If its pointless, I can't help but ask are trappers are more successful when they do it?
The way I was successful trapping was not by wearing scent loc suits... Or by practicing scent control the way people do for deer hunting. The idea was to not get human scent on the trap itself. Even though small critters don't have the nose or intelligence that a deer has, getting human around the area was inevitable. But boiling and treating the traps and never ever handling the traps with anything other than rubber gloves would keep the critters from knowing exactly were the trap was located. I also never pit bait or scent right with the trap, but rather the trap was placed where the critter would not expect it and trigger the trap while investigating the bait scent. The trap would be placed where the animal would have to step on his way... I also experimented in setting water sets with no rubber gloves and direct handling of the traps and found out that critters can indeed smell your human scent to some degree on traps that are under water. Catches increased dramatically when the no trap touching rule went back into effect.
Why did Indians practice it?
I am part Menomonee Indian. I am not aware of any scent control Native Americans used? However, they were only human, if they did use scent control that does not mean that it was a great tool... They also believed in praying to animal spirits, the sun, rocks, the moon, and other things as well as going to a medicine man who would do a dance and put some items in a bag worn around the neck to make the hunt more successful.
I don't really believe that stuff helped either...
Why do dogs roll in cow pies?
My guess would be they like to smell like crap
But really, thats not scent control, that would be cover scent, and I believe that has been proven not to work... If you put a five gallon can of gas in a field and a deer came along he would smell the gas AND your finger prints on the container.
I also believe that using a strong odor to mask a minor odor will draw attention from the prey who will smell the mask odor and when it catches there attention they will also notice the minor scent. But really, that don't matter much either, cause if they get downwind they will smell it regardless of cover scent.
if deer freaked out everytime it smelled human scent, they would never stop running. If a deer can smell soooo much, which I believe they can, they need to process it all somehow.
Correct.. I believe they can tell about how far away you are by your scent and the wind stream... I find it extremely interesting when the wind swirls and I get winded in hilly terrain. I have noticed that deer that are upwind and get that swirl don't usually stop and look around, instead they usually spin there head around and look right in my direction and try and find me or they run... But never at me. They never mistake that the wind came from the direction the wind is blowing.... But me? I am out scouting and smell a rotting carcass and want to find out if a rack is attached, I have a hard time figuring out which direction the smell is coming from
I am out walking in the woods and detect a faint odor of a skunk, I may or may not even notice it, but it doesn't bother me, but if I catch a strong whiff, I am on alert. Don't know if I am right or not but my guess is its the same with deer.
Comparing your sense of smell to a whitetail is not apples to apples...
It would be more like having a skunk all out spray you and you using a wash clothe and water for 5 minutes and thinking your wife won't smell you. A deers sense of smell is 100 million times what yours is...
They have 297 million olfactory receptors in the nose, plus a vomeronasal organ... YOU have 5 million olfactory receptors in the nose, and no vomeronasal organ...