Reduced Scent vs. Old Scent

[JakeJD]

Not trying to kick a dead horse, but the recent scent control thread got me to thinking about the concept of reduced (mitigated) scent versus old (aged) scent. From legitimate scientific research, we know that 2-phenylethylamine is a chemical that prey animals associate with predators. Prey animals are born with an innate fear of predators. Lab rats, which were reared in a lab and have never encountered a cat, responded with fear to the smell of a cat. Very interesting:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=12373&start=0

So building off the idea of predator (meat eater) scent, does anyone know about any research or have any experience with how animals are able to age scent? Does it have to do with the oxidation of organic chemicals in the scent / skin cells? Maybe some of the guys who run dogs have an idea how a hound can tell the direction of travel after only taking 2-3 steps in the wrong direction. Absolutely amazing...

Now building on that, how can a deer estimate the distance to an upwind human? Wouldn't have to be by the "age" of the scent and not the concentration of the scent? I just cannot image that a deer's nose will be fooled into thinking that the scent is aged by a reduction in the concentration.

[GRFox]

Not trying to kick a dead horse, but the recent scent control thread got me to thinking about the concept of reduced (mitigated) scent versus old (aged) scent. From legitimate scientific research, we know that 2-phenylethylamine is a chemical that prey animals associate with predators. Prey animals are born with an innate fear of predators. Lab rats, which were reared in a lab and have never encountered a cat, responded with fear to the smell of a cat. Very interesting:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=12373&start=0

So building off the idea of predator (meat eater) scent, does anyone know about any research or have any experience with how animals are able to age scent? Does it have to do with the oxidation of organic chemicals in the scent / skin cells? Maybe some of the guys who run dogs have an idea how a hound can tell the direction of travel after only taking 2-3 steps in the wrong direction. Absolutely amazing...

Now building on that, how can a deer estimate the distance to an upwind human? Wouldn't have to be by the "age" of the scent and not the concentration of the scent? I just cannot image that a deer's nose will be fooled into thinking that the scent is aged by a reduction in the concentration.

I am more willing to think that the reaction deer give to human scent isnt neccesarily caused by the grouping us into the category of predator. I think that they react because the smell a person. I think they react much differently to human scent then to say a coyote.

Deer (or smart deer) seem to be terrified of humans. But they will tolerate quite a bit from coyotes. I have seen a coyote litteraly in a mature does face barking like a dog, and the doe just stood there looking at him and after a few seconds, just turned around and started feeding in the opposite direction. I think that a white tails fear of people is developed over time after bad experience with them and not so much that they ate genetically predisposed to fearing us.

That is pretty incredible about the lab rats reacting to predator scent though. Maybe Im wrong. Would be interesting for someone to do the same study with farm raised deer.

As far as being able to tell the distance off what they are smelling......I truly believe that no matter what you smell like and how bad you smell, I think they can still tell precisely how far you are.

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[jlh42581]

That is pretty incredible about the lab rats reacting to predator scent though. Maybe Im wrong. Would be interesting for someone to do the same study with farm raised deer.

As you know, I have friends who own a whitetail farm. Even though they are in enclosures, the doe's who were bottle fed will walk right up to you. The bucks, who were never bottle fed will stand and look at you if you are in a gator. The moment that little buggy stops they bolt. These are deer that at least have a little daily interaction with humans feeding them.

[Bigdaddy-yoyo]

As you know, I have friends who own a whitetail farm. Even though they are in enclosures, the doe's who were bottle fed will walk right up to you. The bucks, who were never bottle fed will stand and look at you if you are in a gator. The moment that little buggy stops they bolt. These are deer that at least have a little daily interaction with humans feeding them.[/quote]













good point Jlh

[bucksnbows]

Not trying to kick a dead horse, but the recent scent control thread got me to thinking about the concept of reduced (mitigated) scent versus old (aged) scent. From legitimate scientific research, we know that 2-phenylethylamine is a chemical that prey animals associate with predators. Prey animals are born with an innate fear of predators. Lab rats, which were reared in a lab and have never encountered a cat, responded with fear to the smell of a cat. Very interesting:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=12373&start=0

So building off the idea of predator (meat eater) scent, does anyone know about any research or have any experience with how animals are able to age scent? Does it have to do with the oxidation of organic chemicals in the scent / skin cells? Maybe some of the guys who run dogs have an idea how a hound can tell the direction of travel after only taking 2-3 steps in the wrong direction. Absolutely amazing...

Now building on that, how can a deer estimate the distance to an upwind human? Wouldn't have to be by the "age" of the scent and not the concentration of the scent? I just cannot image that a deer's nose will be fooled into thinking that the scent is aged by a reduction in the concentration.

I think a lot of reaction to human scent is associated with a deer's encounters with that scent. More times than not it is a negative encounter. With that said deer in say farm land are used to the farmer and the farmer working on the land. Not that the deer totaly disreguard him but they will tolerate him as long as he stays where he is supposed to be.
Now if that farmer gets in too close to the bedding area the deer will react differently to the scent he leaves behind.

I believe you can actually condition deer, including mature bucks in areas that they typically encounter human scent year round. Not that you can invade their "safe zone" but for example if you walked lets say a mowed trail through out your property on a regular basis the deer would eventually get used to it and tolerate it. A mature buck isn't going to stand there and watch you, but if he hears or sees you walking on daily he might just hold tight in the cover until you pass. If he routinely crosses your scent in the night from where you walked earlier it will become "normal" to smell your scent in that area and because he never experiences anything negative he will pass it off as just normal human activity. Remember humans and deer share a lot of the same areas in different ways.
Now does that mean I am going to routinely spread my scent around.....no, I won't, but with all the talk of access and exit to and from stands, on a property I routinely hunt and do habitat work on I have no fear of using the access trails used for food plot work access. These trails routinely see human activity and deer become accustomed to it.
Last season I let one arrow fly at a nice buck. I happened to miss him high. This buck even to my disbelief, was walking down the same trail I used all summer to get to food plots or other areas for habitat work, either by foot or atv and this same trail was also used for my partner and I to exit the property after an evening sit.
Since then I realized that routinely used areas that do not result in negative experiences tend to be tolerated more.
Now my access trails that lead directly to the stand location is another thing. This I don't want deer to walk on or cross when I hunt that location, but sometimes due to not having permission to all surrounding properties I am left with no choice in my route to the stand location and well I have to expect some deer to cross my path..........hopefully not the one I want to shoot.

But that is why I practice extreme scent control. As ridgerunner pointed out in the now closed thread the activated carbon powder is an amazing product at the very least helping with deer not negatively reacting to scent when crossing your access path. I know some hunters who do not practice scent control and always have complained about deer crossing their access path. One particular hunter gave the activated carbon powder a try and said he was sold on it after one season and the results he had using it only on his boots. That is what got me to try the product..........I just use it on everything though.

As for deer judging how far away a hunter is or seems by the smell. I don't know for sure, but I would guess by the strength of the stench. The more it smells the closer it seems or visa versa. Again though I don't know for sure.
The deers nose is one thing not to be taken for granted that is for sure. Scent control or not we don't want them to smell us...........but if they happen to I guess all we can hope for is what ever our strategy is for that scenario, works in our favor and not theirs once in a while.

[Southern Man]

I tend to agree with the conditioned response idea. If it's routine in their daily activities, they are more tolerant of human scent.... as long as it's where it's suppose to be. It seems the older a deer gets, the more skidish it becomes. Fawns show almost no fear of you if you find one young enough. Button bucks are almost the same, their curiosity will outweigh their safety to a point. But as they get older and have those negative encounters it's different story, unless they have grown up as almost pets. If they had a natural fear of humans, would there be so many suburban deer? They'd go crazy from all the human scent. Conditioned response may not be the whole story but I think it has something to do with it.

[bonemonger]

i think a mature deer that smells human scent in his core area will react whether it 15 minutes old or hours old if it happens in daylight. i have run hounds for a number of years and believe that deer react different when they smell human odor in their comfort time which is darkness, i dont think they feel as threatened about the odor then as they do in pre dawn, daylight times. deer have the ability to smell you for hours after you leave and will track you and pattern you without you knowing it. that is why they avoid over-hunted pre-hung stands.

[bucksnbows]

i think a mature deer that smells human scent in his core area will react whether it 15 minutes old or hours old if it happens in daylight. i have run hounds for a number of years and believe that deer react different when they smell human odor in their comfort time which is darkness, i dont think they feel as threatened about the odor then as they do in pre dawn, daylight times. deer have the ability to smell you for hours after you leave and will track you and pattern you without you knowing it. that is why they avoid over-hunted pre-hung stands.

I agree. Infact I will go as far as say every time any of us enter the woods we leave behind 3 days of information for the deer to use to pattern us. Meaning one trip in leaves scent behind for 3 days.

[bonemonger]

i would like to add that i think deer are able to tell how fresh or old your scent is, and that scent reduction methods wont change that one bit. the deer in my area are used to smelling humans, squirrel hunters ,duck hunters and coonhunters to name a few. they dont react by running out of the county if they smell human scent. they will react to all scent in their safe zones in daylight hours.

[JakeJD]

i would like to add that i think deer are able to tell how fresh or old your scent is, and that scent reduction methods wont change that one bit.

I agree, but how are they able to differentiate new scent from 3-day old scent? Or how are they able to differentiate 12-hour old scent versus fresh scent? I have never seen a deer react negatively in the afternoon to my morning entry trail (say 10-12 hours old), but they sure as heck will react negatively if the trail is only 3-4 hours old. How can a deer determine the age of the scent? The deer always know that you were there and somehow they can determine when you were there. And IMO, it makes no sense that a deer will be fooled into thinking a reduction in concentration (scent reduction) is an increased distance to the hunter. Those are two totally different attributes.

I have heard guys who run hounds say that in only takes a few false steps in the wrong direction for a dog to realize the mistake and reverse direction. That is absolutely amazing. How can a hound determine the direction of travel in just a few steps? It has to be by the age of the scent, correct? So, how are they able to age the scent? Oxidation?

[headgear]

i would like to add that i think deer are able to tell how fresh or old your scent is, and that scent reduction methods wont change that one bit.

I agree, but how are they able to differentiate new scent from 3-day old scent? Or how are they able to differentiate 12-hour old scent versus fresh scent? I have never seen a deer react negatively in the afternoon to my morning entry trail (say 10-12 hours old), but they sure as heck will react negatively if the trail is only 3-4 hours old. How can a deer determine the age of the scent? The deer always know that you were there and somehow they can determine when you were there. And IMO, it makes no sense that a deer will be fooled into thinking a reduction in concentration (scent reduction) is an increased distance to the hunter. Those are two totally different attributes.

I have heard guys who run hounds say that in only takes a few false steps in the wrong direction for a dog to realize the mistake and reverse direction. That is absolutely amazing. How can a hound determine the direction of travel in just a few steps? It has to be by the age of the scent, correct? So, how are they able to age the scent? Oxidation?

Good question Jake, I don't know we will ever get a solid answer unless we ask a deer. If the deer are smelling our old or dead skin cells those cells might be able to be aged by a deers nose. Fresh or recently shed cells probably smell different then cells which are hours or days old. Their whole world revolves around scent so what seems impossible to us just comes naturally to them. They might not be able to scent the exact age but lets say anything 3-4 hours old is going to freak them out a little, maybe something 8-10 hours old puts up some reg flags but they aren't too concerned about it. To complicate matters you have different age classes of deer reacting differently and deer with different personalities also reacting differently to the same scent so there is a wide variety of things that could happen when a deer does smell your scent new or old.

Just imagine you drop a big buck during the rut, you are trailing him and you can smell him before you can even see him. You finally find him and start to gut him and that rut stench if filling the air. You go get some help and get him loaded up in the truck, the musky buck stench is still going strong but maybe a shade less intense than hours earlier. Later that night some friends come over to check out your buck, yep he is still stinky but its a little less intense than before. Next morning the same deal, you can still smell that rutting buck musk but it is a little less each time, with each passing day that buck still smells a little less than the previous day but you can still smell the funk. I am no buck but this could be hour a buck can smell age, they just smell on a whole new level we can't comprehend.

[GRFox]

I can recall Dan sayng that he has seen (mature) bucks react to human scent that he left up to 10 days earlier.

If I recall, his frend, maybe Dave??? Hunted the same bed or bedding area where Dan lost that buck from Extreme Whitetail tactics episode 10 days later. When the buck worked his wway through the staging area he crossed what Dan knew was his scent trail from tracking the buck and the buck freaked out. Maybe someone else remembers?

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[JakeJD]

I am sure most older bucks will freak out if they encounter scent in their safe zones versus well-used trails or feeding areas.