strangest cover/scent you've used (or heard about)

bklysen

Not sure what made me think of this but it seems timely.

Quite a few years ago I got off my stand, mid bow season, and stopped for a quick one on the way back to the cabin. A few moments later another guy sits down next to me and I got a definite whiff of something. Hmm, not completely unusual given the type of places I can frequent. Got to talking, discover the guy just got off his stand...so I had to ask.

His home made cover was a handful of dirt, leaves from some large mast area, some of that mast (acorns typically), a handful of carrots....and another handful of deer droppings. Into the blender it went. He tells me it becomes a 'nice paste', if done properly - that he could smear on his face, any other exposed skin and, yes, to arm pits and the grundy areas. And he leaves it on for a few days.

I believed every word of it, and I think you might too if you had a chance to look him in the eye. I didn't shake hands, though.

Odd, though - he mentioned that he was divorced.

Have any of you met this guy?

5280 shooter II

No, but I'm a fan of using smoke from a fire to permeate my hunting clothes.....it seems that wood-smoke, while strong.....doesn't scare the game so much as it's strong enough to overpower the natural human odors and seems more natural.....i.e. wildfires....right?

JerryBobCo

I wonder what he uses when he's bear hunting?

orchidman

This post is about strange cover not scent........


Was doing a cull on a farm that was as flat as a billiard table a few years back. It was so flat and the grass was so short, you could see empty shotgun shells from 50-60yds away.

I came home and after some thought. I worked out how I could hide in full view.

Take a large sheet of corflute, a large 'natural' coloured woolen blanket, a box cutter and some contact adhesive...............................ten minutes later I had a sheep!!!!!!!!!

Well I didnt 'have' a sheep.......I made a sheep.......Not 'made' in the sense that some of you think......Maybe I should say I constructed a sheep.....yes thats it, I constructed a sheep.

Just dragged 'dolly' out of the shed and took a pic for you guys..............Here she is, looking a bit battered............battered as in she has had a hard life...........from being used so much.........as a decoy/hide damnit.

( I knew when I posted this up it was going to be hard to get the message across)




Dolly is set up with the two halves staked into the ground about 2' apart and clipped together at both the front and back. The left over blanket was draped over my shoulders and I sat between the two halves on my ammo 'Drybox'.

First day out I set "Dolly' up in the paddock just before first light and in 2 hours I had used half a slab of 12g ammo (250) and had to go back to the truck for more. Ended up using most of the second 1/2 slab and shot over 450 birds.

Here are the answers to some of the questions I had to put up with from some of the people who saw 'Dolly'

1. No, I did not put lipstick on 'Dolly'

2. She doesnt have a sister

3. She doesnt have a twin sister

4. No, you dont have to kiss her first

She is actually darker than shown in the pic, more a natural wool colour.....

Buffco

Oh man... Do you have to keep an eye out for Australians when you're in that get up?

I mean, please tell me you employ a rear gunner... You might never see 'em coming.

woodsrunner

Alec, that's one of the most original ideas I've ever heard of! I had forgotten all about that approach! I might have to do that just out of fun!

5280 shooter II

Of course he had a rear gunner....where do you think the term "Ram" comes from?

5280 shooter II

Alec my brother, you need to watch some more Bugs Bunny cartoons.......try what you may.....Wile E. Coyote (Suuuper genius!) didn't fare as well either...lol!

orchidman

Buffco wrote: »

Oh man... Do you have to keep an eye out for Australians when you're in that get up?

I mean, please tell me you employ a rear gunner... You might never see 'em coming.

When My Aussie buddies come to stay I set her up in the spare bedroom so they will feel at home .:tooth:

orchidman

woodsrunner wrote: »

Alec, that's one of the most original ideas I've ever heard of! I had forgotten all about that approach! I might have to do that just out of fun!

I had discussed this idea with my hunting buddy GB in front of his wife at his business. She laughed hysterically at the thought. I then went home, made dolly, drove around to their place and stuck her on the front lawn. When they drove up the drive,( they live semi rural) she pointed out the neighbours sheep to GB and told him to chase it home before it ate her flowers. GB walked over, pulled Dolly out of the ground and then started laughing.

My next project was to make a Friesan silhouette and disguise the quad bike by bolting one to each side....never got around to it.

Fisheadgib

Nothing really wierd but last year one of the guys that I hunt with said he uses corn oil to oil his guns because the deer are used to the smell of corn on our land. We put out feeders during the off season and most of us mix corn and a high protein feed. I thought it would get gummy pretty quick but it doesn't seem to. One of the craziest cover scent experiences I've had was hunting down in Llano texas about 20 years ago. A freind of mine and another guy that I worked with and I put in for a state hunt next to Llano river state park. There was a game ranch in the area and a lot of exotics had escaped onto state land and they wanted them culled. We could shoot all the exotics, hogs, and antlerless deer that we wanted but no bucks and no javalina. There were several thousand acres and around ten of us on the hunt. It was a very controlled hunt and everyone was assigned an area and specific shooting stands that had to be used. Since I was the only one with a 4x4 truck, we were assigned the remote corner of the property as there were some pretty rugged roads to get there. This was the first time that my friend Mike and I had hunted with Walt, the other guy that we worked with and from the conversations at work, we thought that he was a fairly experienced hunter and knew what he was doing. We quickly learned that he was a magazine rack hunter as that's where he gained most of his knowledge. On the first day of the three day hunt, he stepped out of his camper with shiney new everything and every scent producing device available at the time. I had a regular cab truck and he had to ride in the bed but I had a sliding back window and a fiberglass shell over the bed. We camped at the state park so the hunting area was actually walking distance next door. When I dropped Walt off at his stand, he had stuff on his boots, some little pads tied to string dragging behind his boots, and he hung some little gizmos in the shrubbs around his stand. Mike and I were getting a pretty good laugh out of all this. On the first day, we discovered that there were tons of wild goats roaming the property and we were encouraged to shoot as many as were could. These weren't little farm goats but almost the size of deer as they ran 75 to 90 lbs. I learned that wild goats are the nastiest smelling animals that I've ever been around and the only thing smellier than a wild goat, was a wet wild goat. It drissled the whole weekend and we actually tracked the herds by smell. I shot one on the first day and shortly after the herd bolted, we heard shots from Walts stand. we loaded my animal and drove over to Walts stand to see what he was shooting at. When we got there, he was shaking like a kid that shot his first deer and he could barely talk. He claimed that he shot at a big white billy but he's pretty sure that he missed as he couldn't find any blood and it ran off. He suggested that it would be a waste of time to look for it as he was sure it was a clean miss. We had him direct us to the area that the herd was standing and there was so much blood on the ground, it looked like someone had a chainsaw fight on the spot. We were getting pretty annoyed at Walt at this point and followed a blood trail that looked like someone walking along and pouring blood from a pitcher up the side of a steep hill. About 75yds up, we found a gut shot black billy still wheezing on the ground. We told him to get up here and finish this thing where he hiked up and tried to shoot it in the head from about five feet and missed! He bolted his 30-06 and put the second shot right through the butt (at almost point blank) and it had a coffee cup sized exit wound out of the chest with fecal matter all over hole. Then he ran down the hill to the truck leaving Mike and I to drag the animal down. By now we were getting really annoyed with the guy. (be patient, this is where the real cover scent story starts) Well we got Walt and his blood and crap covered smelly goat in the back of my truck and had to close the sliding window to keep from yacking and we were so PO'd at Walt that we decided to do a little four wheeling on the way back to the ranger station. I bounced Walt and the goats all over the bed of my truck and when we got to the station he was pretty well covered with goat poop and smelled so bad that even the rangers wouldn't allow him into the station to fill out paperwork. It gets better. We convinced Walt that all the animals on the property were used to the smell of the goats and that would be a great natural cover scent. He bought it and actually wore the same clothes for the next two days! A few months later we were drawn for a pig hunt in central Texas but Mike and I decided that we didn't want to do any more hunting with Walt. The goat smelling story lived on at work for years.

Varmintmist

Ewe did know before ewe posted that the ramifications would be double entendre woven into the body of the post...

3RD LAR

When I was a youngster my dad had a pet **** and he kept a pan underneath his cage to collect his pee and feces. He would bottle this and use it for cover scent before he went bow hunting. It was so god awful you couldn't ride in the truck with him and not want to vomit.


Also another peice of advise do not put fox urine in someones heater vents because it never goes away and I mean never. A buddy of mine did this to a friend and he had to scrap the car because no one would buy the car it stunk so bad.

bullsi1911

I know people that use powder strawberry jello sprinkled into the air to attract hogs.

woodsrunner

Collected animal urine is excellent steel trap bait! I've caught a ton of bobcats with collected bobcat urine like that! "Course bobcats aren't too hard to catch....unlike a red fox! I bet it would go a long way in masking human odor in the woods, too!

bklysen

Wambli Ska wrote: »

I kow a lot of folks advocate the use of animal feces as cover scents BUT that is a REALLY BAD IDEA!!!!!!!! Escherichia coli (also called E. coli) is a bacteria that inhabits the colon of just about every creature that eats and craps. The problem is that it has a lot of variations and what YOUR body is used to is not the kind of E. coli that a fox or deer has in it's intestinal system. If E. coli from a diferent species is intruduced into your body's intestinal track at best it will make you sick. At worse IT WILL KILL YOU!!!!!!

All it would take is for you to touch/wear any animal feces and then somehow it gets in your mouth, nose or any food you eat.

Have to admit, that aspect of it NEVER occurred to me. I don't think I was ever tempted to heap such abuse on myself, but this may have sealed the deal.

NN

Back some years, one of the hunting magazines I read had a monthly
series of hunting stories that listed all the particulars like:
gun
ammo
cover scent
etc

Well, this lady in Texas shot a big deer and her cover scent of choice was
Chanel #5

woodsrunner

Like I say.....deer are curious creatures! Chanel #5 MIGHT even attract me :tooth:

kansashunter

I knew of a guy who ate alfalfa pellets starting about a month before bow season. He claimed it made him smell different. I will try to step in some fresh cow manure, the deer around here are used to that smell. I am not putting it any where other than my boots, besides they have some there already.