you if you ignore direction.  Most of your scent is from glands and it will still escape from your head if nowhere else. 

You ooze scent out of your pores and it travels in the down wind direction and it may change directions although it generally will travel in a straight line.  Like a stream of water it runs in a line that follows curves and when the Deer run into that stream of your scent they hit it like a wall alerting them to your presence and exact location.  

Learning about scent teaches you how to enter and exit a field and where to place your Deer stand or what direction to hunt in.   It may be impossible to enter an area without leaving scent in some part of the area.  Puff bottles and other items can always be used and referred to so that you can always be aware of in what direction your scent is traveling.  Scent always travels in a direction or gathers and pools.  That direction may be directly up, or it may go around a hill and then turn downhill, or it can collect and pool in a low area like a pool of water.   If air cools and no wind is blowing the scent will pool and spread around the bottom of your tree stand like water spilled on the ground unless the air warms and rises taking the scent with it upwards.  

Most hunters think that hunting into the wind is the best approach.  However cross wind is always an option.   Cross wind can be used to drive Deer gently or it can be used to cover more ground more quickly when Deer are using corn rows for safety and evading hunters.   Learning to use the wind to your advantage and understanding how scent is always working for or against you makes Deer hunting less hit and miss. 

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