Opening Day for Deer Rifle Season is a mere 5 days away, so it's due time to take this week to review the age old rituals of the Pre Hunt. The nuances surrounding the Pre Hunt Rituals revolve around purging one's "civility" in order to embrace the primal wilderness BEFORE we enter it. The goal of the hunter it to not be heard, seen, or smelt by his prey. Giving one's position away, is a tried and true method to end up getting skunked. To naively enter the forest smelling like your lavatory is indeed folly. I re-learned this lesson last year.
It began predawn as I sat in my stand on a crisp morning. For the past 30 minutes I had been listening to a deer in the valley to my west slowly make his way up the hill and into my line of sight. Finally he appeared. It was a medium sized 4 point buck. He was to small to shoot so this was an opportunity to just relax and watch the show. He was tracking a doe in estrus because his nose was to the ground, and he was paying little attention to his surroundings. My stand was a good 30 feet of the ground and wrapped in canvas so I was invisible and very quiet, but there was a mild wind out of the north. As soon as the buck was downwind of me, you would have thought he had been shot. He froze, and his head snapped instantly to look up at my stand! He knew I was there and we entered into a stare down. Deer are color blind so even with my orange hat and vest, my silhouette was broken up by the canvas and the tree behind me. He couldn't see or hear me, but he was drinking in my scent and you could sense his fear escalate as his raised foreleg trembled. Finally I grew tired of the game and tipped my hat to him. With a flash of white tail he was gone...
Stalking a deer is rarely a viable option unless you are at least half Cherokee, or you can hover above the ground. Likewise you can't control or always predict the direction of the wind so it behooves the hunter to eliminate/mask his civilized scent as he sits along a known deer path and waits for his shot. So, starting the week before season opens the hunter simply has to stop bathing. This implies a level of sacrifice for family/co-workers but this is serious business. Shaving must also stop if it hasn't. Only dry shaving can be tolerated because even unscented shaving cream screams "man" in the forest. Couple these elements with a daily rub down with fresh cedar chips or worst case a handful from the hamster cage, (not the dog run, dogs are predators!!) and in 4-6 days you can eliminate most alerting odors. Now for your attire.
Throw a handful of dirt and two handfuls of pine cones into the washing machine with all your hunting clothes and that should eliminate the laundry detergent smells. Drip dry outside or if you're in a pinch, chuck them in the dryer with a squirrel tail. The oils in the tail provide a great softening effect just like a dryer sheet, it also will neutralize any UV brighteners that your clothes might still have from previous laundering. And since you will be sitting up in a tree, smelling like a squirrel is fitting enough. Besides everything else you are about to do makes this pale in comparison. For the Pre Hunt Rituals have just begun and by the end, everyone will consider you squirrel bait anyway. To bad it's not squirrels we are after...
Until next time..
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