Tips for deer attractants and cover scents

[shooter43]

Anybody have any good attractants and cover scents for deer? I'd like to try some out this season and would like to know if any of you have any home made recipes you use?

[Capt Rick Hiott]

I see you are in Fla.

On the way to your stand, grab a hand full of green pine needles, crush them up and rub the sent all over you. Ive got a buddy that does this and has never been busted!

[Brian Pfleuger]

Smoke.

Get a bee smoker, cedar chips, smoke your hunting gear.

I set mine up in a ground blind and let it smoke up everything.

Kills bacteria, eliminates and covers odor.

Deer are used to and not afraid of smoke.

[farmerboy]

+1 on Brian's and also spray bottle with natural vanilla, spray on your boots before walking to stand. Deer and hogs either won't pay attention or they come to you.

[Kreyzhorse]

On the way to your stand, grab a hand full of green pine needles, crush them up and rub the sent all over you. Ive got a buddy that does this and has never been busted!

+1. I grab some pine needles, leaves, grass and even a little dirt and rub it over my jacket and bibs.

I also leave my hunting clothes outside whenever possible to get that outside smell on them.

Brian's smoker idea is a great idea too.

I'd guess those a combo of the above tactics work as well as any thing else you could buy.

[jwrowland77]

I use scent away all over everything to include using the deodorant. I also hang a Tinks scent bomb in each corner of my box stand, that way no matter which way the wind blows, it covers my scent up.

[warbirdlover]

I've had no luck with any of the scents nor scentlok systems. I see more deer when I smoke.

That stuff is big business now. Just watch the wind direction.

[arch308]

I drive my ATV to my stand and park it in a brush pile I set up to hide it. I sit in my stand and don't bother to look downwind much. Over the years I have wasted alot of money on all the scent products and not found much use for them.
IMO it is better and more enjoyable to use hunting skills and your brain, especially when I get down on the ground for some still hunting, than to depend on some storebought gimmick. When it's time to take a doe for the freezer I find it more rewardable to get on the ground. Shooting does over a feeder is too easy as I see them almost every time I sit in the stand.
Nice mature bucks are another matter!

[big al hunter]

Hunt into the wind, no worries

[shortwave]

Have used Trails Blend on a drag rag with some success during pre-rut. Making sure to stop and freshen rag up several times on the way to stand. Especially when I get about 50-60yds. from the stand.

Course, stand placement is always off a well traveled deer trail and I'll take that deer trail into the stand dragging the rag and tie the rag to a twig in front of stand.

It seems to attract does more then bucks and I've had does follow the trail with their noses on the ground right to the rag.

Have also used scent glands cut off of does shot around rut time the same way as well. Keep the glands wrapped tightly in saran wrap and frozen till ready to use. Usually thaw them out the night before the hunt but keep wrapped till I tie them on the twine the next morning.

[rebs]

Do the mineral blocks and salt blocks really attract deer or is it a myth ?

[shortwave]

Deer will feed on the mineral/salt blocks. You will also notice that after the block is gone, the deer will actually eat the dirt as it will have salt mixed with it from the salt run-off that's happened as it has set there.

If you really want to make a block very appetizing and draw deer in, get some molasses and pour on it.

I've not really experienced any more deer feeding on the mineral blocks over the salt blocks and the salt blocks are cheaper and last longer as they don't seem to melt as fast.

[Wild Bill Bucks]

Boy, I wish I had all the money back, I have spent on all the attractants and crap I have bought in my lifetime. I'll bet I could have a real nice paid vacation.

The best thing I have ever found to bring deer into an area, and works about as fast as anything else, is a plain old salt block, in a toe-sack, hanging from a limb, over a flat rock.

When it rains the salt is dripped down onto the rock, and the deer will find it very quickly. You can speed the process by wetting the sack down with a bottle of water, when you place the bag. This will last pretty much all year, because the deer and other wildlife can't get to it, to break it up. They will lick the rock, and after a few years, it will look like a large, smooth bowl, sitting on top of a mushroom of dirt.

This is by far the cheapest, longest lasting, quickest acting, thing you can do.

Just another 2 cents spent

[jimbob86]

For years, the kids and I have gone out and picked up dry leaf-litter and packed our outer layer of hunting clothes in a trash bag full of it a week or 10 days before the season opens ..... where we hunt, the predominate trees are box elder and cottonwood. The cottonwood leaves have a pretty strong smell, even when dry..... we also spray down guns and hands, face, hair, etc. with a scent-killer product. A doe-pee drag on the way in, as well ...... had a young buck come in our back trail, nose to the ground one year....

[jimbob86]

Do the mineral blocks and salt blocks really attract deer or is it a myth ?

In cattle country (SW/SC Nebraska is mixed pasture/row crop ag land) there are more than enough salt/mineral blocks out there for the cattle already- you adding one won't likely bring any deer to you.

Likewise, a food plot in the middle of miles of alfalfa, corn, milo, cane and sunflower fields is kinda silly ...... at harvest time, the grain is piled in mountains on the ground.....

[shortwave]

In cattle country (SW/SC Nebraska is mixed pasture/row crop ag land) there are more than enough salt/mineral blocks out there for the cattle already- you adding one won't likely bring any deer to you.

Good point jimbob86

There are nine natural springs on this property. The water oozing from the ground leave minerals on the topsoil around the springs. The deer love to eat the dirt around those springs. Especially two of them. The soil has more of a white-ish/grey tint around them. The deer keep the dirt around those two stomped down. There's no grass.

Our local extension officer was out here and I asked him about the difference in color of the soil and he explained there was probably a high sulfer/salt content in those two springs. At any rate, the deer love these areas.

What I can say, when placing a salt block in areas such as these is if you can strategically place the lick in a more convenient place for the deer, I.E closer to deers bedding area, on deers route from bedding to feeding areas, then the natural salt/mineral block, the deer will use your placed block as well as the natural blocks.

[Brian Pfleuger]

I love the "hunt the wind and forget everything else" comments.

Anyone who believes that needs to hunt where I hunt. For one thing, in all the years I've hunted, deer almost never come from a predictable direction, except for ONE hunting spot I have. For another, you usually can't count to 10 before the wind changes direction on any given day or any given moment.

I see these hunting shows and they have stands set up for east wind and west wind and I'm thinking, "What do you do? Switch stands every 15 minutes?"

I'd love to find these places where the wind blows from one direction for hours at a time. I'm generally pretty happy if I can keep it in 180 degrees for a few hours.

But, the wind is only half the equation.

I'd also love to hunt these deer that actually follow the wind. Our deer come from almost any direction, any time, except that one spot I hunt, where they almost always come from the east. Every where else, no predicting it.

I have to do SOMETHING for scent control. I agree that the commercial products are mediocre at best but they're better than nothing.

Last year, I saw mentions of smoking your clothes and figured it was worth a try. I seems to work well, I never had a downwind deer spook, that I saw, and I had several deer within a few feet of me downwind that didn't spook.

In addition, I shot by far the biggest buck I've ever taken. The wind was from the west, he came from my South and circled within 20 yards of me directly down wind before I shot him almost due North.

In regards to mineral blocks and salt licks, they work to bring deer to certain points but the deer quit using them about this time of year in my area.They're also illegal to various degrees in many places. Sometimes completely illegal, sometimes only during the season and shortly before.

[shortwave]

Gotta try the 'smoking clothes' thing Brian

Have never heard of that before.

Too, sounds as though you hunt some of the same areas as far as wind goes as I do. When I first started hunting from a tree stand, I tried to play the wind and was wore out by noon the first day climbing up and down trees.

I still try to play the wind but also try to mask my scent.

On very calm days with no wind, this being hilly country, I try to hunt high ground in the morning and bottoms during the evening.

Another scent masking trick that works for me on stand is cutting an apple and placing them around my stand. My hunting clothes are washed in scent free detergent,air dried and hung in the barn.

[Strafer Gott]

If you wash with the soap of invisibility, you will be invisible!
Send 39.95 to" Harry Potter Hunts" P.O. Box... HAH!

Fresh estrus urine, my brothers. Find it with your nose. Sweet and tangy. Roll right in it. All it attracts is other does, but it does work for that. Side effects though. Makes me as randy as an old buck!

[Brian Pfleuger]

You definitely want to still use scent and UV killer detergents but you can't totally fool a deer's nose with scent free detergents. Plus, if you're anything like me, a 300, 400, 500, 800 yard walk with a 23 pound climber and other gear, with various layers of clothing, you're sweating like a pig anyway.

I really think the smoke works. There's a ton of people on ArcheryTalk that do it, which is where I learned it, and there are few if any negative comments.

[shooter43]

Thanks for the info! I have alot of pine where i hunt so i'll try that. Isn't there a special no-scent camo bag you can buy and store your camo in?

[shortwave]

Isn't there a special no-scent camo bag you can buy and store your camo in?

Yep...an unscented plastic trash bag.

Seriously, they do sell special camo storage bags but IMO, they're just another money maker.

[farmerboy]

Yep the stores will sell you anything and if you can't find it there call me and I'll try and sell you something.

[Kreyzhorse]

In regards to mineral blocks and salt licks, they work to bring deer to certain points but the deer quit using them about this time of year in my area.They're also illegal to various degrees in many places. Sometimes completely illegal, sometimes only during the season and shortly before.

Brian is dead on. Salt licks will get them into an area, but check and see when they are legal to use.

[YARDDOG(1)]

If you hunt in a stand, put it as high as you are comfy with & can see the best or ofers best shot. it helps eleminate BO PS Good Luck & Stay Safe
Y/D