To Bottle or Not To Bottle?

[Cut N Run]

I feed the deer here at the house every day of the year. Some will even take food from my hand.The herd remains at about 12 individuals from year to year, with their numbers getting higher in the middle of winter when there is not as much to eat in the woods. There is no hunting allowed on or behind my property, but hunting is legal on the other surrounding land.  I don't hunt anywhere near here.  I figure since I take from somewhere, I need to put back somewhere else.  Feeding the deer allows me to move around them pretty freely and study their reaction to various stimuli.  For the past couple of weeks I have been peeing along a couple of deer trails that I seldom walk on or near, just to get their reaction to it.  They couldn't care less.  To be fair, these deer are accustomed to the sounds and smells of humans.  But to have human urine along one of their regular trails and the deer barely react to it, makes me think I have been a bottle guy for too long.
 
I'm anxious to give it a go (pun intended) during the hunting season on some wilder deer than those who are used to me.
 
Jim

[scottflesher]

I agree with Cut, I had to let it go last year for the first time out of my bow stand. I leaned as far out as I could to keep it from getting on my climber and boots. That's tough to do when you've got 5 layers of clothes on and well you can imagine the rest....
I had deer underneath my tree within 5 feet of where I peed and it didn't seem to bother them at all.

[NorthernoaksHunt]

maybe its not that they cant tell the difference but rather there curious and are investigating. I dont think anyone will ever know.

[ajkrem22]

I guess I would say I am on the fence about this one. After reading some of your posts by people who swear by it, kinda makes me want to try it. I have always been a bottle guy but now am wondering if it is necessary to haul something else into the woods. Think I will let it fly in the early part of the year once or twice and see how it goes. Best way to find out is to test it.

Andy

[Woods Walker]

ORIGINAL: ajkrem22

I guess I would say I am on the fence about this one. After reading some of your posts by people who swear by it, kinda makes me want to try it. I have always been a bottle guy but now am wondering if it is necessary to haul something else into the woods. Think I will let it fly in the early part of the year once or twice and see how it goes. Best way to find out is to test it.

Andy

Try this......when you see the first scapes of the year, urinate in them. You may be surprised at what happens. At worst it'll do nothing at all, just like 90% of the commerical ammonia you buy that's sold as "Doe In Heat" urine.

[bowhuntr15]

No more "doe in heat" for me. 

[Wolfman]

ORIGINAL: fasteddie

I spend a lot of time in the stand . I used to carry a bottle with me until I read an article about it years ago . The Nuge said the 1st thing he did when he got in the stand was to take a whizz !
I never used a bottle after that . I pee from the stand and also in scrapes .
Here is a pic of a button buck at the base of my ladderstand at less than an hour after I pee'd out of it .

[font="Courier New"]Did you pee on the buck too?[/font] [:D]

[SHKYBoonie]

Ok, I had forgot about this thread but not about wanting to do a camera experiment on how deer react to the smell of human urine. I have had a camera out in a spot that usually doesn't get hunted. I put the camera out on a mineral site just to get the deer coming to the area. I was careful not to leave any human scent behind so I could get a true sense of what was coming to the area on a regular basis. There were at least 6 different doe, 3 of the does had fawns and only one of them had twins. There were 2 small 1.5 year old bucks, one 2.5 year old 8 point and an older buck that looked to be a 9 point that would score in the high 130" class. I think I knew this older buck from some pics last year and I am going to say he is around 3.5 to 4.5 years old. This seems to be a good starting point with my experiment. I was getting pretty regular pics of all of these deer. Mostly night pics but there were a few day time visits as well.
I went in and urinated (several different times throughout the day) in the direct vicinity of the mineral site without contaminating the mineral itself. My findings over the next week just set my beliefs in concrete! Do what you feel about using a bottle or just pissing on everything around you, but what I have seen with my "own" experiment tells me to keep bottling, period!
Most of the does kept coming back to the site, but the old doe with the twins hasn't been back sense. Matter of fact, I started getting pics of her at another part of the farm that I had not gotten pics of her at before. She Moved! The small 1.5 year old bucks still come pretty regular as if they aren't effected by it at all. The 2.5 year old 8 point came on 2 different occasions but I haven't seen him in a while. I haven't had any pics of the older buck at all. I don't know where he went but he went just the same. Take into account that I was getting pics of all of these deer on a REGULAR basis, it is still early in the Summer so they haven't changed their patterns yet and the food sources are still basically the same. The only difference is the URINE!
A young deer (buck or doe) hasn't had the experience lessons yet and there are probably a good many older deer that haven't had experiences that has put human urine and danger in their memory just yet. The older deer that have been around awhile, well, they know to get away while the getting's good. So, go on doing your thing all over your hunting area and using "button bucks" as your measurement of tolerance. Someone on the farm next to you that bottles is hoping you keep doing whatever it is your doing.

[Woods Walker]

Boonie: A couple of points.

1. How do you know it wasn't YOUR scent from your boots, or whatever, and not the urine? And how long was it from when you did put your urine there and they came by? If it was more than a few hours, then the urine had already broken down into urea.

2. How do you know that those deer that haven't returned didn't see/hear YOU going back and forth, "several times a day"? Any daylight travel that you make in and out of deer cover alerts them to you, especially in an area that doesn't see much human activity.

I know you now have an opinion, and that's fine, but there's just too many of us whose experiences don't bear that out. Try this...when scraping activity begins, try urinating in a scrape and see what happens. I've just killed too many big bucks and older deer letting fly when the need strikes for it to be a fluke.

IMO, it wasn't the urine per se, but your activity putting it there. And conversely, I can say that if you're the kind of hunters who goes in and out of his hunting area several times a day, KEEP DOING IT! Those of us that stay out all day will love you for it! [:D] [;)]

[SHKYBoonie]

Woods, you make good points but let me answer all these questions for you.

ORIGINAL: Woods Walker

Boonie: A couple of points.

1. How do you know it wasn't YOUR scent from your boots, or whatever, and not the urine? And how long was it from when you did put your urine there and they came by? If it was more than a few hours, then the urine had already broken down into urea.

I took all the same scent control steps (maybe even more) so not to compromise the experiment from other scents. I didn't take extra measures of scent control when setting the site up in the first place. So, if there was going to be any adverse effects from other scent, it would have been when I put the site there in the first place.
The urine had been in place for a few hours before the first picture had been taken.

2. How do you know that those deer that haven't returned didn't see/hear YOU going back and forth, "several times a day"? Any daylight travel that you make in and out of deer cover alerts them to you, especially in an area that doesn't see much human activity.

This isn't in an area that "doesn't see much human activity". It is but a few yards from the front gate of the farm. Let me clear something up, I didn't take a break to run down to the spot every time I had to go. I used a bottle and after several uses through the day, went down on my UTV, never got off, and poured it out at the site. The bedding area here is behind the site, so it was never disturbed. The deer here are use to seeing/hearing vehicles come and go. The main road is less than 50 yards from where this site is. There had been more activity on the farm when I first set the site than has been while the experiment was being done.

I know you now have an opinion, and that's fine, but there's just too many of us whose experiences don't bear that out. Try this...when scraping activity begins, try urinating in a scrape and see what happens. I've just killed too many big bucks and older deer letting fly when the need strikes for it to be a fluke.

Thing is, young bucks make scrapes too, probably more so than older bucks. If you are a good hunter, you have worked everything on the wind in the first place and chances are the deer are not coming into the down wind side of your post. But, there is still the chance that you are alerting deer to your presents after you have gone with urine on the ground around where you were posted. If nothing else, the deer get curious about the urine smell, come to check it out and smell an odor you left behind from something else. Like I said before, what you choose to do is your decision, but IMO it isn't wise to just put scent out that doesn't need to be there. From what I have witnessed myself, I wouldn't advise anyone to spread their urine around in a place they plan to hunt.

IMO, it wasn't the urine per se, but your activity putting it there. And conversely, I can say that if you're the kind of hunters who goes in and out of his hunting area several times a day, KEEP DOING IT! Those of us that stay out all day will love you for it! [:D] [;)]

Hope that cleared all of the misconceptions up![;)]