Deer can smell your scent up to several hundred yards away! That is the length of 3 to 4 football fields! Moreover, a deer's ability to smell is 30% greater than a dog. Check this out: At crime scenes, dogs have been able to pick up a human scent from finger prints that are 7 days old!
Deer have up to 297 million olfactory (scent) receptors in their nose. In comparison, dogs have 220 million and humans have just 5 million olfactory receptors. Not only do deer have a huge number of olfactory receptors in their nose, they also have a secondary scent gland called the vomeronasal organ that is located in their mouth.
If you think you can eliminate your human scent with scent killers, I would suggest that you think again. Deer can even smell your excitement and anticipation, let alone the pizza and beer that you had last night which is on your breath and seeping from your pores.
If you are going on a hunt, it is impossible to eliminate all of your human odor. The only way to success, is to cover it!
The Ole Time Woodsman 1800’s Scent Cover Story:
The myth that back in the 1800’s wild game was so plentiful that one just had to go into the woods and shoot their winter’s supply of meat before becoming trampled by them is just that, a myth. In fact, at that time game was more scarce than it is today due to over hunting for profit. A Wall Street Journal article reports that “The U.S. now has 30 million deer, a hundred times more than a century ago" You do the math!
So, if you had to provide for your family or hunt for the woods camp, success was not a given. If we take into consideration the accuracy and reliability of the weapons that were available at the time, hunters had to give themselves every advantage to be successful. Covering the human scent while not introducing a foreign scent into the game’s environment was critical to a successful kill.
Coincidently, this is the same formula that led to the development of our Ole Time Woodsman Fly Dope.
Here’s to a successful hunt!