I've heard of people putting unwashed worn clothes in their stand, like ones you wore working outside, a few months before season. They would swap them out when refilling feeders or other visits. Never knew if it worked or not. The idea was to get the deer accustomed to a particular scent.


Have any of you ever heard of such?

Ozonics is pretty poor form. I can’t get behind its use.

Why not flood your scent cone with a strong but familiar to them cover scent? It’s not expensive and I’ve been bow hunting that way for 40 years with great results. I always have two set ups for each location for either a north or south wind too.

My issue with that is that I've seen deer begin to purposely avoid an area where there is constantly human scent. i put a tripod up years ago right next to a trail. After 2-3 years, the deer would start taking a different trail about 50 yds north and come out again, back on the old trail, about 50 yards south. Even deer that hadn't been born when I put up the tripod took the different route. Coming north, with a south wind, they still took the new trail, which went through a bunch of brush instead of the nice open walkway of the old trail.

And unless you are refreshing the clothes very regularly, the deer are going to notice a sudden influx of a bunch of fresh, new scent.

I was a fanatical bow hunter for years before I owned a deer rifle. I was taking scent control to extremes. Brushing my teeth with baking g soda. Taking chlorophyll tablets. Washing my cloths in unscented soap. Wearing hip boots on my walk to put up treestands. I tried all kinds of cover scents.

I had some phone conversations a well known deer/wildlife biologist. The way he explained it to me. We humans smell a hamburger. It has a distinctive smell to us. A dog does not smell a hamburger. It smells the meat, the lettuce, the tomatoe, the onion, the mustard, and the bread. All individualy. A deer has over 100 more receptors than a dog. Cover scents will not cover your scent. Deer will just smell your scent and the cover scent.

The best approach is to enter your stand from downwind. Not walk through your hunting area. And have your stand downwind from your target. Of course individual deer and a deer herd can react differently to human scent for a multitude of reasons. Extreme examples to that would be heavily pressured and poached deer on a crowded public hunting area vs a private ranch where deer are hand fed daily. Deer in those two examples are going to react to human scent very differently.

I don't worry about scent control that much these days other than choosing a stand location that places me downwind. The lease i am on at this moment I have three stand locations, each with more than one stand to choose from for different wind directions and weather.

I was a fanatical bow hunter for years before I owned a deer rifle. I was taking scent control to extremes. Brushing my teeth with baking g soda. Taking chlorophyll tablets. Washing my cloths in unscented soap. Wearing hip boots on my walk to put up treestands. I tried all kinds of cover scents.

I had some phone conversations a well known deer/wildlife biologist. The way he explained it to me. We humans smell a hamburger. It has a distinctive smell to us. A dog does not smell a hamburger. It smells the meat, the lettuce, the tomatoe, the onion, the mustard, and the bread. All individualy. A deer has over 100 more receptors than a dog. Cover scents will not cover your scent. Deer will just smell your scent and the cover scent.

The best approach is to enter your stand from downwind. Not walk through your hunting area. And have your stand downwind from your target. Of course individual deer and a deer herd can react differently to human scent for a multitude of reasons. Extreme examples to that would be heavily pressured and poached deer on a crowded public hunting area vs a private ranch where deer are hand fed daily. Deer in those two examples are going to react to human scent very differently.

I don't worry about scent control that much these days other than choosing a stand location that places me downwind. The lease i am on at this moment I have three stand locations, each with more than one stand to choose from for different wind directions and weather.