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Deer attracting scents

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#42 ·
I was in a white oak one year and shot a young doe right away in the morning. Before I climbed down a button buck came in. I was dropping creamsaver candies on his back. He'd push them around with his nose then go back to eating nuts. Was that baiting?
 
#44 ·
NiteSniper said:
Anyone try Smokey’s Orbital scent? I heard good things about it. Then again, someone recommended to me a very popular scent made by James Valley Scents (I think).. and I had a buck snort the first time using it.
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I never tried a pre orbital, interdigital, or any other deer scent at a scrape. If you get a licking branch started early in the season, live deer will deposit their own glandular scent on a daily basis. To get a licking branch started I'll saturate the entire branch or vine with a curiosity scent (vanilla, banana) and the deer will start hitting it immediately. After it is established I will freshen it up with curiosity scent once in a while, but I keep the added scent way up high so that it's not on the same section that the natural glandular scent is.
I have videos of deer, even big bodied bucks standing on their hind legs trying to get to the curiosity lure. I had 7 bucks last year standing around the same branch, with 5 of them working the branch at the same time. It works all year long and they will come long distances to check out who's been there.
I put out a "treecoy" today in an open area and saturated it with banana. I fully expect that transplanted tree to get destroyed.
 
#45 ·
Fairchild #17 said:
I never tried a pre orbital, interdigital, or any other deer scent at a scrape. If you get a licking branch started early in the season, live deer will deposit their own glandular scent on a daily basis. To get a licking branch started I'll saturate the entire branch or vine with a curiosity scent (vanilla, banana) and the deer will start hitting it immediately. After it is established I will freshen it up with curiosity scent once in a while, but I keep the added scent way up high so that it's not on the same section that the natural glandular scent is.
I have videos of deer, even big bodied bucks standing on their hind legs trying to get to the curiosity lure. I had 7 bucks last year standing around the same branch, with 5 of them working the branch at the same time. It works all year long and they will come long distances to check out who's been there.
I put out a "treecoy" today in an open area and saturated it with banana. I fully expect that transplanted tree to get destroyed.
Click to expand...
That’s good info, thx for sharring. I’ve always been fascinated with licking branches and think they are the best (legal) way for getting buck inventory. I been reading up on licking branches more this summer and I’m noticing there are some small things you can do to turn a ‘good’ licking branch into a hotspot for bucks. I look fwd to testing them out.
 
#46 ·
bob kirschners widow maker is good, it will scare off younger bucks but will attract the dominate buck, the original "cover up" is good stuff too. i use to put that on my clothes and store them in a plastic trash bag. i put some on my boots and sprinkled it around my stand. then i placed the open bottle under my ladder stand. a mature doe and two young ones came by. one of the little ones started sniffing around and followed my trail right to the ladder. it stuck its head between the bottom rungs and started licking the open bottle of cover up.
by that time mom had me pegged and was going bonkers, snorting and stomping her hoof trying to get junior away from me....it was quitting time to i yelled at junior, that poor little deer jerked its head up and down so many times trying to get out from under my ladder i thought it was going to knock me out of it. it finally fell backwards, got up, looked around for mom who was already gone. surprisingly it took off in the same direction.

i wish i had that on video :)
 
#49 ·
bohunr said:
i think it was bob foulkrod or dan fitzgerald that used urine from a cow in heat to kill some nice bucks. just grab a rain coat and a 5 gallon bucket. find a friendly farmer and collect all the urine you need.
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I grew up on a dairy farm and said the same thing for a long time......deer and cow urine smell identical. And I'll bet the pheromones are equally attractive.
 
#52 ·
I remember a quote from Wayne Boscovitch a (FAMOUS,,)bear guide from Maine, coming to a bait site upwind and a bear had it's head inside of a cow carcass feeding the bear whipped his head out and took off ,(HE SAID I KNEW THEN THAT THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING THAT CAN COVER HUMAN SCENT PERIOD)AND I FOUND THIS TO BE TRUE.........
 
Discussion starter · #58 · (Edited)
Years ago when Tink Natham own and run Tinks I read his brochures and applied Tink's 69 to a number of setups. One brought in an OH buck traveling some 150 yards down wind to him putting his nose on the canister hanging on a bush 20 yards from me.

Another hunt on the last day in PA I was set up near a bed down with lots of rubs to see nothing. Until 9AM the wind changed from a cross wind to flow down wind directly to the bed down area . I knew something was going to happen so I stood up and within minutes an eight point came into to sniff one of my three canisters filled with Tink's 69. It was a 6 yard shot.

Again in IN state a nice 8 point approach to one on my Tinks film canisters, sniff, turned and walked to another before I could release an arrow. This shot 18 yards.

Tink hasn't run the company for many years. I remember one thing he said never buy scent that is not in a bottle as you will not get good results and low and behold new management changed to plastic bottles. It never worked nearly as well for me since.

Over several decades of using different scent I have never found any product to equal the results of Tink's the few years I used it back in the day.

I once used a bottle of buck lure which brought a couple of different bucks off their main trail to come within 15 and 20 yards stand and stare at dispenser. I don't remember the name of the product as it was discontinued when I needed to purchase another bottle. Ditto with a paste scent in the early nineties which was discontinued.

I try different scents no longer excepting bucks to come in from afar and stand near by for a good open shot. The most that I find that can happen is a buck comes in to my area and stops allowing for a shot or spends some time in range raising his nose and sniffing. That is great. I haven't had one come in and stick their nose on the dispenser as was the case with the old glass bottle of Tink's 69.
 
Discussion starter · #59 · (Edited)
I was hoping this scent topic would proceed to licking branches. Whereas, they can be a real magnet for deer.

Finding an existing licking branch is a real asset as they are often used by both sexes and all ages of deer. Easier found in Jan. thru March with no snow on the ground. Often scrapes appear at licking branches during the pre rut. Years ago there was not much information on licking branches, their purpose and the opportunities for seeing more deer. Kinda like seeing a rub...A buck was there once. Will he return???? When????

I wanted to increase the activity at this sites particularly daylight activity. Spending many days watching and hunting these areas taught me that the ones on crop areas were not used by older bucks until after dark but the hidden ones gave more opportunities for what a was looking for in a buck come pre rut activity. This knowledge did not produce me with wall hangers on a regular bases by any means, but intrigued me and peaked my interest as I knew there was potential there. I just needed to increase my chances of being there when they are there. The more I could get them to visit the greater my chances.

One of my early brain storms was to scrape up soil from fresh scrapes in the area and out of the area dump it on my site in an effort to make big bucks think many other deer were using a particular licking branch/scrape under my tree stand often with the aid of different scents based on the time of the season.

I normally have 7 scrapes I maintain a couple originated by deer and the others mock scrapes, Now with the aid of trail cams some of the guess work in documented.

Currently I use a section of grape vine and hang it to the height that even a small young short deer can reach it to rub and they seem to love going that often as I have hundreds of pictures of young deer to mature bucks and doe distributing their scent on the vine. In the early days when I hung the vines high they would often stand on their hind legs to rub.

Got called away will return with what has and has not worked for scents at these sites for me.
 
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Fairchild #17
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