My BIL logs the property I hunt and is on the property everyday either logging or processing the wood. I have considered switching to the same laundry detergent, soap, and deodorant that he uses. I've also considered stepping in some hydraulic oil or chainsaw bar oil before heading out.
Treating clothes before and during season
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Loyalist Dave
Member
So I get hold of a bar of actual lye soap. No scent. If you know somebody who can make soap, that's great, or you can order a plain bar of lye soap online.
I usually wear reproduction clothes from the colonial era, since I'm using a flintlock muzzle loader. A craft knitting lady made me a knit hat in blaze orange and I wear a shoulder "cape" on my hunting shirt that's also orange. I mean I'm out for the experience but I have to comply with orange regulations too....
So what I do is I grate the soap with a cheese grater, about a cup's worth, and I put this into the washing machine set on Small Load, and Hot water. The lye soap dissolves and I let the water sit until the water hits room temp as some of my clothing is wool, and I don't need it to shrink. I soak the clothes with the machine off, for a few hours, then switch the washer to empty itself, and let it refil with cold water. I let the clothes sit for about 30 minutes as a rinse with the machine off...(OH I almost forgot, I check the local tap water before I do any of this to be sure they haven't had a chlorine dump into the system)..., After that I then switch over to spin dry. Out they come and they get hung up to dry. No added scents, and no color brighteners. (I have a friend who does the same thing but he prefers baby clothes detergent without scent or dyes)
After a full day they are dry, and THEN they get hung up outside with a black, scent free garbage bag around them. The bottom of the bag I put in a few trowels of shredded mulch. This gets closed up around the clothes, and gets hung where the sun heats the bag during the day. After about three days, they are ready..., they have a faint "loam" or "dirt" scent that I can smell, and I figure the deer can as well.
When I'm wearing the clothes and get to where I'm hunting, I gently scrape away the twigs and dry leaves to get down to actual soil/loam where I will stand. This helps me keep quiet as I don't do tree stands, and puts some more dirt scent into the air.
NO IDEA if this works, BUT...., so far it doesn't seem to hurt my chances of getting a deer, and it's pretty inexpensive and not complicated.
LD
Kingcreek
Member
Some of you folks go to a lot of work.
I feel like a slacker, just hang mine in the firewood shed during the hunting season. (On hangers from the rafters so the mice less likely to move in.)
I feel like a slacker, just hang mine in the firewood shed during the hunting season. (On hangers from the rafters so the mice less likely to move in.)
daniel craig
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To add to my original post:
Don’t use detergent with optical brighteners.
Don’t use detergent with optical brighteners.
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Garandimal
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Bacon buster
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Hunt the wind. I boiled pine needles and cedar one time and put the juice in a spray bottle. I could definitely smell it when I used it so I know the deer could smell it but I doubt that it covered up my stink. Those critters know how to use their nose and they can still smell human mixed in with the other stuff.
archeryrob
Member
I do also. Without washing clothes after every trip you just build scent in them, even hanging them outside. Extra washing is labor some and wears clothes out faster. Ozone binds to scent molecules and destroys them. If it was run fresh, past day or so, the ozone on your clothes helps bind to new scent you are making. It is weird to see deer downwind from you smelling like What is That smell. Like they smell rain coming but there is no rain.
https://archeryrob.wordpress.com/2019/11/20/hunting-ozone-closet/
Double Naught Spy
Sus Venator
You seem to be intimating that ozoned clothing will act as a deodorant while you hunt. It will be a very short term deodorant. I suggest you unpack your ozoned clothing, dress, and hunt really fast.
So, you might want to recheck your chemistry. Ozone is a unstable. At best, it will remain as ozone for about 4 hours before reverting back to regular 02. That is like when you have your clothes in a bag and are pumping in ozone. That ozone will remain concentrated and isolated from the rest of the atmosphere and will last up to 4 hours. You take the clothes out of the bag and the concentration immediate starts dropping and it starts dropping as the ozone molecules diffuse and react into the surrounding air. The concentration drops as the ozone molecules react with the fresh air.
And just how much ozone do you think your clothing are storing up to fight new scents?
https://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/postsecondary/features/F_Ozone.html#:~:text=Ozone (O3) is a relatively unstable molecule made,transparent (blue) while high levels are opaque (white).
https://airfuji.com/how-long-to-run-ozone-generator-how-long-does-ozone-last-in-air/#:~:text=Ozone will last between 30 minutes to 4,the ozone to break down into normal oxygen.
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Sav .250
Member
For bow hunting.......absolutely. Must admit I don`t do it though. Well, not to the extent some do.
I do the soap thing (body and clothes) .
I`ve paid the price a time or two but it is what it is.
I do the soap thing (body and clothes) .
I`ve paid the price a time or two but it is what it is.
archeryrob
Member
enough that it seems to be better than not having it. The deer seem to smell something when directly downwind, but are confused as to what it is. Sometimes they don;t know what they smell, others they kind of know you're a problem, but its is way better than before. Granted I will give you it does die off quickly and even from the closet the second day after being run it seems to be gone, but they are de-scented to wear again without washing to remove scent.
md7
Member
I grab my clothes from the dryer or closet and hit the woods. Not saying that’s ideal, it’s just what I do.
archeryrob
Member
If the wind is in your favor, it doesn't matter if you do nothing. 
Aletheia
Member
If the wind is in your favor, it doesn't matter if you do nothing.
True. And if the wind is betraying you, it doesn't matter how much you try to do.
EIB0879
Member
I spray my clothes down with permathrine before every season. I use to use scent killer sprays but don't anymore but I wash my clothes in scent free detergent.
Garandimal
member
sugarmaker
Member
I have always wondered what all of the things we use actually smell like to a deer. Sort of like the sliced salmon labels on cat food, we buy according to our perception without knowing what the animal perceives. If it helps get someone in the woods, fine. If it adds to a deer story, great. If it makes someone lazy about the wind, it’s gonna hurt and not help. Working the wind alone or in a group is a skill that takes time to develop.
At best these things will limit the range game can smell you. Instead of smelling you 100 yards out, they may have to get within 50 yards before they detect your smell.
An animals sense of smell is so much better than ours that it is hard to imagine. I volunteer with a SAR team and have worked and trained with some dog handlers over the years. Much of what we do is remains recovery. I've seen a dog alert to a single bone, buried 2' underground from a guy who died 2 years earlier. We've put divers in wet suits and had them wait on the bottom of a 30' lake while our dogs trained in boats. They were able to pinpoint where the diver was under the water.
I worked on a search for a despondent young man who had been missing for 10 days. We gave our bloodhound a scent article from his suitcase right beside where the car was found at a marina . The dog went straight to a wall 50' away. On the other side we found an empty whisky bottle and 6 beer cans. The dog then trailed him to one of the docks and sat down at the end of the pier. This was a 10 day old scent trail mostly on asphalt. The next day that dog, and 2 others alerted from boats where the body was located near the end of the pier where it was recovered.
An animals sense of smell is so much better than ours that it is hard to imagine. I volunteer with a SAR team and have worked and trained with some dog handlers over the years. Much of what we do is remains recovery. I've seen a dog alert to a single bone, buried 2' underground from a guy who died 2 years earlier. We've put divers in wet suits and had them wait on the bottom of a 30' lake while our dogs trained in boats. They were able to pinpoint where the diver was under the water.
I worked on a search for a despondent young man who had been missing for 10 days. We gave our bloodhound a scent article from his suitcase right beside where the car was found at a marina . The dog went straight to a wall 50' away. On the other side we found an empty whisky bottle and 6 beer cans. The dog then trailed him to one of the docks and sat down at the end of the pier. This was a 10 day old scent trail mostly on asphalt. The next day that dog, and 2 others alerted from boats where the body was located near the end of the pier where it was recovered.
Aletheia
Member
jmr40, a very good example of the astonishing power of dog type noses (and quite a few other animals of equal ability). Knowing that such feats are not only possible, but are quite common, and often exploited by humans to their advantages when appropriate, I will repeat my assertion that thinking some special soap will prevent deer (or coyotes, or whatever) from smelling you is just absurd. You cannot escape a deer's sense of smell if the animal is paying attention to it with any of the soaps, sprays, washing processes, sitting in disgusting cover scents, rubbing clothing in spruce boughs, or any of the other wastes of time and money that hunters superstitiously and religiously follow. The only effective thing you can do is keep your scent from getting to them. Stop wasting money and effort (although lots of money gets made by marketers, and that is not completely worthless) and start managing your hunting so your scent is controlled.
I think it is also important to begin to appreciate just how often modern deer and other game animals encounter human scent in their daily activities to the point they tend to ignore it in much the same way we ignore traffic noises. It's just always there, so there is no point in freaking out about it. THAT indifference is a powerful tool for us to use at times, and I'm sure it resulted in several dead deer that I ate because they ignored something they thought was not important. No one can control their scent all the time.
I think it is also important to begin to appreciate just how often modern deer and other game animals encounter human scent in their daily activities to the point they tend to ignore it in much the same way we ignore traffic noises. It's just always there, so there is no point in freaking out about it. THAT indifference is a powerful tool for us to use at times, and I'm sure it resulted in several dead deer that I ate because they ignored something they thought was not important. No one can control their scent all the time.
archeryrob
Member
The only thing I believe in is washing clothes to reduce scent and and Ozone machine to kill scent without washing the clothes to wear them out. Then there is hunting the wind. Deer can still smell me, but the presence of available particulates for them to pick me out has been drastically reduced. You are constantly sweating or shedding skid, so it can't be totally eliminated.
My daughter used to be a fan of those sprays. They portray to smell like "woods" and I can't smell good and told her it doesn't smell like the woods to me. She was hunting over my buddies behind his pond where the deer come through. Maybe a 50 yards walk. She dropped over to hunt and I followed to have a couple beer with my buddy and brought my lab in the Avatar. My girl hit the stone driveway, smelled her car and nose to the ground trailed her right to her stand. That was after she used all that spray, but before we used the ozone unit. My dog ran the hour old trail like it was fresh laid.
They say deer have more nasal receptors than dogs do also.
My daughter used to be a fan of those sprays. They portray to smell like "woods" and I can't smell good and told her it doesn't smell like the woods to me. She was hunting over my buddies behind his pond where the deer come through. Maybe a 50 yards walk. She dropped over to hunt and I followed to have a couple beer with my buddy and brought my lab in the Avatar. My girl hit the stone driveway, smelled her car and nose to the ground trailed her right to her stand. That was after she used all that spray, but before we used the ozone unit. My dog ran the hour old trail like it was fresh laid.
They say deer have more nasal receptors than dogs do also.
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