Many years ago, when Shari and I were first dating, my wife-to-be was under the mistaken notion that I drank a 20-ounce bottle of pop every time I went hunting. Finally, I had to confess that I was not hooked on soda. The bottle was empty when I stuffed it in my backpack and, um, filled if my bladder convinced my brain we’d been in the treestand too long.
Obviously, preventing deer from detecting human odor is a building block of deer hunting. It doesn’t matter if you’re the biggest carbon-clothing geek out there, or someone who simply plays the wind; if you aren’t at least thinking about scent control, you likely aren’t very successful. And since urine is one facet of our odor we have some control over, plenty of deer hunters take the logical step and pee in a bottle.
But in recent years there’s a ton of evidence that human urine doesn’t bother deer a bit. In fact, I’ve been peeing in my mock scrapes the last several seasons, and for the most part it drives buck crazy…in a good way. So acting upon the evidence I’d heard from other hunters who “let if fly” off the stand, and my own mock scrape experiments, I decided a few years back that I would no longer tolerate the muss, fuss and mess of a pee bottle. I’ve found the experience liberating, and to the best of my knowledge, have not spooked a deer with my scent-marking.
So as always, I’m curious about your experience. Are you a pee-bottle kinda hunter, or do you just let it rip when you can’t take it anymore?
