Scent control questions

[Danno]

#1 Thermals. Someone explain this to me again. I know heat rises. Does this mean you hunt high in the morning when the temp is rising and low in the evening?
#2 Kitty litter. Any reason this wouldn't be effective to layer on the bottom of a container that you store your hunting clothes after the day's hunt? Assuming the litter is clay only, no added scents.

 

[blake]

Thermals rise in the morning and fall in the evening especially in hilly terrain. By bedding high during the day deer can catch uphill scents, by moving down hill in the evening they move into the thermals that are still rising. Game animals often bed low at night where they catch any falling scent with the changing thermals. When they move uphill to beds in the morning, they move into thermals that are still falling until it warms enough to reverse them. Just my thoughts about this subject.

As for the kitty litter? I have no idea.

 

[Scott]

Thermals can let you hunt almost any ridge on a calm, clear, sunny morning. As the hills heat up in the morning, it will pull your scent up the slope. On calm evenings when the temp is high above on the ridge, your scent will be pulled downward as it heads for the cooler bottoms. So basically hunt high in the AM and low in the PM. However, this only holds true when there is little wind, generally the first or last couple of hours of daylight. If you have a strong wind, lets say coming from the top of the ridge, as it gets pulled out over the valley, it will get sucked back in and form a vacume that pushes the wind right back up the ridge. So even if you have a strong west wind, if your hunting near the top of the ridge it feels like a east wind. This is kind of a neat little trick to hunt a ridge you might think the wind is totally wrong for. Vacumes are only formed when you have a nice strong consistent wind. Regardless of time of day, with high winds I would hunt high in all cases.

As for your second question, I have no idea.

 

[muddy]

well...i would assume that most kitty litter is made to absorb the scent of the cat crap. if you can get some litter that is unscented it would absorb the smells from your clothes??

 

[ironwood]

Kitty litter!

 

[blake]

I bet that Kat stores her hunting clothing in kitty litter.

How else could she have stalked up on the cat the other day?

 

[Shredder]

Because the cat she snuck up on thought she was just another cat. Make sure you use fresh litter and not the spent stuff

 

[Kat]

Sorry, no kitty litter here.

I store my clothes and boots with cut cedar branches. I had the bright idea to put one in the dryer the other day with a load of hunting clothes. Very fragrant!

Guys, maybe you should ask the wife before you try this...

 

[Kat]

Update: The aforementioned cedar branch in the dryer was added during the last 5 - 10 minutes. I just finished another load and added one for the whole drying time to see what would happen. Not good. Most of the needles came off and got lost down the lint trap and were all over the bottom of the dryer. And it didn't even smell any better than the first time.

 

[Danno]

I imagine cedar wood can get kinda sappy if it's heated enough. I hang my clothes out to dry. The dryer smells like the perfume from the last 10 dryer sheets.

 

[muddy]

Kat - how about taking the cedar branch or cedar chips and putting it into a fine mesh bag?? would keep stuff from going all over the place in the tumblin.

 

[Kat]

That’s a good idea muddy. But I got the same scent results with the quick five minute tumble at the end, and there was no mess with that since it wasn’t in there long enough to dry the needles out. Oh well, I had to try it. Sometimes more is better, but sometimes it just gets you in trouble...

 

[KSQ2]

i've tied cedar branches in a pair of pantyhose and put them in the drier before, works pretty good and no mess. here's a question for the scent gurus. i read on this website that some of you take chlorophyll (sp?) during season. i recently got some capsules to take, should i take these every day or just the night before and day of the hunt?