Re: Do scent blocking/masking products work?
You CANNOT eliminate human odor. If you're breathing, you're stinking.
But, you CAN reduce it, and hence reduce your human signature in the woods. You can manage and reduce your scent possibly to a "non threatening" level.
The hunter soaps are nothing more than anti-bacterial soaps without perfumes, they kill the bacteria that grows on you and creates body odor. Scent killer sprays are predominantly baking soda and peroxide, one absorbs some odor, the other kills bacteria.
Masking scents simply intermingle with your human odor. The idea being it makes it harder for the animal to separate out the odors.
Deer are not smart animals, in fact, they're downright dumb if they havent been conditioned to hunters. I firmly believe you can reduce, manage, and mask your human odor to the point that A) your human scent is at a "non threatening" level, or B) you have masked your odor enough by throwing a bouquet of odors at the animal.
I do not believe this fools a deers nose, but I do believe this can confuse them long enough to potentially get you a shot.
Also, with deer, a lot of how a deer reacts to human odor of varying age and levels, has to do with the recent experiences of that particular animal. Deer do not teach their young.
Now coyotes on the other hand, there is no way around their nose. A coyotes nose IS better than a whitetails, no doubt about it, whats more, they are a far more intelligent animal. They will smell you farther, can differentiate between "old" and "fresh" scent better, and are much better at separating out odors. Unless the last several generations of their family has had absolutely NO human interaction, it is game over when they hit your scent stream. The ability of a coyote to pass on experiential behaviors to its young is pretty damn cool, and part of why they are so adaptive and resilient to selection pressure.