Scent Lok Clothing

[fabsroman]

I was at Dick's today picking up some ammo and saw that they were having a sale on hunting clothing. I checked everything out and was interested in a 4 in 1 parka and bibs with a particular camo pattern, but they didn't have my size.

So, I continued looking around and ran into some Scent Lok and Un Scent clothing. The stuff was marked down from $120 per item to $60 per item. I almost bit the bullet and spent the money $120 for the entire system. However, the shirt had a tag on it with a scratch and sniff underneath some of the scent lok material. It read "Scratch the dot underneath, cover it with the Scent Lok material, and see how well it works." I tried it out and I could still smell the scratch and sniff scent, albeit a lot more faintly. Then I thought that maybe the scent I was smelling was on my thumb so I scratched it again and held the material down with my left hand. I could still smell the scratch and sniff scent. I am not too convinced that this Scent Lok or Un Scent stuff works. If I can smell that scent through the fabric, I am sure that a deer could too, especially if I have been on stand for several hours.

With all the gimmicks out there, I am very leery about buying things.

[L. Cooper]

There is a vast array of "stuff" that hunters buy out of the same logical fallacies that create most superstitions. My favorites as far as "least rational devices" go are deer whistles on vehicles, game finders, and scent lock clothing.

If drug dogs can find drugs in sacks of coffee, no plastic bag is going to cover a human's scent, especially if it isn't even sealed up.

[fabsroman]

That is some good rationale. If scent lok works well enough to fool a deer about a human's scent, you would think the drug trafficers would use the stuff to hide the drugs in (i.e., charcoal lined bags full of drugs). Very good point.

I know a dog can smell 100 times better than a human. How does a deer's nose compare to that of a dog?

[L. Cooper]

I'm not aware of any studies comparing the power of the sense of smell of a deer to that of a dog. Most experts believe it to be very similar to that of dogs. Like dogs, deer are oalfactory animals. Humans are visual, dogs and deer use smell as the primary sense.

Studies show that while some aspects of a dog's sense of smell are at least 100 times more acute than humans, the detection of some other chemicals in the air is more than a million times more acute than humans.

It is very difficult for us to understand what it must be like to walk around perceiving the world like that. Imagine knowing who walked over your lawn 36 hours ago by simply sniffing a couple of times. Imagine being able to find avalanche victims burried under many feet of snow by just walking over the area and sniffing.

Imagine how stupid it is for someone to think he could hide from such a nose by putting on a plastic suit.

[fabsroman]

One would think that these animals would be able to smell the clothing/plastic out in the woods and know that something is amiss.

I think the only reason we are able to kill some of these deer is because the wind is in our favor, or in my case, they live so close to people that they don't really care if they smell a person. I have been able to hit deer with snowballs at 20 yards in my parents' front lawn.

[L. Cooper]

I've shot lots of deer doing "stupid" things. I think they get distracted just like humans, and don't pay enough attention to that nose at times. Just think about how distracted bucks get when they are thinking about sex. Dumb as any human adolescent!

Deer have incredible senses of smell and hearing, but they have social lives too, and between distractions and just making mistakes, we hunters can often connect in spite of our inferior senses.

We must also remember, that our sense of sight would be as astonishing to deer as their sense of smell is to us. "What??? You can see colors???"

If we hunt in ways that maximize our sight advantage, we can sometimes overcome their hearing, smell, and speed. Sometimes we can use our brains to deliberately manage our scent "shadow" to avoid being detected. And sometimes we get lucky and they are just not paying proper attention, or are, as you suggested, just too familiar and bored with another human scent.

I don't think a "scentlock" suit will help much, however, except to put money in someone's pocket.

[larryours]

Pay attention to wind direction, keep the sun at your back, the wind in your face, and wash your hunting clothes in good ole'
baking soda

[Jack]

Worth remembering, too, that deer undoubtedly smell many things that they cannot identify.
Aromas don't have labels on them saying "this is what the new Scent Lok clothing smells like"
I suspect, many times, deer pick up a scent, but don't know what it is... may make them curious, or wary. I doubt they automatically flee when they pick up a new scent.
And I agree that deer that live in an environment close to humans don't necessarily panic when they smell something they can associate with humans- if they did, they'd never set foot in a cultivated field.

[wages]

I've been wearing scent lok for several years now. Here's my take on it.

I spend most of my time in the woods bowhunting. This past season alone I can think of eight deer that I had come within 10 ft of me, one paid the price, the rest I didn't take. Of those there were two occurances where does walked 3 feet from me while I was hunting on the ground, as well as a Coyote that trotted by within 10 yrds of me while I was on the ground.

Can I say that scent lok is the reason I can get in close to the critters? Well, no I can't. I put a lot of energy in to scent control, I use unscented deoderant, shampoo, and soap from Sept. to Dec. And I don't mean just when I go out to hunt, I mean all the time, everyday through out hunting season. I pay attention to wind but I won't let it keep me off a stand if I think everything else is right. I let a lot of deer walk by through out the season, and I watch how they react. That's just how I like to hunt.

Now here's the kicker. With all of that said, ocasionally I still get busted. It happened once this year. Scent lok and all, I had one hit that invisible wall down wind of me and just lock up. She gave every indication that she smelled me. How? I can't say, that's deer hunting.

[Skyline]

I've had a lot of hunters wearing scent lok in the last few years. I do not think it is the end all be all.............as wages indicated you still need to practice scent control in a lot of other ways.

From my own observations of it I think that the scent lok type clothing minimizes the intensity of the human odor, but certainly doesn't do away with it.

But then there are the guys that wear all of this stuff and then sit in their treestand smoking a cigarette.............no I am not kidding.

[ribsplitter]

I recently went on a shed hunting trip to a farm in southern Illinois and encountered a fellow hunter with a similar story. During a bow hunt last year, my friend had a guy staying in the same camp as him that apparently didn't care about his scent or anyone elses either. Every night this "hunter" would make his rounds at the local bars bringing home the smell of booze and cigarettes back to contaminate the entire camp. One night, this fool coated himself with aftershave and proceded to remove my friends scent lok clothing from a designated laundry dryer and had the stones to bring it to his room. To top it off this idiot came in late the next morning with a cigarette glowing on the way to his stand that he had strategically positioned within 75 yards of my friend. Needless to say, he was not invited back this year. It just goes to show you that, no matter where you are, idiots follow.