Stop Sabotaging Your Scent Control!

Your wife or your girlfriend won't tell you this, and I'm sorry I have to be the one, but deer think you stink.

They don't like your soap, your aftershave, or your deodorant. They don't like the way you smell after eating a big plate of lasagna. They don't like the way you smell when you stop by the gas station for a fill-up on the way to you hunting property.

But you knew that already, and you're pretty good at preventing those odors. What aren't you good at? You probably stink at dealing with two issues almost every deer hunter overlooks. Read my column below to find out, and you'll probably be more successful.

Steve Sorensen's bi-weekly newspaper column, "The Everyday Hunter," appears in the Forest County News Journal (Tionesta, PA), the Corry Journal (Corry, PA), both part of the Sample News Group. Also the Warren Times Observer (Warren, PA), and the Jamestown Post-Journal (Jamestown, NY), both Ogden Newspapers. If you'd like to see "The Everyday Hunter" in your local newspaper, have your editor contact me.

Scroll down to read "Stop Sabotaging Your Scent Control." (First published on September 21, 2024.)

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To access more of Steve's writing on hunting topics, go to the home page of his blog, Mission: Hunter.

Stop Sabotaging Your Scent Control!

Steve Sorensen

Scent control products never hurt and usually help, but don’t depend on them too much. You must also play the wind—stay downwind from where the deer is likely to approach. You must also worry about swirling air currents, and on evening hunts thermal drafts are falling as the air cools, carrying your scent to the ground. That can be bad if you’re hunting from a tree stand. Odds are, deer are going to smell you unless you do two things most hunters don’t think about. If you don’t do them, you’ll often sabotage your scent control efforts.

First, pay attention to your hat. It soaks up your sweat, skin oils, and any hair care product you’ve used. You might not have dandruff, but you are constantly shedding skin cells from your scalp. And the fact that more body heat escapes from your scalp than anywhere else makes your hat problem worse. You probably don’t smell it, but your personal aroma saturates your hat.

Your hat is a Petri dish where bacteria colonize in a moist, dark environment. When you put your hat on, your head warms up those invisible critters and they start partying. They feast on your dead skin cells and do unmentionable things that include reproducing and excreting their own waste. Your hat becomes a storage place for stink.

It defies logic that hunters work to get rid of all sorts of odors, but don’t worry much about their hats. Can you keep the odor in your hat from wafting into the wild green yonder—right into a big buck’s nose? I don’t think so.

A few spritzes of a scent control product on our hats won’t do the job. Adding a clip-on cover-scent wafer that smells like dirt can’t overcome your personal odor factory. You can’t ignore dead skin cells, loose strands of hair, industrial-strength perspiration, accumulated skin oils and perfumy personal care products that collect in your hat. Your hat functions as a virtual deer hunting dunce cap because a quick spray-down can’t possibly eliminate all those sources of odor.

So, what do you do? You dedicate two or three hats to hunting, wash them, and rotate them. How do you wash a hat? Don’t bother with one of those plastic hat-shaped contraptions people use in the washer and dryer. Instead, when you shower with scent-free, anti-bacterial hunter’s shampoo or body wash, take your hat and a scrub brush into the shower.

Lather up your hat and work it over thoroughly. Scour the inside and outside of the hat band, as well as the whole hat inside and out. Don’t overlook the brim, especially the area where your hand grips it. Rinse the hat until all soap is gone, then air-dry it outdoors. Make this part of your scent control routine, and you’ll always have a clean, scent-free hunting hat.

Now that you’ve conquered your worst scent control problem, you’re still not finished.

Second, I’ve already mentioned that you shed skin cells from your head. You also shed them from every other part of your body, and you distribute them around your hunting area like you’re sowing microscopic scent seeds everywhere you walk.

Want proof? Wear a black T-shirt for a day. When you peel it off at the end of the day, look at the inside. You’ll see countless white specks on the inside of your shirt. Those are dead skin cells. Now scratch one of your arms lightly. You’ll see white tracks left by your fingernails. Those are more dead skin cells. You are shedding them all the time. Some of them go wind-borne, and deer always smell them. Cold, dry weather dries your skin and makes it worse.

A shower removes dead skin cells, but by the time you get to your hunting spot you have more. So, what do you do? After your shower, use a scentless foam skin-care product and apply it all over your body, especially anywhere skin is exposed—your face, arms, wrists, and neck. It will moisturize your skin and for a while, you’ll drop far fewer dead skin cells.

We’re on the threshold of archery deer season now, and I’m convinced most hunters don’t think about these things. Add these two measures to your preparation or you’ll continue to sabotage your scent control efforts.

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When “The Everyday Hunter” isn’t hunting, he’s thinking about hunting, talking about hunting, dreaming about hunting, writing about hunting, or wishing he were hunting. If you want to tell Steve exactly where your favorite hunting spot is, contact him through his website, www.EverydayHunter.com. He writes for top outdoor magazines, and won the 2015, 2018, and 2023 national “Pinnacle Award” for outdoor writing.