What human scent do deer smell?

[Tap]

Tap, I'd love to hear what you do to reduce your breath odor.

Okay here goes. Another long post. Sorry about that.
The vast majority of this whole odor thing, and how deer may react is just plain not known. Humans still have little clue about the the physics of how critters actually sort out odors and scents in their environment. We also don't know much about how a lot of odors are produced. Heck, it's only been the last few years that we've discovered that dogs can detect cancer. We've always been told since we were kids that dogs can smell fear on us. That may very well be true. There's a lot of this stuff that we just don't know.
Add to that lack of knowledge, we also can't possibly know how a deer will react when they encounter different odors. How could we predict what a deer will do when it smells us or chemical substances related to humans? Deer have proven to us that they make conscious decisions all the time. They certainly smell a logging operation, right? We're in there sweating, farting, spitting, and producing all kinds of bacterial odors in addition to chemical odors. Yet deer are actually attracted to logging sites. Those deer make the decision that those odors are not a threat. How can we predict what goes through a deers mind? We can't.There are certain aspects that keeps hunting a mystery and I like that.
Then, on top of all that, we still don't fully have a handle on climate conditions and how wind and humidity disperse our odors.

What I do know is that I have several limitations in my hunts.
#1...Time; I simply don't have a lot of free time to hunt during that short, magical time of the rut. My days in the stand are limited.
#2...Space; I don't have the luxury of owning hundreds of acres. It's a big deal to me when I educate the few mature bucks that I get a chance to hunt. I hate getting winded!
#3...Fickle winds; I've never hunted flatland. The places I do hunt have torturous wind patterns and they change throughout the day. Milkweed has proven to me that air flow is incredibly complex so we can't always say for certain if a deer really winded us or to what level they did wind us. I believe they detect us a lot more often that we realize but they don't always convey that to us. I think sometimes they smell us but, for whatever the reason, they accept it. Maybe they think we are farther away? Once again, we simply don't know for sure.
#4 I highly suspect that the most alarming human odors to deer are bacterial, not the man-made chemical odors that are incidental odors in most every breath a deer take in our modern society.

So, while there's a lot I don't know about what a deer will do, I do know that there are some things that I can do to reduce (not completely eliminate) the odds of being busted. Why take chances when it may be years in between having legitimate chances of killing a mature buck? In 47 years of hunting I laid eyes on the same 200" buck 5 times. I believe, with a little better odor control, I may have gotten him to walk through my shooting lane. I've decided back then that taking liberties and making assumptions with odor reduction isn't worth it.

And I believe mouth odor is our odor that deer detect the most. So here's my routine...
Thoroughly brush teeth before every hunt of course but the tongue should be brushed, too. Get a new toothbrush before the season. A new brush cleans better. I also schedule dental cleanings as close before the season as my insurance will allow.
I haven't done the brush with baking soda route but I guess it wouldn't hurt. Regular toothpaste is made to clean the mouth, right? I don't worry about the mint smell. There's wild mint growing in my area anyway, plus, as I said earlier, I'm not sure those types of odors are what spooks deer...bacterial odors are.
Rinse mouth with peroxide, spit but don't rinse with water yet.
Then floss. I believe that flossing will help work the peroxide down into the gums where plaque hides and creates bacteria.
After flossing (while there's still peroxide residue in my mouth) I run one of these around the gum line... https://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/st...sdDx71VKQjrkqfyX91h97Tm0MnMbXq4IaAu0LEALw_wcB
Even after bushing and flossing, It's surprising how often we mis plaque below the gum line and that gizmo gets whatever I missed.
Then I rinse with Smart Mouth 12 hour mouthwash. I think the stuff works better than Scope or whatever.
There...clean, mouth with minimal odor. But It won't last for the entire day's hunt.
That's where apples shine.
I learned a long time ago, back in my teenage years during that 1970's culture, just how well an apple deodorizes "certain" smokey type smells that may or may not have somehow gotten on the fingers (if you catch my drift). Rub an apple core on that smell and it was gone.
Apples are incredibly effective at neutralizing odors. I didn't say apples cover odor, apples eliminate them.
So I'll always have a few apples in my pocket during the hunt. They're not only my lunch, but they're also breath cleanser. If I have a deer working it's way downwind (as shown by milkweed floaters) I'll take an extra bite of apple and leave it in my mouth like a chew. I believe it helps destroy breath odor. I drink a ton of apple cider during the season and I started carrying a thermos of hot cider during cold days. It helps warm me and it freshens breath all the way down to the belly.
So, that's my breath routine.
I also believe chlorophyl helps.
There is one other thing that I just read about that may be worth a try.
My new ozone unit says that rinsing with ozonated water destroys mouth bacteria. I might treat my stand water with O3 and take a flush a few time during every sit.
I don't know if any or all of this stuff is worth the effort, but I'm not taking chances with a critter that makes conscious decisions on whether or not to spook and he does so in wind conditions that I may be able to predict but I certainly can't control.

 

[Jeff H]

Good info Tap. Thanks for taking the time to share. Funny, I have one stand that I can remember not being able to finish my apple several times due to deer encroaching on me....and I thought it was just coincidence!

 

[Chainsaw]

Once while eating an apple in a stand about 12 ft. high, I dropped the apple by mistake while only half eaten and within a couple of minutes a buck fawn came in and ate it right at the base of my tree. I just figured wow, that deer is not afraid of people much. He finished the apple quickly and then just wandered off.

 

[dogghr]

I'm thinking Tap you must be your dentist's fav patient. That is clean. Lol I won't argue about the H202 and apple reducing mouth odors. I just can't accept that it truly removes causitive factors. The mouth is full of bacteria both good and bad and without them it is an unhealthy environment. In addition, this is assuming that there is no bacteria or tissue issues down the throat or airway or nasal passages. I'm not saying it doesn't work well for you, but I think it is more mind over the actual matter. We have constant odors coming from all pores, anus, urethra , and of course the food and air passages. Even hair produces oils and proteins that emit odor. It is simply impossible to negate those producers. Reduce? Perhaps. But odor is present no matter what we do and it is the perceived threat by a prey as to whether they are in danger or not. Just my opinion.

 

[Tap]

I'm thinking Tap you must be your dentist's fav patient. That is clean. Lol I won't argue about the H202 and apple reducing mouth odors. I just can't accept that it truly removes causitive factors. The mouth is full of bacteria both good and bad and without them it is an unhealthy environment. In addition, this is assuming that there is no bacteria or tissue issues down the throat or airway or nasal passages. I'm not saying it doesn't work well for you, but I think it is more mind over the actual matter. We have constant odors coming from all pores, anus, urethra , and of course the food and air passages. Even hair produces oils and proteins that emit odor. It is simply impossible to negate those producers. Reduce? Perhaps. But odor is present no matter what we do and it is the perceived threat by a prey as to whether they are in danger or not. Just my opinion.

I don't disagree at all with any of that.
As far as my whole regimen goes, I'm not doing it year-round. It's only for days just before and during the hunt so I doubt it's harmful and I know that it's not a grueling routine. It takes me probably 5-10 minutes to clean my mouth every morning. It's no big deal.
I completely agree that we constantly produce odors. I'm working to reduce them to the point where it may let me get that shot that's not easy to come by. If a deer doesn't spook for an extra 30 seconds, I might get the shot. I also believe that odor reduction helps to keep stands fresh longer. But there's more to odor reduction than just personal hygiene. Gear handling, stand access, wind choices all come into play.
I also agree that a lot of this may be mind over matter. But as I said earlier, we don't really know what goes through a deer's mind when he inevitably smells us. I'm hoping he will accept my odor long enough to slip an arrow in him. Or that doe that has THE buck following her decides to continue on past me without spooking. It was the doe that barely winded me and cost me the chance at a shot at the 200" buck.
Doing this stuff gives me a more positive state of mind in the stand which leads me to stay put longer. Having a positive attitude goes a long way towards tagging a mature deer.

 

[Ozarks-Bowhunter]

I remember years ago I would actually take peroxide to the stand with me on all day hunts to rinse my mouth after eating my lunch on stand. One time I had just finished rinsing and spit the peroxide on the ground right at the base of my tree when I noticed a buck heading my way. He went directly to where I had spit and licked the leaves for at least 5 minutes.

Sometimes I am amazed at what deer will and will not react to. I have a enclosed box blind that I hunt often. I walk down a two track road along the food plot to get to it. Usually when I hunt in this box blind I use no odor control at all as it is air tight. Most times I wear the same clothes I've been working in and sometimes I wear the same clothes for several days as I am just working around the house and property. I sometimes wear my leather work boots that has been in some pretty bad stuff. I work in oil refineries and I'm sure those boots has some bad smells impregnated in them. In 5 or 6 years of hunting this blind I have not once had a deer spook when crossing my entry trail that I have seen. It is a very active area and deer are there every day. Mature does and bucks pay it no attention.

 

[OkieKubota]

I believe that some hunters emit more odor than others so they have better "Luck" than other hunters. Years ago I hunted on a military base where hunters were assigned their area to hunt, and if a deer was harvested the hunter's name and deer's sex and weight were listed on the board. Every day of the season, dozens of hunters left the game station to hunt, and maybe one deer would be harvested, maybe none. The limit was 5 deer per season/2 deer per day! There was one hunter who almost always got his deer, often out hunting all the other hunters combined. I believe there was something about that hunter either not emitting odor or emitting odor that might even attract deer.

My wife is one of these people...either deer are attracted to her scent or they simply disregard it. She tells me of her hunts and rarely is there any word of a deer spooking or winding her and the last 2 bucks she has killed which were both giant mature bucks were directly downwind of her...

 

[Keith Nehrke]

No matter how much you try to control your scent, I think we all agree that it's best to play the wind, just to be safe. And there's always somebody who's going to stink to high heavens and still shoot a deer. But for the most part, minimizing scent is just smart.

I made an interesting observation in the stand yesterday. My hunting clothes are treated with ozone in the back of my cab, as mentioned previously. I had a mature doe and three buttons downwind of me after passing under the stand. The buttons were oblivious, of course. But the mature doe cut my trail and immediately knew something wasn't kosher. She sniffed the ground and low shrubs, looked around, in fact looked straight at me from ten yards. But she didn't spook and she went out, downwind, on the trail I'd walked in. I'm guessing that either my boots weren't as clean as they should have been (ie, never wear hunting boots at a gas station) or she was reacting to the Evercalm that I'd applied earlier. The take home for me is that you can't fool a mature whitetail forever, but you can trick its nose long enough to better your chances. Ozone has become part of the arsenal. And my hunting Muck boots are getting washed and sprayed tonight.

 

[Tap]

Ozone has become part of the arsenal. And my hunting Muck boots are getting washed and sprayed tonight.

There's certainly nothing wrong with washing boots inside and out, and spraying with scent killer can't hurt.
That was my routine for years and I did okay when it came to deer not smelling where I walked. Sometimes they busted me but most of the time they didn't.
What I do now with my boots is to treat them with ozone. I put them in a Rubbermade tub and stick the O3 hose inside the boot. The boot gets deodorized inside and out.
This is working really well for me. Deer cross my trail and seldom even lower their nose. It's actually opened up some new stand opportunities because now I'm not as concerned about crossing deer trails. I used to rightfully avoid crossing trails because deer routinely busted me before I washed boots and occasionally busted me after I started washing them inside and out. With O3 they rarely show any concern where I walked.
Weather does have some impact. On dry, breezy days the ground retains odor much less than on calm, damp days.


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[OkieKubota]

Ozone will destroy rubber in fairly short order...

 

[Tap]

Ozone will destroy rubber in fairly short order...

That's what I hear.
I get 2 or 3 years out of a pair of boots.
I'm willing to accept that limitation as part of the cost of doing business.

BTW,
I hear guys that DON'T use ozone complain that they don't get a whole lot more life out of their boots.

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[Hoseman]

I have been thinking about this for several years and simply believe deer can smell us because we, as humans, have a particular smell that we all give off 24/7. Our sense of smell is not developed enough to detect most of the human odor. Just as we can all be blind folded and have a horse walk up to us and we can put our nose close to the horse's side almost everyone could guess correctly that it is a horse. All horses have a particular, recognizable smell. The difference is that a deer can smell that same scent two hundred yards away if down wind whereas we need to be within a few feet to smell the same scent. We can put our arm to our nose and it doesn't really have a smell to us but to a deer our scent is just as strong as that of a horse and he can also smell us two hundred yards away when down wind.
Of course we should take every precaution we can to eliminate as much of our scent as possible including our body and clothing by washing/bathing with scent free soap and avoid contaminating our clothing and boots with foreign smells such as diesel fuel. And we should take precautions against sweating while walking to our stands and use unscented deodorant as well. IMO, there is nothing we can do to totally eliminate our human odor so the best choice is to always hunt the wind.

 

[Jeff H]

For those using Ozone generators I have heard from a car restoration specialist that they have their best results deodorizing cars when they leave the windows down vs up. I don't know why this is and I do not have an ozone generator but thought I would pass it along. Most here seem to run them in enclosed spaces.
Also as Tap says the weather has a large impact on a deer's ability to smell. I used to hunt rabbits a lot and I can tell you when there was moisture in the air those beagles could smell a rabbit for a half mile but we had some long hard hunts on cold dry days.

 

[Tap]

Also as Tap says the weather has a large impact on a deer's ability to smell. I used to hunt rabbits a lot and I can tell you when there was moisture in the air those beagles could smell a rabbit for a half mile but we had some long hard hunts on cold dry days.

EXACTLY, on the beagle analogy!
We can learn a lot about how deer may detect odors from dogs.
I'm the 1st one to admit that we cannot achieve "odorless". But, odors are not forever (in practical terms). Contact odors, like ground scent or where we touch something, will dissipate in time. It makes logical sense that the fewer, or weaker odor we leave behind, the faster it will be undetectable by deer...maybe minutes or hours for a clean hunter as opposed to days or weeks by a dirty hunter.
Airborne odors expand, dilute, and also dissipate as wind turbulence stirs them around. There's always the core of our scent cone which should be the "hot zone" for detection, and then there is the extreme fringes of that scent cone. A clean hunter will have a smaller or weaker detection zone than a dirty hunter.
Neither hunter is odorless but the clean hunter emits less detectable odor than the other.
And a deer's tolerance for human odor can change from animal to animal, (they do have distinct personalities and moods), day to day (what a certain deer tolerates one day may be not tolerated the next), and condition to condition...humidity, wind speed, thermal direction all have an impact on how detectable our odor is and for how long.
I agree that wind is our best ally (or enemy for that matter). But while we can predict wind trends, we can't 100% depend on the wind not screwing us or what unexpected location a deer will appear.
I'm going to try to be as odor minimal as possible. It can't hurt and ignoring odor can't help.


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[Booner21]

Ozone will destroy rubber in fairly short order...

I think the secret is letting it air out after exposure. When I first started using ozone probably 2005 before it was being used for hunters
I ruined a pile of clothes and a pair of boots the first year because I ran it for hours and kept things closed. I haven't had that problem in years I just air out the clothes for a short time afterward.

I follow almost the same routine as tap just had my dentist appt last week. I also add a carbon mask like this only black to help keep mouth odors at bay.

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[The Bruce]

I've been using smoke vs ozone. Smoke is free. According to what I have read the carbolic acids in smoke kill the bacteria that causes human odor. I still shower before a hunt in scent free soap and dress in the woods instead of home. I still hunt the wind. I've had enough instances where deer should have winded me and didn't to believe that it works. I think they still smell the human scent, but the smoke kills enough of it that it's not alarming to them.
I also carry a smoker with me in the woods. I made one that is best described as a battry operated bee smoker. The smoke goes where my scent goes.

Using a smoker to smoke my clothes and body before every hunt has literally revolutionized hunting for me. My farm is a very steep ridge in ky and while I would religiously wash and spray down etc, the deer would wind me regularly from 50 yards away and not even visible. The first sign of a deer being close was hearing him or her blow through the woods. It was so frustrating. So I got to studying. To use the wind you have to sit on the top side of the leeward side of the hill. I did that and had some success but still got busted. So I read some more and started smoking up before every hunt. Seeing the results (deer come in from down wind nose up, smell and keep right on coming!!!). Well with this new way of hunting I'm no longer hunting the leeward side of the hill, my best stand is on the point of the ridge where worlds collide. It's awesome. Nearly every trail on the ridge from both sides meet there...and the wind swirls like crazy but the deer keep coming. I have yet to get blown out of the woods smoking up. It's a bit of a pain to do and takes some time, but it's well worth the effort.

 

[Keith Nehrke]

There's a telling article from Field and Stream online where a police dog trained to detect drugs is put to the test by having to identify which box a guy is hiding inside. It normally takes the dog 14 seconds. If the guy uses classic scent control methods, it takes the dog 19 seconds. If the guy does an ozone treatment, it takes 42 seconds. That's a telling result to me. You can't fool their nose forever, but you might be able to fool it long enough to make a shot possible. Every little advantage helps.

 

[George]

They smell bacteria.

G

 

[Tap]

They smell bacteria.

G

Yes, but they are constantly bombarded with bacteria. What is it about the strains of bacteria that grow on humans versus the bacteria in the soil or a squirrel's butt that doesn't alarm them? These are some pretty amazing critters that we chase. They even differentiate bacteria from individual deer to deer or person to person. I can't begin to fathom just how incredible their sense of smell really is.

 

[herdman]

Using a smoker to smoke my clothes and body before every hunt has literally revolutionized hunting for me. My farm is a very steep ridge in ky and while I would religiously wash and spray down etc, the deer would wind me regularly from 50 yards away and not even visible. The first sign of a deer being close was hearing him or her blow through the woods. It was so frustrating. So I got to studying. To use the wind you have to sit on the top side of the leeward side of the hill. I did that and had some success but still got busted. So I read some more and started smoking up before every hunt. Seeing the results (deer come in from down wind nose up, smell and keep right on coming!!!). Well with this new way of hunting I'm no longer hunting the leeward side of the hill, my best stand is on the point of the ridge where worlds collide. It's awesome. Nearly every trail on the ridge from both sides meet there...and the wind swirls like crazy but the deer keep coming. I have yet to get blown out of the woods smoking up. It's a bit of a pain to do and takes some time, but it's well worth the effort.

Can you please share your method of doing this? I hunt in southern WV and Eastern KY. As you said, very mountainous, swirling winds. Nothing I do works. I will try anything and this does make sense. I bet the Natives used to smell like smoke a lot.