Scent Control Questions for Safari Concession Owners/Managers

I have hunted South Africa seven times, and I've hunted at a number of different safari concessions and locations over the years in multiple provinces. Almost without fail, the concessions furnish soap/shampoos that are VERY heavily scented with perfume, as if we are going to a pub and not into the bush to hunt game. Also, the laundry detergent used on our hunting clothes has also been heavily perfumed. I am strictly a bowhunter, so perhaps I'm more sensitive to scent control than are rifle hunters, and perhaps it's the fact that many of these concessions (that claimed to be experts at both rifle and bow hunting) were really just rifle concessions that only occasionally catered bowhunters? Are scent free detergents, soaps and shampoos not readily available in South Africa? It's a question that I've always wondered about, but I have never asked. In the U.S., scent free soap products of all types are easily purchased wherever groceries are purchased. While there are archery-only concessions, and I've hunted one or two of those as well, they just don't act like they think the African game will be alerted by the strong perfume scents, although they are probably a little better than the "all weapons" concessions.

I bring my own scent killing bath soap and if I had access to a washing machine, I'd do my own clothes as I do here in the states, even if I'm hunting groundhogs or other varmints. Same goes for blue clothing and the camo that's made from fiber that shows up in UV light During hunting season, starting the beginning of September until mid February, I have a couple big Walmart tubs that sit outside. My hunting clothes are stored there. Those clothes are washed with this detergent that has no whiteners, brighteners or other chemicals.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07L8NJY8W/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I suspect a lot of busted stalks in Africa are the result of the wrong detergent, bath soap and aftershave lotion.

One thing that I have found with animals is that they are inquisitive. They will search out and find the source of a new smell in their area when they come across one.

In my bow hunting days I'd keep all of my hunting clothes in a bag along with pine, cedar, or oak limbs depending on where I was hunting.I then found out that deer and elk really didn't care. Even when I was cutting firewood during mid dI would keep my bow and arrows close because of the ones that would want to see what all the noise was about.

The places that you needed to worry about were where they had been chased or scarred off by someone that they came to investigate and associated that smell with danger

How about cigarets .I know I can smell cigarets. Scent is scent everyone need to pay attention.

Our trackers swear that it is gun oil scent that gives the hunter away

Lon

Tokoloshe Safaris said:

How about cigarets .I know I can smell cigarets. Scent is scent everyone need to pay attention.


Lon

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Smoke is naturally occurring in nature, I would presume that they could associate cigaret smoke for some other weed.

I've seen mule deer and elk bedded down in areas that had recently been burnt over with the smell of smoke all over the place.

My PH said he never worried about animals scenting us because we always hunted and stalked into the wind. We did not sit in any blinds. We got very close to some animals. No long range stuff.

Much of bowhunting in South Africa is done from hides, and there are many days when the wind is swirling and you can't control your ability to stay downwind of the animals. I would think that if the animals are hunted from hides very often, they would quickly learn to tell when people are in them or not by the perfume smell associated with getting shot at!

StickFlicker AZ said:

Much of bowhunting in South Africa is done from hides, and there are many days when the wind is swirling and you can't control your ability to stay downwind of the animals. I would think that if the animals are hunted from hides very often, they would quickly learn to tell when people are in them or not by the perfume smell associated with getting shot at!

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Warthog hunting (and likely other pigs) is the worst. However, you controlling your scent doesn't do you much good unless the PH and tracker are controlling theirs as well.

We went through hell trying to get a good pig in close. My PH was burning cow pies around the truck and our blind when we hunted them. They would still wind us. We missed out on a really good shooter male that got our wind from 100 yds away in what seemed like a matter of seconds. This was actually the day we hunted a mud/stone pit hide on the PH's property he used for bowhunting.

Didn't seem to matter with anything else. The wildebeest, if anything, was the other animal besides the warthog that was really good at grabbing scents.

Tokoloshe Safaris said:

How about cigarets .I know I can smell cigarets. Scent is scent everyone need to pay attention.

Our trackers swear that it is gun oil scent that gives the hunter away

Lon

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JimP said:

Smoke is naturally occurring in nature, I would presume that they could associate cigaret smoke for some other weed.

I've seen mule deer and elk bedded down in areas that had recently been burnt over with the smell of smoke all over the place.

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Cigarette, cigars and pipe smoke is a double edge sword sort of speak.

Back when I was a smoker and smoked all three forms: deer would often come in to check out what the smell was. Then again a heavy smoker, not necessarily a chain smoker, that has a stronger essence of smoke in their clothing deer 100 yards away would blow a take off in an instant. Like people some enjoy the smell some just totally frown on it.

Campfire smoke seems to cover human scents and deer could careless about it.

Low monotone conversation can also draw deer in closure.

Unfortunately NA deer are NA deer and not European deer, nor African PG.

I take my own scent free soap, deodorant, and such.

I know I'm a little late to this conversation, but I'd like to throw in my two cents.
In my travels, I have noticed that most guides, trackers and PH's, at least the ones I have hunted with, in the US, Canada, & Europe, and especially all African guides and trackers, are heavy smokers. Heck, the trackers will smoke anything and roll their own in newspaper. They could care less about scent control in any situation, be it body odor (especially trackers), smoke, cooking odors, etc, and we always seem get the game we are after. You can be 100% scent free, but if your hunting partners, guides, trackers, and PH are not, it's not doing you any good except in your mind. I'm heading back for cape buffalo, and I know that's a different critter altogether, but I also have faith in my PH in that he will watch the wind and get me close enough for the 50ish yard shot I asked for. But I also know that those trackers that look like they never bath will be right there with us as well, reeking of smoke and body odor.
Now when I'm deer hunting in the states, it's a completely different story.

HookMeUpII said:

Warthog hunting (and likely other pigs) is the worst. However, you controlling your scent doesn't do you much good unless the PH and tracker are controlling theirs as well.

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You said a mouthful with the comment above. I have always tried to control my scent profile when hunting but in Africa nobody seemed to be all that concerned about it. We stalked to within 30y of one Nyala and several others were inside of 100y. Only the Zebra seemed to be easily spooked but only when I was actually hunting them. At other times, they seemed like cattle. I still used unscented deodorant and did what I could but like you said unless everybody is onboard it is meaningless.

The days I tracked buffalo we had a team of three trackers and they looked like a cross between refugees and terrorists. Clothes in tatters and very aromatic. Maybe that was why the buffalo were so hard to get close to on that concession. We moved to another location and left the trackers at home and then we tagged a buff.

Wind and movement are the 2 most important......

When baiting(lion and leopard) it becomes a completely different ball game.....

I cringe at some of the leopard hunting videos and how some guys treat the bait site.....I am not surprised at the low succes rate of some.....

I’m a skeptic when it comes to this. Most game animals have a sense of smell that is orders of magnitude ahead of ours. I suspect that they can smell people with or without detergent perfumes, so called sent-blockers, shower or no shower. Maybe all of these efforts make a small difference, but probably only a small difference.

When hunting I do switch to Arm & Hammer unscented deodorant and that's about it.

This was a question I've been wanting to ask. Its a ongoing thing for me during deer season or hog hunting. I had a feeling Africa hunters weren't much in to it since I've never seen it mentioned.

I have always found the whole scent blocking tech was great at tagging hunters, but pretty useless in actually tagging game. And yes, I was a bow as well as rifle hunter for many years. If an animal can smell your shampoo, he can smell your human odor. Whether in the Americas, Europe, or Africa, I clean up when I get in after the hunt, and get into clean nice smelling clothes in the morning. I spend my time and energy worrying about wind direction and movement.

As long as you are downwind of the game you are fine. If you are upwind of it, short of covering yourself with mud and feces they will smell you with or without scented soap etc..

StickFlicker AZ said:

I have hunted South Africa seven times, and I've hunted at a number of different safari concessions and locations over the years in multiple provinces. Almost without fail, the concessions furnish soap/shampoos that are VERY heavily scented with perfume, as if we are going to a pub and not into the bush to hunt game. Also, the laundry detergent used on our hunting clothes has also been heavily perfumed. I am strictly a bowhunter, so perhaps I'm more sensitive to scent control than are rifle hunters, and perhaps it's the fact that many of these concessions (that claimed to be experts at both rifle and bow hunting) were really just rifle concessions that only occasionally catered bowhunters? Are scent free detergents, soaps and shampoos not readily available in South Africa? It's a question that I've always wondered about, but I have never asked. In the U.S., scent free soap products of all types are easily purchased wherever groceries are purchased. While there are archery-only concessions, and I've hunted one or two of those as well, they just don't act like they think the African game will be alerted by the strong perfume scents, although they are probably a little better than the "all weapons" concessions.

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To be fair scent control is more about managing the wind direction and your approach than if your smell is body odor/bugspray or lavender.
I alwayd bring my own toiletries when traveling

Red Leg said:

I have always found the whole scent blocking tech was great at tagging hunters, but pretty useless in actually tagging game. And yes, I was a bow as well as rifle hunter for many years. If an animal can smell your shampoo, he can smell your human odor. Whether in the Americas, Europe, or Africa, I clean up when I get in after the hunt, and get into clean nice smelling clothes in the morning. I spend my time and energy worrying about wind direction and movement.

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When I was about eight years old, a friend’s Dad told me “most fishing lures are made to catch fishermen, not fish”. I feel the same way about scent tech and a lot of the camouflage clothing for that matter (especially in Africa).

At times I wish the entourage in the final stalk was smaller. Between myself, a PH, trackers, skinners, game scouts etc, it’s sometimes been a squad size element. I’m pretty sure some of that crew wasn’t even using soap or shampoo, so I doubt that was why we got busted.

Africa was educational for me. I did not wear camo at all. Only earth toned cotton clothing in solid prints. We made little or no effort to manage scent. But, we were still able to stalk slowly to within very close range of our prey. I have never been able to do this with North American deer for example. In Africa we did pay close attention to the wind and always drove out of sight of the game before dismounting from the vehicle. In many cases the driver then continued on so the game thought we had left the area.

Another somewhat mystical thing that I was told in Africa that experience supports is that hunters never speak out loud about what they are planning to hunt in the morning. Why? The story goes that if you speak about your quarry the monkeys are always spying on you in the bushes and the monkeys then tell the birds who fly out ahead of the hunters announcing to the animals of the approaching predators and what we are hunting. This alerts the prey to be more warry of us. I have seen this multiple times with Zebra. We were hunting them one day and they spooked in seconds and the very next day with the same herd we were not hunting them and they stood around staring at us and allowed us to drive within 100y. Seen this with Sable, Giraffe, Waterbuck, and others. I have also seen the Go-away birds sitting in a tree just ahead of us "Caw-Cawing" loudly before flying out ahead another 100y or so to wait. I think prey animals are much more sentient beings than we often give them credit for and they can sense when a predator is near and has malice in his heart. Man is one of the apex predators of the earth and in that role they can tell when we are hunting them.

I also witnessed a male - female couple of Zebra where the female was crippled from an accident that had split her hoof. She had deteriorated so much that she could no longer walk or reach food and water. Her mate refused to leave her side even when danger was near. The PH had even tranq darted her to allow a vet to attempt medical care but this was not successful and she was now starving. Her mate remained at her side for many days until she finally died. She died the day after the photo was made.