Human scent on feeders

[MarkL]

This was youth hunting weekend in TX, so I went hunting with my youth and the .357 Mag carbine he uses. We got to the stand at about 3:30 Saturday afternoon and checked the feeder to make sure it still had corn and tested the timer, then set up in the stand.

We observed a single spike approach the feeder. It wandered around the area for a minute, then wandered off without eating any corn, or even getting close enough to do so.

A little while later, a group of three deer approached the feeder but never got closer than 10 yards before turning away.

Could the deer have been spooked by residual human scent left on/around the feeder?

[L. Cooper]

Maybe.

But deer get used to the presense of human odor very quickly and will basically ignore it. Deer have no problem eating in our garden (lots of human smell in town here and in our garden too) so I suspect there was something else they didn't like about the feed or the feeder.

I think it depends much more on what they are used to - what they think is "normal" - than on any specific odor.