I have spent a lot of time training with scenting dogs. Tracking dogs, when properly trained, are not just smelling skin rafts and whatnot cast off by the quarry, but they are smelling crushed vegetation, soil moisture escaping from the quarry's footfalls, etc. Trailing dogs can tell which nostril gets more molecules of airborne scent and is able to work a scent cone to find the source by following the increasing concentration. They also process scents individually, which is why the old coffee bean trick over the cocaine doesn't work. When I learned how complex a scent picture is for a dog I realized that trying to fool them was pointless. I breathe, I sweat, I eat. Sent control clothing has openings for sleeves, torsos, heads, and feet. After several benders in college I distinctly remember smelling boozy as alcohol worked its way out of my pores. Scent control products MAY reduce odor, but I really don't think that they will reduce it to the point where their effectiveness justifies their cost. One of our dogs had a big pile of shredded cash, courtesy of the US Treasury, to show that he is hitting on drugs, and not money. That cash was kept sterile, and trainers had to use extravagant means to keep it that way. The first time he hit on the cash it would cause reliability issues in court, reducing his usefulness. As long as every time he hit cash on the street there were drugs with it, and he did not hit on the sterile cash he was fine. Even vacuum sealing leaves detectable residue on the packaging.
I decided a few years ago that if a deer/elk is half as sensitive to scent as a dog is, trying to fool them is a lost cause as well. This was reinforced two years ago after a five day hunt without so much as a baby wipe whore's bath. I was ripe, I could smell myself. I was sitting in a blind on a watering hole waiting to ambush the only legal deer I had seen that week. I could visualize my scent cone. I watched four does walk up to the watering hole. One appeared a little skittish after seeing something that disturbed her in my blind, and hung up staring right at me. The lead doe walked over, grunted at her, smacked her, and got her moving towards the water. The three leading does all wandered into my scent cone and began to drink. The lead doe pushed them forward, and then took her time. She was more alert than the other three. I called it within one foot when she would scent me based on my visualized scent cone. Her head popped up, she looked at me, grunted, and all of them bolted. I had already moved enough to photograph her and with the same hand use my laser range finder to determine she was 12 yards away. My blind was a bunch of juniper branches pulled together and tied strategically with a huge shooting window right in the middle.
At times I think that these animals are so tuned into their environment, that they may not even smell "human", but notice a smell they recognize as out of place, and thus, possibly dangerous. They have learned to trust their sense of smell, and while they can identify some predators by smell, so can we, really, if we are close enough. How many yearlings and young animals have had much exposure to human scent? I would wager that the majority of them can't recognize human scent specifically, and that the vast majority of those that do have no negative run-ins with people trying to kill them. There are far more hikers, walkers, drivers, campers, and fishermen than hunters in the forest. A small percentage of the humans that they detect by scent, sight, and sound are no threat to them, and would rather shoot a picture than an bullet or arrow, but they can't know that. How many just notice something strong smelling that doesn't belong here and their prey instincts say "you don't know what that smell is...RUN in case it is something that wants to eat you".
pat
