[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.