LAST UPDATED: May 1st, 2015
After a long hot summer, bow season for America’s favorite big game animal is finally getting underway across most of the country. Deer season ushers in a pile of new opportunities for a fresh start in the whitetail woods as hunters go head to head with one of the most challenging critters God ever put on the earth. You likely already have a pack full of gear designed to bring deer closer to your stand. However, few things allow you to draw and place mature bucks right where you want them like deer lures. Here’s a quick guide to using deer lures this season…
Tell a Story
I remember as a kid thinking I was big stuff when I bought my first deer grunt call and little glass bottle of Tink’s #69 Doe-In-Rut buck lure. I had no idea how to use either of them. All I knew was that they were the tools that no deer hunter would hit the woods without. So I bought them and used them with reckless abandon. I spooked more deer than I can count blowing that grunt call, and more than once I showed up at church reeking like deer pee after a mishap with that little brown bottle of Tink’s #69.
Eventually I learned that calls and deer lures work much the same way; they are designed to tell a story. We are painting a picture in the mind of the buck we hunt when we use the many deer lures on the market today. Many a man is lured away by curiosity, food, and sex. Whitetail bucks are no different.
Many of today’s deer lures allow you to entice bucks (and does) past your stand with scent products that lure through the drive for food or curiosity – persimmon, acorn, honeysuckle, and others. The folks at Tink’s have made this task much easier with their new Hot Shot Mist lures available in Persimmon, Turnip Greens, Sweet Weed, and more. The mist-style products are user-friendly with easy application and no messes. While many folks use these scents early in the season they can actually be effective all year long. After all, a whitetail always needs to eat.
The exclusive bag-in-can technology of the Tink’s Hot Shot allows you to quickly and easily disperse deer lure without making a mess or wasting product.
Tink’s also allows you to easily tap into a buck’s sex drive with the same simple Hot Shot mist applications in products designed to present a rutting buck or doe. The various deer scents allow you to accurately paint a picture in a buck’s mind throughout the season, pre-rut, rut, and post rut. Tell the story…bring deer closer.
Keep It Clean
Despite slick advertising claims by some scent control companies you’ll never completely eliminate human odor in the deer woods. That is why it is of the utmost importance to go the extra mile in reducing as much human odor as you possibly can. This is especially true when using deer scents and lures. These scents will automatically kick a deer’s senses into overdrive as they try to determine what they are, where they’re at and how they can get to them. If your human scent is mixed in with the lure it may be enough to curb their curiosity and send them headed the other direction.
Wear rubber gloves and boots as you walk in and work on your stand sites. Mature bucks will know the very first time a careless hunter sets foot in the woods. Many hunters will bathe, scrub, and spray down to reduce human odor prior to a hunt but won’t think twice about walking into the woods on a scouting run or to check trail cameras in their street clothes with the smell of fragrant cologne or perfume. Reducing as much human odor as possible should be at the forefront of our approach every time we step into the woods.
Scent control is always important but even moreso when using deer lures. Always try to spray down with a scent eliminating spray, wear rubber boots and a scent control clothing such as ScentBlocker.
The use of scrape drippers, scent bombs, stretch wicks, and drag rags help make for clean and easy dispersal of deer lure and urine products with minimal human contact. Use these tools to broadcast the scent you want near your stand location, as well as to help minimize unwanted odors in your area.
Place Your Buck within Bow Range
Conscious and careful placement of your deer lure can make or break shot opportunities when hunting with a bow. There will be times when a buck will follow your drag-rag scent trail with his nose to the ground without a care in the world. Those are the hunts we dream about. But there will be many more times when a buck responds to your deer lure and remains undetected by scent-checking the presentation from a down-wind hide. Consider the wind direction when you lay down a scent trail, mock scrape, or hang a scent bomb. The idea is to draw that buck into your effective bow range, regardless of whether he walks up to the exact spot of the scent dispersal unit or scent checks from down-wind.
When placing deer lures keep in mind that not all bucks will walk directly up to them. They may hang out down wind to check the scent and look for danger before approaching. Hunter shown wearing Lost Camo.
Deer lures can be worth their weight in gold when it comes to positioning deer for the shot. With a little more attention to detail and patience in the process, you’ll soon discover increased encounters with bucks when you put deer lures to work near your stand this season.
