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As a human it’s hard to fully understand how a whitetail deer could live by its nose. Humans do not function this way, and if we had to survive simply through the use of our noses, we probably wouldn’t make it very long. On the other hand, whitetail deer live by their noses, and mature whitetails learn to rely on their noses more than any other sense. A whitetail deer's nose is to him what eyes are to humans; he trusts what he smells more than any of his other senses. The cliché, “I have to see it to believe it,” represents humans’ heavily reliance on eyesight.

With this in mind, let’s talk about the importance of scent control. I firmly believe that it is impossible to go totally undetected by a whitetail’s nose. So what we must do if we want to consistently score on mature whitetail deer is practice scent control. This means minimizing the amount of foreign odors we take into the woods with us. I see people make mistakes all the time that may ruin their hunt before they even step foot in the woods, most without even knowing it.

Some of these things include wearing your hunting boots while you are pumping gas or wearing your hunting clothes to do anything other than go into the woods. Certain things may never cross your mind, or seem harmless, such as warming up your truck while it is backed up to an open garage door. While you are inside waiting for a warm truck, exhaust fumes are steadily pumping into the garage, either absorbing into the hunting clothes you’re wearing as you walk through, or into the clothes and accessories you have laying around. These are some of the mistakes that allow foreign odors to tag along with you on your hunt. These odors will serve as major alarms to a whitetail deer, especially a mature whitetail deer. A mature deer will detect these foreign odors much further away than you can imagine and slip away in the other direction without you ever laying eyes on him.

Scent control isn’t a new concept. There are thousands of articles written about scent elimination and scent control. I would like to share the ritual I follow to help guarantee I enter the woods as scent-free as possible. This may seem a little extreme, but it doesn’t take much more time to take care of the “details”. After all, if you are going to get up at 4:00 in the morning and sit in the freezing cold, you should take every step possible to help ensure that all your efforts aren’t wasted by a few missed details.

1) Take a scent free shower before each trip to the woods, including scouting. Use scent-free soap, shampoo and deodorant.
2) Wash all hunting clothes, bags and undergarments in scent-free detergent. I also use fresh earth dryer sheets, which work wonders (do not use with carbon clothes)! Take your clothes out of the dryer and directly into the scent-safe bag.
3) Knee-high rubber boots are a MUST for scent control.
4) Keep all clothing in scent-safe bags, including undergarments, boots, hats, and packs. Only remove them when you are ready to put them on to go into the woods. If it’s hot, I will carry them in the scent-safe bag to the stand (or close to the stand), so as not to get them sweaty (be mindful of scent on the outside of the bag and be sure to leave it out of sight).
5) Never wear any hunting clothes, undergarments, boots, etc, while driving to your hunting property, including while on an ATV. Use your bags to get your clothes there as scent-free as possible, then dress when you get to where you are leaving the truck or ATV.
6) Once dressed, be sure to spray yourself thoroughly with a scent-eliminating spray, heavily coating your boots. Don’t forget to spray your pack. I also spray anything inside the pack and all my equipment including my bow or gun.
7) I use cover scents on the bottom of my boots, but you must match the scent to your environment. For example, if you don’t have red foxes where you are hunting, you shouldn’t use red fox urine as a cover scent.
8) Be mindful of things you are bringing into the woods. If you bring a snack, make sure it doesn’t have a strong foreign odor. Apples are great hunting snacks!

All of this may seem a little over the top, especially if you just hunt casually, but to me it’s always more exciting to see deer during my time in the field, and these steps should allow that to happen a lot more often. Once I became what my wife calls “obsessive about whitetails,” I grew to realize that the more time I spend on scent control, the more whitetail deer I see in the woods. A whitetail’s nose is a phenomenal weapon in their arsenal of survival tools, and if you expect to beat it on any kind of consistent basis, you need to practice “scent control” and practice it well.

Once you arrange your scent control ritual and learn to live by it for all your hunting, I am sure that you will have more success in the woods. It isn’t much, in my opinion, to do all your homework and buy all the latest gadgets to help you get closer to whitetails if you aren’t going to take care of the “details”. When hunting whitetail deer, it’s the little things that seem to have the biggest effect on success or failure in the woods.

Posted by S. Johnson at 12:00 PM | Permalink

The Transformation

The sound of breaking sticks as I pave my way through the woods, the solitude and peacefulness of sitting on stand, and the adrenaline that rushes through my body while I wait for the perfect shot opportunity has created an obsession within me. The feeling that comes over me during those few seconds is the most addicting feeling I have ever experienced. Unlike most hunters, I didn’t grow up surrounded by many hunters. My grandfather hunted, but I seldom was able to hunt with him since he lived in West Virginia.

I grew an interest in hunting in my late teens when invited by a couple of friends. I completed the necessary course, practiced with my gun, and began my first deer season in the late 1990s without too much anticipation. Little did I know that these first outings would greatly transform my passion for the sport over the next several years. I spent the first year doing what most teenagers who hunted liked to do- hunt a couple of hours in the morning, eat at the pancake shop, go home for a nap, then head back to the woods for the last two hours of daylight. During that first year, even though gun season was only a couple of weeks long, it didn’t take much to talk myself into staying in bed when the alarm clock went off. I remember being disappointed with myself when I awoke to find what could have been the “perfect morning” to be in the woods.

"Oh, Deer!"

In year two I found myself standing over a GIANT 11-point buck I had just taken with a shotgun! This was a hunt that started like any other with a few buddies heading out into the woods, only this time with just over an hour left of legal shooting light.

We decided that it would be most productive if we split up and walked through the woods. A huge valley with a flowing creek lies behind my buddy’s house, and after everyone’s resistance, I volunteered to walk through the bottom while they walked on either hillside. As we headed into the woods, I crept down the 4-wheeler trail, carefully avoiding the newly fallen leaves. While reminding myself to be extra careful to remain slow and silent, I caught a glimpse of some movement up ahead. Immediately I noticed a buck and he was headed straight towards me! As he got closer I noticed he had his head down- he must have been following the trail of a hot doe. I knelt down beside a tree and waited anxiously. As the deer got within 50 yards I came to realize that this was not only a buck, but a giant buck! I attempted to take my focus off his rack and to remain calm. He continued on his path, which led him to within 15 yards of my slightly unhidden position. As I took aim at this monster whitetail, everything seemed to go quiet. I put the bead of my 12-gauge right behind his front shoulder and squeezed the trigger. The shot is just forward and hit him in the shoulder and he immediately folded up. Only then did I start to realize what just happened, and the adrenaline started to flow through my body; I began to shake with excitement!

After the deer was down I ran to get the rest of my party. I could hardly wait to spread the news. Of course they heard me shoot, but they probably thought I had missed. As I ran across the huge valley bottom and leaped across the creek I couldn’t help the feelings that were welling inside me, feelings I had never felt before. The excitement of the hunt is something that is impossible to describe. I reached the bottom of the hill and yelled up that I had taken a big buck, and as if my buddy had his name on it, he yelled “you shot my deer!” I emphasize again that I had shot a big buck, and that was surely not his! My buddies came running down the hill toward me in disbelief and we started back across the bottom toward the deer. As we approached the deer they were totally in awe at the immense size of this buck. The excitement my hunting partners and I shared is something I will never forget, and something that changed my life forever. Even to this day my buddy refers to that deer as “his deer.” I’m sure he will never forget!

My buddy had been hunting a few more years than I had and took a respectable 9-pointer from the same area a few years prior. As I thought about all the deer stories I had heard, and the deer my friends already had on their walls, I couldn’t help but think this was the normal routine for hunting. It seemed to me that taking big whitetail bucks was a normal occurrence, and everyone did it. Over the next few years I realized just how far from normal this was, and that this very well could be the deer of my lifetime.

Reality Strikes

As I got more involved in hunting, I purchased my first archery equipment and muzzleloader. This would allow me to be in the woods more often and improve my chances at scoring another giant. But over the next few years I found myself getting frustrated and discouraged. I was hunting harder than ever but having the worst luck, hardly ever spotting deer while I was on stand, and when I did they seemed to be miles away and headed in the wrong direction. I couldn’t understand how it seemed so easy one time, and now seemed impossible. What was I doing wrong?

I began trying to learn anything I could about the whitetail deer that I had, seemingly overnight, become addicted to. I looked for the “secrets” to consistent success in the woods. I subscribed to magazines, searched the internet, spoke with fellow hunters and asked questions at the pro shop. I watched countless hours of the latest hunting videos and shows, and read the magazines from cover to cover, sometimes 2 or 3 times to make sure I didn’t miss anything. I couldn’t wait to take my newfound knowledge into the woods with me. This was the point when things started to get serious, and the whitetail addiction began to grow.

I spent more time in the woods, practiced more, scouted, and learned to pattern deer. The most important lesson I picked up at first was to become scent conscious. Although this was only the beginning of the fanatical nature that I display today about scent control, it was the start of learning its importance. It was in this year that I really started getting closer to deer, and a lot more often. It was typical for me to come home with a story to share about the deer I had seen while hunting. This year I was also able to score my first deer with a bow, a quality 7-point buck, another rewarding moment in the woods. Even though he wasn’t a record book buck, this was a major accomplishment and a true trophy in every sense!

New hunting friends, young and old, had entered into my life. Hunting was quickly becoming a major part of me, not only in the fall, but year round. I would go to parties and talk about hunting to anyone who would listen, sometimes with the notion that my obsessive nature with hunting was annoying to people. I was forced to change the subject (so I didn’t get blacklisted from parties…haha), but once in a while I would run into someone who shared the same passion. I would drive around with a video camera and binoculars to local farms and fields in hopes of catching a glimpse of a giant whitetail from the road just before dark. Simply catching sight of a giant whitetail, even from 300 yards away, was enough to bring a smile to my face.

Whitetail Way of Life

Now a decade into my hunting career I have grown from a twice-a-year hunter into someone who cannot stop thinking about it. My compulsiveness includes everything from where that best stand placement might be for the next season or how I could have changed fate, to studying maps and aerial photos. I have gone as far as renting a small plane to fly over my hunting properties to take photos and learn the lay of the land. Hunting is constantly on my mind and in my soul. I have even rearranged my work schedule so that I am able to get into the woods in the evenings until the time changes in October. There is never a Saturday missed during the hunting season, and I ensure that I am able to get into the woods 3-5 times a week. If I had more time and less obligations, this obsession could easily become 7 days a week, 365 days a year. My wife is very supportive of my hunting, but sometimes doesn’t understand the extent of my passion. She can’t picture the Advantage Max4 recliner in our living room, or how great one of my bucks would look hanging in the foyer. However she does allow me to have my own room, which is about all I can ask for (at least for now)!

People ask me all the time, what drives you to want to get up at 4:00 in the morning, just to go sit in the freezing cold for hours on end? It comes down to the old cliché, “if you have to ask, then you won’t understand.” There’s something about being on stand watching your breath (to make sure the wind is right…haha), or watching the sunrise start to crest the treetops, and the woods start to come alive that must be different for others than it is for me. The feeling of being in the outdoors and watching the woods wake up… From hearing that first leaf crack in the morning to hearing that steady walking as you strain for a glimpse of the giant 10 pointer you have spent so many hours scouting and planning for are things that I have yet to be able to explain. Just being in the outdoors, enjoying all the peacefulness it has to offer and sharing that experience with friends and family drives me to the woods every year and will continue to for as long as I am able.

Posted by S. Johnson at 04:10 PM | Permalink

The anticipation of the season to come is already forcing me to lose sleep. My TiVo is starting to fill up with the latest hunting shows, and I find myself daydreaming of the heart pounding action that is bow hunting. Yes there are still months to go before I will actually be perched in a tree, but it’s already starting. My mind becomes so consumed with hunting it’s hard to focus on anything else. I catch myself thinking of the close encounters with giant whitetails of years past and wondering if I will get the shot opportunity this year.

As the scouting process continues I can’t help but feel as though I have picked the perfect trees for the season, fine tuned already productive stands and found different setups overlooked in previous years. Scouting cameras are set up and checked to help track whitetail movement, and the anticipation in the Wal-Mart photo line is almost too much to handle. Hour after hour is spent going over every setup, examining how things might work and what could be changed to tip the odds in my favor.

While getting close to giant whitetails is no easy task, even to the most seasoned hunter, the time we spend post-season scouting, pre-season scouting and studying maps and photos can really start to tip the odds for us. Determined to match wits with the mature whitetails of the woods, I will spend countless hours in thought to choose the best strategies for the upcoming season. As the season creeps closer and closer I can only hope for that one split-second opportunity when everything will come together.

Posted by S. Johnson at 04:30 PM | Permalink