bioactive wrote:I would expect a well trained dog to find a hunter no matter how good his scent control is. It makes no sense to compare dogs to deer because they are trained/conditioned differently.
A dog is trained to follow even the most faint odor to its source.
A deer in farm country smells humans 24/7/365. He is conditioned to avoid close interactions with humans. Deer on one of my farms are going to smell human scent from the nearby houses all the time. What he is alert for is when that scent no longer seems to be "normal" in terms of intensity, distance, etc. When he feels the scent is encroaching on his territory, he will slink away. He could easily follow even the most minute scent to it's source, just like a dog does, but he is conditioned to do the opposite.
Now, if I can reduce my scent 10-fold, the deer may feel I am 10X further away than I really am. I cannot tell you how often they sense me, stare off past my stand into the distance, and then casually move on, thinking I am 200 yards away rather than 20 yards away.
Your right. A dog is not like a deer. A deer has to survive based on his nose. A dog just gets a treat if he does what he was trained to do... Deer smell much better than dogs and there survival depends on there nose. Nope, a deer probably can't be trained to track anybody, but if a dog can smell the scent to track someone down you can bet the farm a deer can smell it.