homemade cover scent?
Whitetail Deer
Hi all, i was wondering if anyone on here makes their own cover scent spray. i am a bit of a tightwad, and dont like having to buy some every fall. i was wondering about using walnuts, etc and boiling them. i read an article in outdoor life that said to mix the water with hydrogen peroxide and then let it sit for a couple days. would the walnut stain my skin?? any ideas would be great.
Craig
I used to make acorn scent. You crush the acorns up pretty small and soak in grain alcohol for about a month then strain. Spray it on and the alcohol evaporates leaving the scent. It worked pretty well and the scent lasted awhile. You can also do it with pine.
I made the acorn scent once and it ended up smelling very fermented...almost like rotting acorns. I never used it becasue I couldn't stand the smell myself. Not sure what I did that was wrong, but that was 10 years ago and I have not tried again since.
I used to make acorn scent. You crush the acorns up pretty small and soak in grain alcohol for about a month then strain. Spray it on and the alcohol evaporates leaving the scent. It worked pretty well and the scent lasted awhile. You can also do it with pine.
spirit of turpentine can be picked up at your local grocery store. Works great and is a lot cheaper than the pine cover scent.
Be careful with it though, it's very strong. A little dab will do ya.
If you have sage around, my brother in law mixes sage with cheap vodka in a spray bottle. He definately smells like sage brush. I've heard of guys using water, Hydrogen peroxide and Arm and Hammer for a scent eliminator.
"would the walnut stain my skin??" I would say a resounding YES if you put it directly on your skin. Ilearned the hard way when I was 13. Mid September I was sitting by a walnut tree dropping large green walnuts almost the size of baseballs right and left. I was hunting from a ground blind I built and the deer kept smelling me and running off. One evening I took at least 10 of the green hulls and smeared them all over my face, arms, clothes and surrounding area where I was sitting. At the time the juices looked a greenish yellow. Long story short my buddies called me s@%$& face at school for a long time because for two weeks it looked like I had crap smeared all over my face and arms. My fingernails were also crap brown. If I were you I would be careful!
i use what is available where i hunt. if i am hunting in the mountains i will break off some small pine branches and rub them all over my clothes or even put my clothes in a sealed bag with them over nite. if hunting open country ill do the same with sage and it seems to work.
Go out to the area you hunt and pick up a 1 gallon zip bag of local leaf litter, and plants that grow there. take it home. put it all in the blender and mascerate it well. Put the mush on a square of cheese cloth and fold and tie it into a bag and then in a large pot heat 1 gallon of canola oil to about 250 degrees and then put your cheese cloth bundle in it remove it from the heat, cover tightly and let set in a cool, dark place for 2 weeks. Remove the cheese cloth "herbal" bundle and you now have a scented oil that is the smell of the area your stand is in. You can make soap with it and also put a the cheese cloth bundle in a cleaned coffee can perferated with holes and tape on a bailing handle to hang it from a branch near you.
Recipe to make your own Scent-Elimination Spray
1 Gal of Distilled Water 8oz Bottle of Hydrogen Peroxide 1 Small Box of Baking Soda 1 Tablespoon of Green Scent-Free Body-Wash
Boil ¾ gal of Distilled water with baking soda. When the mixture is cool add the 8oz bottle of Hydrogen Peroxide. After a day or so when all of the bubbles go down add the TBL of Green Scent-Free Body Soap—then fill the jug up the rest of the way with the remaining Distilled Water. Make sure you keep it out of direct sunlight and in a dark colored bottle (or one that doesn’t allow light in—if you don’t, it will make the hydrogen peroxide ineffective). You will need to put it in a smaller spray bottle that blocks out sunlight—shake it before each use.
If the leaves dirt and pine trees covered scent then how can a deer follow you or another deer walked. If those "cover scents" worked then dont you think they would cover the scent of a footstep. Cover scents do not work....
Wildman nothing is perfect. best cover scent is to have the deer up wind of ya plain and simple but ANYTHING that can help minimize foreign odors will help alot.
So tell me how it helps a lot. The whole idea behind a cover scent is you use a stronger scent to cover a weaker one. This may work on humans but it doesn't on animals like deer and dogs.
These animals can pick out the different scents and it make zero difference if you add another scent on top of it. Just think about it. A buck can follow the scent of another deer across a corn field or pasture field with no trouble at all. Put your nose to the ground and smell a fresh deer track....what do you smell? You will smell dirt, corn stalks, leaves, etc.....These scents are very strong to our nose am I right? You cant even smell the scent the deer left behind at all. Yet a deer and follow the scent of the deer and do it at a fast trot regardless if the other scents are stronger. The same goes for your scent....you can rub dirt or pine scent on your cloths if you like but it doesn't help at all. The best we can do is keep our foreign scent down and hope the wind carries the rest away.
Got to agree with WildmanWilson.
Grab your empty spray bottle form last year and do the following:put the tea pot on to boil,pull out your wifes baking soda from the cabinet,take a quart canning jar & fill it with the water from the screaming tea pot,add 2 tablespoonfuls of baking soda & stir til dissolved,let cool & fill the empty bottle CHEAP
Wildman do you think scent free hunting suits work, like scentloc, etc
No. If they did every pro hunter out there would be using them....not just the ones that get sponsored by them. Products like this are hard to argue against. If someone is using one and they don't get busted then they automatically give praise to the suit. If they get busted they say nothings perfect but it helps.
I've had deer smell me at times and I thought the wind was perfect and on the flip side I've had deer not smell me when it looked like it was a sure thing. Many things affect it.... weather is a big part. Anyone who hunts with dogs will tell you some days a dog can't pick up scent worth crap and other days they are unbelievable. The same with deer.
Wildmanwilson. Deer and dogs do not bathe. All animals have a extremely pungent smell so by them just laying on some dirt or pine needles isn't masking anything. We bathe to lower our natural scent then try to mask the rest. Try smelling yourself and then smelling your dog. Little bit of a difference I hope. Pine needles won't help him
Go on you tube and there a lots of receipes for scent killer. Baking soda, hydrogen peroxide and some unscientific soap. Easier way is wash your cloths in. Baking soda and hunt the wind.
I mixed apple cider and vanilla extract in an empty Dead Down Wind spray bottle when hunting the wife's family in Michigan. I sprayed it on my boots and pants. I can not say if it helped or not. I will say the apple cider starts to ferment after a few weeks so it must be used fresh.
In the 10 years since he posted I’m sure he figured out a failsafe solution
I just soak my clothes in in fresh field corn mash, bathe in apple juice , and chew on pears , and fart out roses
They can smell a ton of different odors at the same time. Therefore all they gonna do is small your cover scent AND you
The best you can hope for with any scent "eliminator/cover", is to possibly make the game think that you are 200 yards away instead of 20 because they will still smell you. Whether they become alarmed or not is a roll of the dice. But as others have mentioned, just stay as clean as you can and play the wind.
