Chuck Admas

Many bowhunters underestimate an animal’s nose. It has been calculated that a deer can smell 3,000 times better than a human, and I believe it. A big game animal sometimes doubts its ears or eyes, but it never doubts its nose.

Most archers understand the advantage of wearing carbon clothes from ScentBlocker, Scent-Lok, Ca-bela’s, and other companies. Such garments soak up huge amounts of body odor — a real advantage in places where deer are accustomed to sniffing trace amounts of human odor from people in houses, farmers on tractors, and joggers along roadways.

Likewise, serious whitetail hunters know that rutting deer urine can lure animals from long distances. Two keys are using small amounts, and placing urine crosswind from your stand to keep your own odor out of the scent stream. If you overuse genuine urine, deer might smell a rat. A little goes a long way.

In my experience, the most overlooked scent strategy is masking your foot trail to and from a stand. Take a tip from savvy fur trappers and wear all-rubber or scent-impervious boots to provide a total odor barrier between you and the ground. Select a route to your stand that avoids high grass or thick brush, and spray your lower body with scent-eliminating sprays to kill surface scent that might transfer to foliage.

A big game animal can sniff the odor from leather boots or un-doctored clothes like a bird dog sniffs a pheasant — especially in damp conditions. Without precautions, you might be scaring animals you never even see.