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It is notable that the diminutive Pygmies who hunt the small (relatively) jungle elephants will cover themselves in elephant dung before sneaking underneath an elephant and thrusting a spear into its soft underbelly. If covering one's self in dung did not work, I doubt the Pygmies would bother to do it. So, if you really want an effective cover-scent, you know what you must do. But, I suspect that, that method would only work for single men.
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Natives around the world have been documented performing all sorts of things before and after hunting to assure successful hunts, all of which are claimed to work. There are groups of people who won't sleep with their wives before hunting, sometimes for several days.
I don't know about the pygmies covering themselves with feces as all I can find is this fictional story about doing what you describe that includes the pygmies being unrealistically short
http://semanticweb.com/elephant-hunt...company_b32963 , but I know that there are several other groups that hunt elephants without doing that. It would appear that the dung story may be a complete myth.
http://discovermagazine.com/1992/may/aquestionofsize42
There is a less than bright hunter on Youtube that will spray elk urine in his mouth before deer hunting. He claims it works and if it didn't work, he wouldn't do it, right? Of course, you have probably seen the guy. He is the guy that gets the heck beat out of him by a buck while being video'd.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khKrd1RNy2U
The bottom line is that people will do things that they thing will work, even if such things don't necessarily have any empirical basis in reality.