Making a quiet entrance into the woods

[MUP]

One aspect of "entrance route" work I do believe makes a BIG difference, is mowing down tall grasses or briers/brush. Anything your clothing/scent can rub against is a bad idea. Although I'm very careful about keeping my boots clean, and I don't see deer catching my boot scent, I HAVE seen deer react very negatively to any grass or brush my clothes touched as I walked to my stand.

Well, you obviously didn't spray down with a quart of the latest and greatest scent killer, then, did ya?

 

[BSK]

One aspect of "entrance route" work I do believe makes a BIG difference, is mowing down tall grasses or briers/brush. Anything your clothing/scent can rub against is a bad idea. Although I'm very careful about keeping my boots clean, and I don't see deer catching my boot scent, I HAVE seen deer react very negatively to any grass or brush my clothes touched as I walked to my stand.

Well, you obviously didn't spray down with a quart of the latest and greatest scent killer, then, did ya?

Actually, I always do, but that just goes to prove you can reduce your scent, but you can NEVER eliminate your scent.

 

[catman529]

On them same subject and 100% serious. I have seen absolutely no difference in deer sightings from stands with clean paths to them and stands that you have to fight a thicket and briars to get to.

I think a lot of that depends on what type of a set-up you are hunting. If you are hunting close to a bedding area, I suspect trying to be ultra-quiet, because the deer literally are close enough to hear you as you enter your stand, would make a difference. However, if you are hunting a bottleneck, where deer are traveling from some distance before reaching your stand, it wouldn't have mattered if you entered the stand playing in a brass band.

One aspect of "entrance route" work I do believe makes a BIG difference, is mowing down tall grasses or briers/brush. Anything your clothing/scent can rub against is a bad idea. Although I'm very careful about keeping my boots clean, and I don't see deer catching my boot scent, I HAVE seen deer react very negatively to any grass or brush my clothes touched as I walked to my stand.

this is what I did... took a weed eater and machete to the briars, goldenrod, grass and other vegetation in the thicket for the last 75 yards or so of the trail in to the natural blind. It's all dense growth in there so I wanted a noise-free, low scent trail into the blind. Deer bed nearby all the time, and that's why I wanted to make a quiet entrance. Now the tough part will be getting a shot off at close range from the blind.

 

[MUP]

One aspect of "entrance route" work I do believe makes a BIG difference, is mowing down tall grasses or briers/brush. Anything your clothing/scent can rub against is a bad idea. Although I'm very careful about keeping my boots clean, and I don't see deer catching my boot scent, I HAVE seen deer react very negatively to any grass or brush my clothes touched as I walked to my stand.

Well, you obviously didn't spray down with a quart of the latest and greatest scent killer, then, did ya?

Actually, I always do, but that just goes to prove you can reduce your scent, but you can NEVER eliminate your scent.

I posted that comment b/c I thought you didn't use scent eliminating sprays actually. I don't use them at all. My thinking is that when I spray something on my clothing, that has been hanging outside in the fresh air for a few days, the deer will smell it, and conversely, that clothing, with no added scents, other than scent free detergent(that has, in theory, been aired out by the time outside), will be least able to be detected by the deer. I make a concerted effort to have clean clothes dried and in enclosed plastic "scent-free" bags for every time I hit the woods, underwear and all.

 

[BSK]

MUP,

I go to great lengths to reduce my scent. I take a full shower before every hunt, washing my entire body and hair with scent reducing soaps. All clothes are washed in scent-reducing soaps, air dried, and then stored in air-tight containers, and outer layers sprayed with scent-reducing products. Yet we humans, with our nearly non-existent sense of smell, simply can't comprehend what other animals can smell. They can easily smell individual fibers from our clothing, a single hair from any part of our body, or just a few dead skin cells invisible to our eyes.

Now I believe I have found the tricks to keeping my boot-prints from spooking deer (I haven't seen a deer react negatively to my walking trial in years), but I sure as heck have seen deer freak out when they sniff grass or brush my pants leg brushed against.

 

[MUP]

I do mostly the same Bryan, but I absolutely believe that, if I can smell the scent reducing sprays, the deer most certainly can. Those sprays, at least the ones I've had occasion to smell up to a few years ago, definitely had an odor of their own. And, that is surely foreign to the naturally occuring woods/nature scents I would tend to believe. Anyway, if it works for anyone, then who am I to doubt its effectiveness? . I've just had my own successful, by my standards, encounters with deer without the sprays, while using the scent free soaps, detergents, and deodorants you mentioned...just not the scent eliminating sprays.

 

[BSK]

MUP,

I use the same scent reducing sprays on the bottom of my boots, and I'm having no problem with deer smelling my tracks. That suggests to me that the sprays don't leave an odor deer are reacting to.

 

[MUP]

Cool. When the deer reacted to your clothing that had brushed up against the grass, had you used spray then, or had your clothing just been washed scent free and air dried?

 

[MUP]

Also, I have a theory that what the deer smell(providing we have showered scent-free and washed clothing accordingly) is actually the disturbed freshened scent of the ground, or grass, that we have brushed up against or stepped on, instead of the actual scent from the boots or clothing. Have you considered this or maybe tested this theory? I've also had deer cross my trail and not react in the least, but have had them stop and check it out too. Since I've started only wearing my boots just before I head into the woods, I can't recall any reaction of a deer cutting my trail I don't think tho.

 

[JCDEERMAN]

Throughout the last 3 years, I have been on a couple elk and antelope trips out west. In doing so, I have bought 2 pairs of boots - a warm weather hiking boot and a cold weather boot. I have made a commitment to only wear these boots in the woods and nowhere else. I have not had a deer pick up my trail since starting this

 

[BowGuy84]

I use a boat as much as possible. Opening weekend last year I hunted 87 feet from it and killed a deer 30 minutes after sunrise.

 

[DirtyBear0311]

I would think that time of day would also play into how much stealth is needed to get to a stand. If you are going in before first light to a bottle-neck or even a bedding area and you figure that the deer are out and about feeding, noise would be less of a concern unless you are hunting near these feeding areas. On the other hand, if you are traveling to your spot in the afternoon then the situations would probably be reversed since you would expect the deer to be mostly bedded until close to evening when they move to food.

 

[BSK]

Also, I have a theory that what the deer smell(providing we have showered scent-free and washed clothing accordingly) is actually the disturbed freshened scent of the ground, or grass, that we have brushed up against or stepped on, instead of the actual scent from the boots or clothing. Have you considered this or maybe tested this theory?

Anything is possible.

But an experience I had years ago really stuck in my head and made me realize how critical it is to mow down tall grasses, weeds, and brush along any entrance trail. I had one particular stand way back on a long ridge, and the easiest route to reach the stand was to walk the old log-skidder road that ran down the crest of the ridge (in fact, that road was the major deer trail for deer walking up and down the ridge). Over time, sunlight on that road had allowed it to fill in with broomsedge and other tall grasses, which would stand dead all winter in the roadbed. One morning during MZ season, I walked down the old road to my stand and set-up looking back up the road the way I had come. Just before sunrise, a very nice 3 1/2 year-old 10-point came walking up and over the ridge. I raised my MZ, ready to shoot as the buck crossed the road, but just as he reached the road he sniffed the mid-thigh high grass I had walked through. He reacted like he had touched and electric fence. He jumped back several feet, immediately went on super-high alert, and then very, very slowly stepped forward, stretched his neck out and started sniffing each blade of grass my pants had brushed against. He must have spent 3 or 4 minutes sniffing up and down the grass along the trail. Eventually he hunkered down and backed away (he literally slunk backwards, low to the ground like a scolded dog) from the road and out of sight.

Since that experience, we always mow all of our old roads and trails with at least a pull-behind ATV brush mower just before the season, generally in late September, around the end of the weed and grass growing season. I don't want anything touching my pants as I walk to the stand.

I've also had deer cross my trail and not react in the least, but have had them stop and check it out too. Since I've started only wearing my boots just before I head into the woods, I can't recall any reaction of a deer cutting my trail I don't think tho.

Ever since I started wearing my hunting boots ONLY in the woods (not even on an ATV or in my truck), and hosing them down with scent-reducing sprays almost daily, I have not observed a deer noticing my boot prints. Before I started doing that--even when I wore rubber boots--I watched deer literally trail me right to my stand, sniffing every individual boot print.