Early Season Scent Control Is Critical To Harvesting Mature Bucks

It is that time! We wait all summer for this…the final months of preparation just before deer season arrives.  Time to start getting the Hoyt Bow and Morrell Targets out and flinging some arrows down range. It’s also about time to head to the store and pick up your tags. In just a few short weeks the 2016-2017 whitetail season will be underway!  If you are serious about punching a tag on big buck during the early season, then this is the blog for you. Why? Because when the day comes to climb in the tree for the first time this year, the most critical factor is early season scent control, and this blog supplies the need-to-know behind it!

Now up to this point your main concern has been checking your Bushnell Trophy Cam’s and making sure that you have had plenty of Big and J Attraction out. This has mostly been an effort to ensure that you are ready and supplied with all the information you can once opening day arrives. Outlining a hit-list, patterning mature bucks, and defining deer movement all are necessary in order to stack the odds in your favor of harvesting a mature buck, especially in the early season. If everything happens to align perfectly, chances are you can harvest a mature buck on opening day.

Over the past months we have touched on the opportunity that whitetail hunting during the early season provides.  The early season is one of the few great times to punch a G5 broadhead in the breadbasket of your number one hit list buck. Whitetails during the early season are typically still stuck in their summer pattern. This small window provides the hunter with great advantage.  While the lists of advantages that come with whitetail hunting during the early season are many, there are no guarantees due to one factor above all…scent control. This facet of deer hunting can stand in your way, making early season scent control techniques and know how at the top of your list to-do.

Remember the Ole’ Gym Bag?

At Bone Collector, we believe in keeping it simple.  So in honor of keeping it simple, we will ask you to relate the importance of early season scent control to that ole’ gym back you kept in your locker back in high school.  We all sweat, and as any deer hunter will tell you sweating can be problematic when you when it comes to deer hunting.  Remember how nasty that ole’ gym bag was after a couple of weeks of not washing your clothes?  That human odor you encountered then is very similar to what a whitetail deer can detect the second you begin to perspire or walk in the field without employing some fashion of scent control. That is just how sensitive their sense of smell is.

The reasons that early season scent control is so challenging end up being the facts behind its importance. The first reason is that the temperatures and humidity during the early season are the warmest and highest they will be all season. This means better scent distribution and that a whitetail’s nose will be at the most optimal point it will during the entire season. The second reason is that the warm temperatures can obviously lead to sweating, increasing the amount of human odor you are producing. When it comes to scent control during the early season, the odds are stacked against you no doubt.

Early Season Scent Control Success

Although scent control during the early season can be very challenging, the good news is the challenge can be overcome.  Here are a few things that you can do to help level the playing field and make sure that you can putting a big buck in the back of the Chevy this early season.

Bone Collector apparel and their full line of field sprays and detergents are critical to not only control your scent but to also ease your mind during the early season.  It is important to do your best to wash your clothing after each early season set, whether you felt you perspired or not.  Take advantage of ScentLok’s full line of light weight wear, as it can really make the difference between letting an arrow fly and watching that buck run the other way.

If there was ever a time to dress in the field, it would be during the early season.  As a matter of fact, many whitetail hunters who have routinely had success during the early season will not change into their hunting clothing until they are close to the stand.  This is an excellent practices to ensure that you have the best scent control possible and are doing all you can to stack the odds in your favor.

Lastly, hunting on the right wind is one of the most important things you can do to have early season success.  During the winter months or during the rut you can sometimes get away with hunting with a marginal wind.  This is typically not the case during the early season.  Many whitetail hunters are eager to get into the stand of the first time, and will sometimes press the issue.  This is a mistake.  Be patient and don’t press it.  You don’t want to blow a good chance at that hit-list’er.  If the wind direction is an issue, begin preparing multiple hunting locations now that will free up your available wind and keep you in the game all season.

The early season is an awesome time to hunt deer and is an excellent time to punch a tag on a big buck, but just because they are unpressured deer doesn’t mean they are not warry.  They are still deer, and tricking their nose is critical.  Be sure you are practicing good early season scent control and you might just punch a tag on opening day.