I'm normally a rubber boot guy for deer hunting, but am going on a hunt where I'll need my leather LaCrosse clodhoppers for support. What do you guys use for leather conditioning/waterproofing that doesn't have scents that will spook deer?

Your kidding, right?

Bacon grease mixed with peanut butter.........you don't have any bears there do you?

I know what you're talking about and I've read several articles that say don't wear leather anything for deer hunting. Leather boots do have an odor. So do your feet, your mouth and other areas that also give off odor. You can minimize the odor, but you can't eliminate it completely.

There was an interesting article I read in Ontario Out of Doors that tested many of the scent reducing or eliminating products on the market using a trained search and rescue dog. Bottom line, all the scent elimination products didn't do squat, the dog went straight to the target. The only thing they found that did work was a good cover scent, such as scent wafers in pine, earth or oak. The dog still found the target, but it did confuse him for a bit as to the exact location. YMMV

I put baking soda inside mine. Not sure it helps but won't hurt.

If it helps I accidently pissed on my boot before I shot my deer.

"What the hell? It smells like Pepsi on someone's bo..." and I shot him.

Over here its more like coffee...

I've used whatever is native to the area I'm hunting for decades. Simply kicking (or scratching if frozen) the ground beneath your feet while standing is as good a "cover" scent as you can get in my humble opinion. Nipping a couple small cedar branches, or stuffing your pocket with corn leaves are other examples.

Never ceases to amaze me when hunters start spritzing pineapple, or hickory scent where neither is a natural occurance.

True success of course is to hunt into the wind (preferably with the sun at your back too).

While someone besides me may have gotten away with wearing leather boots and still shot a deer with a firearm, I bet that I am the only person on Earth who has killed a deer with an arrow while wearing not only leather boots, but other bits and pieces of leather in the form of a belt, knife sheath, wallet, watch strap, and other items now forgotten.

My slings are all leather. So is my wallet.

if muzzle loader or rifle/shotgun hunting would not be concerned. Can smoke wear clothes from a night before spent in a bar whorehouse . Just hunt the wind.

Now if bow hunting from a stand I am a scent Nazi. would be very scent conscious . Rubber boots, clothes washed in baking soda, washing every day with u scented soap etc.

If there are cattle in the area you walk through, finding a nice, fresh flop to step in with both feet is a great cover idea. The jury is still out on finding a skunk to annoy into spraying you; there are those who maintain that it will cause the deer to go on alert, while others swear it won't. (My favorite is still the guy who gargled with Tink's #69.)

I knew a guy once who wouldn't go after a deer or anything else without sloshing some Pine-sol on his boots. Swore up and down by it.

made sense to me at the time.

>laughin'<


That, qualifies as kook of the year material.

*nods in agreement 'bout stepping in cowchit*

I have several racks from very nice whitetails I've been fortunate enough to kill over the years, but only one that I had a shoulder mount done on. I've never had him "scored" but have been told by a friend who scores, he'd be close to (if not) 170. I was perched on a five-gallon bucket, rifle across my feet, sipping a just-poured cup of steaming coffee that I'd poured from my thermos when the buck showed up (upwind of course). I swapped cup, for rifle, shot once, swapped back to coffee, and gathered him in after I finished enjoying the java.

You do know that people have been killing things for a very long time whilst wearing leather goods in various states of decay...successfully...don't you?


I cannot wait until someone works out that squatting for a crap has all sorts of scented (?) ramifications....we will probably have to start carrying a bottle to piss in as well.

I have been wearing a pair of leather Brownings since 2003. The first year, the biggest buck I had ever seen came down the path I'd just walked and stood under my stand. He's on the wall now.

Once in a very very long while, I will catch a deer making note of my footsteps when I'm in my smelly work boots, but that is rare. I think they are more concerned about the crushed vegetation than the smell of what made them. I have yet to see a negative reaction.

I blame magazines. They've plum run out of useful stuff to say. So in order to fill pages to sell, they create solutions to problems that don't exist. And they're obviously in cahoots with gimmicky product manufacturers.

Got a rubber boot to sell??? No problem. We'll create a problem that requires rubber boots to solve.

I personally had a yearling bust me when it cut the trail I walked in on a while earlier. I was wearing all rubber boots and had just walked over 1/4 of a mile down a path and through several puddles.

Since then I worry more about where I step than what I step into.

If baking soda absorbs odors, it absorbs your odors. Then as you walk, you're sloughing off thousands(or millions?) of human funk impregnated microscopic baking soda encapsuli. Leaving an ever better trail of scent.

yes they will smell you but many times you can still kill them anyway. This one smelled the stinking tennis shoes my bud was wearing that he cleans horse stables in when we put the stand up 6 hours before. Last evening of primitive weapons.

Since the beginning of time-- Take a guess on how many deer have been killed with someone wearing leather on their feet. ---- Wind , wind, wind. -- For years at camp we have been using OLD SPICE in the white bottle with blue ship.

A few years back I hunted with a guy that would spray himself with some cheap honeysuckle perfume his wife was throwing away and he got a whiff of it, said it reminded him of a woods walk when the stuff was blooming.
We gave him a large ration of crap every year until we realized he was the first one to fill his tag every year and most years it was opening day morning.

Best advice yet...

This is all very interesting. At my hunting camp there is a variety of boots worn...leather, rubber, rubber/leather, leather/Cordura and many lined with Thinsulate and GoreTex and other synthetic materials.

I would like to get a federal grant to study the question of scent and boots.

The hunters in the upper Great Lakes have already solved the scent issue with the blaze orange clothing. A day or two before the gun season openers the clothes are hanging outside in the wind throughout the region.

All those countless numbers of deer that have been killed over hundreds and hundreds of years in North America by hunters who didn't have scent blockers or weren't concerned about such things...they must have been dumber deer than the ones we have nowadays.

I like Winnie's attitude. Young hunter already realizes that boots,color of camo, scent clothing,ect, is all over-rated.

Pay attn to the wind direction and that's all you need to worry about IMO. It's worked for me.

i always wear leather boots and seldom use camo.

One of the biggest myths, still being perpetuated to this very day, is that rubber boots are " scent free". Complete and utter BS.

As far as leather conditiong and to help moisture seal seams in my leather boots I use Fiebings mink oil leather preserver. Its about like a vasiline consistancy but non petroleum base. I just rub it in with my hands. It does a good job.





Rubber boots will not permeate odors like leather will, That in its self does help contain foot type odors. But they will certainly pick up and will carry any odors that they come in contact with...thats why I don't put on the boots that I'm going to hunt in untill I actually get to my hunting destination.

what about the dumphucks with all their haute couture $400 ScentLok outer shell and their SuperMan underArmor undies and their knee high rubber boots, yet they are standing in that kitty litter soaked with diesel fuel at the gas station 3am? or they tromp into the Waffle House with all that garb on?

or the same guys that go to all that worry, then strap their climbing stands OVER the exhaust pipe of their ATVs?

ya but, but...but........

I wonder how long it will be before the bone collector/hank parker clowns come out with a gas additive for atvs that will actually cover the smell AND draw in the monster bucks!!
(sarcasim to the max)
but I wouldn't put it past em!

If somebody could up with a viable Fart Silencer Scent Blocker ...

Now you're talkin'. That's my biggest problem in the woods.

heck, I've read on another forum that deer come rushing in to the sound of a human pissing from a tree stand. Bucks think it's another deer.

laffin here

I don't know about bucks rushing in but it's a well established fact that as soon as you whip it out, about mid-stream you'll see game or birds. I can't begin to tell you how many times this has happened to me.

That's the way it went down with a buck I shot a couple of years ago. I got up to take a pizz and ...