Scents and Stands for Whitetails
Volume 1, Number 1, Pages 4-8
By Russell Thornberry
Russell Thornberry first enrolled in archery at the age of 12, while living in Texas. He came to Canada in 1968 and rejoined the archery fraternity in 1973. Russell writes for various publications across North America and operates a guide and outfitting operation. His preference for hunting with archery tackle stems from his available time and the challenge it offers. He plans to visit Alaska in late August bowhunting Caribou and Moose.
Using Common Scents for Whitetails
Photograph taken by Russell Thornberry
There is no substitute for scouting. Finding a buck like this before the season gives the hunter something worthwhile to shoot for. In this my first appearance in BOWBENDER MAGAZINE, I am going to stick my neck out a bit and assume that this is a magazine dedicated to the serious bowhunter and wants its writers to tell it like it is. As you will see as you read on, I intend to pull no punches. The only criteria laid down by the editor thus far has been to convey essential information which will assist the bowhunters of Alberta. This criteria will be a delight. I don't have to pretend to tell you how to Bag the Biggest Bull in Bashaw or any of the "bigger and better" hype. I can stick to ground roots material which really matters to bowhunters and for that I am thankful.
My hunting heart throb is the white-tailed deer. I grew up hunting whitetails and Lord willing I will continue to do so for as long as I can bend a string. With 30 years of experience logged in pursuit of the evasive flag tails, I am the first to admit that the more I understand, the more I realize I have yet to learn. But since this first part of this two-part article on bowhunting whitetails deals with scents, I'll get right to the point. The most important two words in scents for whitetail hunting can be described fairly politely with the ever popular initials ... B.S. And the initials stand for just what you think they do. The meaning behind this rather stout term for cow manure is more complex than one might imagine. Most of us who are enamoured with bow and arrows have studied a bit bit on how the Indians managed to be as successful as they were with the crude bow and arrows they used. They got in close. It's as simple as that. Otherwise they would have all starved to death. And how, you might ask, did the get so close? Well, they rubbed their bodies with buffalo manure and thereby masked their human scent well enough to get close. While that particular practice has not managed to survive as an integral part of our bowhunting heritage, it still has merit. In fact, that particular practice may have been a key factor in the advent of more effective longer range bows. I guess most of use would rather have |
to shoot an extra 20 yards than coat ourselves in B.S. But nonetheless, I always remembered that little fact about the Indian bowhunters. Then a few years ago I saw the necessity to take that old practice out of the history books and try it. I was guiding several bowhunters in southeastern Alberta. Before daylight each morning I would take them to their tree blinds, a subject I will deal with in part 2, and climb into a blind myself so I could observe the hunters and the deer. The deer would start drifting through the area returning to their bedding area just after sunrise. And when a deer would stroll over the tracks left by the hunters enroute to their blinds, their noses would drop and pinpoint the scent left on the ground by the hunter's boots. Then tails would raise and the deer would begin their high stepping and blowing and the hunt was spoiled.
After two mornings of this problem I decided that since we were hunting on ranchland, and since cattle were common, we would employ an old Indian trick. The next morning when I delivered the hunters to their hunting location I had a suprise for them. As soon as they stepped out of the truck I announced that before they could continue to their blinds they had to wade around in the cardboard box I had in the back of the truck. "What's in the box?" they whispered anxiously. "Something Special" I whispered back. When they relaized that the box had a 3-inch layer of fresh cow dung in it they whined and moaned like babies but I insisted. It was that or they couldn't go hunting. Eventually they all took their turn stomping around in the box and then off to their blinds they went. As the sun rose and the deer came heading back to cover, past the blinds, two of the three hunters bagged their deer. What is more important is that not one of the deer so much as raised its tail when passing over the tracks of the hunters. The smell left on the ground was a common and trusted smell to the deer and it worked like a charm. I have something of a reputation among that particular group of hunters as being a bit weird but they couldn't argue with success. They were conscientious hunters and each of them wore rubber soled boots so that they would be scent free, which they may have been originally. But there is a bad habit among hunters which most are not even aware of. As soon as they get back to camp from their hunt they have a habit of relieving their bladders right where they step out of the truck. The next morning as they get back in the truck to ride to their hunting area, guess what they walk through? The worst possible scent known to deer hunting. Then the odor free rubber boots are no longer odor free. I think you get the picture. You watch your hunting buddies on the next hunt and see if my words are founded. A proper latrine area will solve the problem if all take a sacred vow to use only that spot. I suggest keeping your rubber soled boots in a bag full of sage, pine needles, or whatever scent is indigenous to your hunting area. Do not wear them around camp, but put them on only as you enter your hunting area and then take them off as soon as you exit the area. Have an extra pair of boots or moccasins for camp life. You never know when someone will betray the pact and add a dangerous scent in the wrong place. Of course a box of fresh B.S. will eliminate the problem for hunters who are resigned to only one pair of boots. |
Thus far I have been dealing with the problem of leaving scent on the ground because of stinky boots while enroute to an elevated blind. The blind, being well above the noses of the deer automatically eliminates the need for further masking of human scent. Once elevated the deer cannot smell you and you are free from having to use additional masking agents. But for those who do not use elevated blinds for deer hunting, additional scents are a usually a good idea. Although I am sure the Indian approach would work very well, I am not going to suggest to you anything that I am unwilling to try myself. So in examing the best masking scent for deer hunting I suggest that the hunter really studies odors common to his hunting area. For example, skunk scent if used in an area where skunks are common may do the trick. But if used where skunks are uncommon, you may actually alarm the deer more than had you used no scent at all. Whatever you choose as a masking scent, be prepared for an investigation. Any unusual odor may make a whitetail curious if not suspicious. Should that occur, you can count on the animal slipping in for a closer smell, at which time many hunters are detected in spite of the masking agent they used to avoid that very problem. Using the masking agent is worthwhile but I have found it better to place the agent on something other than your person. I carry cotton balls in my fanny pack which I place on tree bark or bushes a bit down wind of me if I am waiting on the ground. The deer, even if they do get curious and decide to investigate, focus their attention on the cotton nballs rather than on me. I am still applying the use of masking agents to the hunter while he is being still because I believe that is the productive method of bagging a whitetail. The larger the buck, the more essential being absolutely still becomes. The odds of sneaking up on a real wall hanger are stacked so heavily against the whitetail bowhunter that it makes it near impossible. Granted, it has been done, but those who hunt that way in hope of nabbing Mr. Big are in for a lot of vacant space on their trophy room wall. If that is your bag and still hunting for whitetails is what rings your chimes, then I wish you well. If you bag a buck worth mentioning (a mature buck regardless of antler size) then you have accomplished what most hunters cannot. The dedicated still hunter will most likely want to use a scent vent which fastens to his clothing and which can be opened and closed to allow the scent to work for him.
I favor getting to a spot where I will try to outwait the deer and let him come by me. I want to leave no suspicious trail on the ground to alarm the deer and where I am situated I want to leave no scent at all. That's the bottom line as far as I am concerned. No smell is the best smell of all when hunting whitetails. This is why I favor the elevated blind. There are untold scents on the market, some of which are masking agents and others are labelled as lure scents. Fox urine is popular and effective as a masking agent as is skunk scent. But once again I suggest you observe the numbers of foxes or skunks in your hunting grounds before you choose. Lures are another matter. They range from the smell of apples to the smell of a doe in heat. All of them are hailed as the end-all of deer lures |
and you will notice that the ingredients are always secret concoctions handed down from previous generations of deer slayers. The same common sense approach to choosing a deer lure applies as in choosing a masking agent. Don't expect deer to come flocking by you to get at an apple scent if they have never seen an apple before. If the deer are hooked on apples they will likely know exactly where to find them and your apple scent may be more effective as a masking scent as you skulk around the orchard. As for doe in heat lure, I have seen them work, especially when the bucks are in the rut. My personal favorite use of doe in heat lure is to pour it on a rag and drag it on the end of a string in a wide arc which happens to pass within 20 yards or so of my tree blind. I don't want a buck to come directly to me, but rather pass by me on his way to somewhere else. I have taken bucks in this manner as they came trailing the scent on the ground. They never even knew I was in the country.
Another scent that works occasionally comes from the tarnished metatarsal glands found on the inside of the rear hocks on rutting whitetail bucks. I remove the glands from such a buck, obviously after he has been killed, and hang them on tree trunks or bushes near my blind. When the rut is in progress a buck smelling the odor emitted from the glands will often come in to see why another buck is hanging around in his territory. Sometimes the investigating buck will come with hackles bristled and blood in his eye. When the rut is on, the bucks are no longer buddies as they were during the summer and early fall. Using the right scent for the right location and style of hunting is not as complex as the endless choices of scents might suggest. It is truly a matter of using common sense for the most common scents. Photograph taken by Russell Thornberry Hunters can learn much about the deer they intend to hunt by scouting in the summer months. This is an ideal time to start to understand feeding areas and bedding areas. This whitetail doe followed the scent left on my boots right to the lens of my camera before figuring me out. Be careful of where you walk with your hunting boots. |
Stand Hunting for Whitetails
Photograph taken by Russell Thornberry
Well known bowhunter and bow hunting author, Chuck Adams, sits high in a cottonwood tree and rattles antlers to attract a whitetail buck. His hunt produced a fine 4x4 buck while guided by the author in southeastern Alberta in 1983. I can make no better case for the use of elevated blinds for whitetail hunting than trying to hunt the wary animal on the ground. His sense, sight, hearing and smell are so razor sharp that a human being is at a marked disadvantage while on foot. As a whitetail buck matures he reacts differently to signals he receives from his senses. A yearling buck may hear a noise and become curious enough to investigate. The same buck at age five and a half, when a whitetail is mature, would hear the same noise and instantly leave the area without any want to know more about the source. So the older the buck, the more likely he is to be a trophy animal and the more likely he is to leave you with egg on your face if you believe you are going to walk up on him. Experience has taught me this over and over, so I have adopted a philosophy for whitetail hunting with a bow which dictates that I get above the scent plane of the animal's nose. In addition my philosophy demands that I make absolutely no noise audible to a whitetail's ears and that I blend as perfectly as possible with my surroundings. Escaping the nose of the deer is the most critical of the three points and getting elevated solves the problem with relative ease. The height of a deer tree blind or stand is often argued among hunters. Some say 8 feet is plenty high, others say 12 feet. I place my stands at least 20 feet off the ground, sometimes higher, depending on how dense the timber is where I am hunting. I have been detected often enough at elevations from 8 to 15 feet to know that higher is better. Twenty feet is high enough most of the time. The saying that deer do not look up is only partially true. If they get used to being hunted from aloft you can bet your fanny pack that they'll be looking up. If the deer must pass through heavy timber, they feel much more secure than they will passing through sparse cover. Their vision in thick cover is concentrated on their immediate surroundings. In sparse timber their view encompasses a greater field of view which includes height. If I am hunting in a lone tree I may be 30 feet of the ground. Some hunters feel quite uneasy that high off the ground and that may sour tree stand hunting for them. Part of that uneasiness may be due to a rickety tree stand. I will discuss what I consider the best tree stand later. Beside the height of tree stands there is the all important matter of location. Obviously you cannot just place stands in random locations and expect to score. Patterning is the all important factor. The hunter must know where the deer are feeding and where they are bedding. Knowing that makes possible the logical placement of tree stands. Assuming the hunter has located the prime feeding and bedding area of his intended buck, he now has the tough part solved. The hunter will most likely notice that the buck is taking a route from his bed to his feed that is well timbered. Therein lies the answer. A savvy hunter knows better than to press the buck in his |
bedding area for he will move out of the area if this happens. Likewise hunting the buck where he feeds will alter his feeding habits or perhaps cause him to abandon feeding in that location. By the process of elimination we conclude that the best place to attempt an ambush is in that travel corridor, then look for trails. If the country is hilly, you may expect the buck to follow a ridge if at all possible. In either case, a trail should be obvious. There may be numerous trails, in which case the hunter will have to experiment until he figures it out. There is no perfect situation because a buck may use several trails available to him and the hunt becomes a numbers game.
Hunters who scout for this kind of information will notice that the best buck is normally the last deer into the feeding area. Does and yearlings usually appear in the alfalfa field first, then small bucks. But just at dusk, often after legal shooting light, there emerges that large bodied deer with the haze of antler above his head that we most want to connect with. It is true that the older and wiser bucks leave their beds later than does and youngsters and subsequently they arrive last at the feeding location. They feed late in the evening and may bed right down in their feeding area in the cover of darkness. And then at the first trace of dawn they move back towards their bedding area. Typically the does and yearlings straggle along a bit later. This understanding makes a case for placing the tree stand as near the buck's bedding area as is possible without spooking him. If done properly the buck will emerge from his bed and pass the stand in the evening, with the greatest amount of daylight available, enroute to his feed. Conversely if the stand is place near the feeding location, the buck will not arrive there until the last critical light of day, perhaps too late to see. The reverse benefit is realized by the morning hunter who will catch the buck entering his bedding area with more light than would be available when the buck exited from his feeding area at the first light of dawn. In addition to the benefit of increased light, both morning and evening, the hunter can approach his evening stand in the afternoon with plenty of time to get set up and with ample daylight. In the morning the hunter has the advantage of being able to move to his stand well away from the feeding area where the buck is likely to be in the dark. In either case, the hunter should be cautious not to walk directly on deer trails where the deer will travel. Approaching a stand should be done as cautiously as approaching the deer himself. Leave no scent and do not approach your stand upwind of the deer you expect to hunt. For the purpose of keeping downwind of the game, the hunter may have to employ several stands to work in conjunction with specific wind directions. There are numerous tree stands available on the market today and some are better than others. Certainly there is nothing wrong with building permanent tree stands if the hunter is confident enough of his area. The only problem I have found with permanent blinds is that they are often an invitation to other hunters who may have done far less homework than the one who built the stand. If you have control of the property then the problem is solved. As far as portable stands are concerned there are two types, both having a place in modern bowhunting. The first type is the truly portable, light wieght, self-climbing models which are generally made of high stress aluminum. They cling to the tree through leverage created by the weight of the hunter. I have taken game from such stands and they are far better than no tree stand but they are unnervingly wobbley and uncomfortable over long periods of waiting. In the portable self-climbing models, the hunter has very little floor space on which to turn himself for his shot and he must be more agile and daring than can be expected from hunters at large. The hunter cannot help but make a fair amount of noise in these highly portable blinds while clanking up and down trees, and to allow the stands to climb properly all |
limbs must be cleared from the tree trunk up to the final position where the stand will rest. The main benefit with these blinds is that a hunter can carry the blind with ease to his chosen location. If the hunter hunts a different area each time out, such a blind would make good sense. A portable stand seldom weighs over 10 pounds.
A second consideration is what I will call the semi-portable stand which is heavier but much more stable and spacious. These stands are for the hunter who does not want to build a permanent blind but who plans to spend plenty of time at a favorite location. My favorite bush stand is the Solid Comfort Tree Stand built in Calgary by Jim Genereux. The Solid Comfort stands weigh about 30 pounds each and attach to the tree with two threaded chain tighteners which fasten the stand so solidly that even the most squeamish hunter would feel comfortable. The floor is 2 feet wide by 4 feet long and offers a spacious platform on which to stand and turn for shooting. In addition there is a metal framed canvas chair which is comfortable enough to sit in for hours. Genereux, the father of the Solid Comfort stand, actually spends the night in the stands and sleeps there so he can be "Johnny-on-the-spot" come daylight. I will say that these stands are the only ones I have ever seen which I would not be afraid to sleep in. All stands which are placed above the ground should be equipped with an adequate safety belt as well as a rope with which to lift tackle after the hunter has climbed safely into the stand. Ladders or climbing spikes can be used to get up the tree to the stand. The advantage of the larger more solid stands is realized in the hunter's confidence of his own safety and comfort. This allows the hunter to spend more time aloft. In addition, the hunter can climb quietly and quickly into the stand with less time and effort than is required in the lighter, more portable stands. My Solid Comfort stand takes longer to put in place initially, but I am the type of hunter who studies his potential hunting area and then places several key stands from which I will hunt all season. Aside from the natural benefits of hunting from aloft, there is the entertainment factor of being able to watch other animals which you would not see were you on the ground. Elevation does dramatically increase your visibility in the timber which helps the hunter prepare for oncoming game. The downward angle of the shot does differ in point of aim from shooting on a level plane. Hunters should practice shooting from their elevated position to thorouhgly understand the change in the point of impact. One must get used to aiming lower on the target than they would if shooting on the ground. I glue down carpet on the floor of my tree stands and then I wear soft moccasins or remove my boots and go sock footed in the tree stand. That way any twig or pine cone that might fall onto the floor of the stand will not create an untimely noise if I step on it while getting into shooting position. I know that stand hunting is not for everyone, but in this effort I am dealing with a method of hunting whitetails which will allow the majority of bowhunters the greatest degree of success. In addition, tree stand hunting can be extremeley effective on other game such as moose, elk, mule deer, and bears. On larger game such as moose and elk, the same general principles apply except that stands must be placed higher in trees since the animals stand much taller than a deer. In conclusion, I wish Alberta's bowhunter many happy hours in the tree tops, and don't forget your B.S. along the way. The content of this article is an unedited archive of the original published in Bowbender Magazine's Volume 1, Number 1 in 1984. |