Myth Busters-Bloodhound-Human Odor

[Woods Walker]

ORIGINAL: Huntingdad

ORIGINAL: bioactive

ORIGINAL: Woods Walker

And just WHY is it that those of you that do won't answer a few basic honest questions about your use of it in regards to what's be proven about it?

Any of you can ask me anything you like about my methods, and you will get an answer that's to the best of my ability. You might not care for my answers, and that's fine. But we WILL discuss it if you like. I don't avoid the questions.

And we don't have to prove a thing about carbon clothing. The court and science has already done that. What were discussing here are those very realities.

Well, its really no different than your boots getting cracks in the rubber over time, your camouflage fading with multiple washes, holes forming in your socks. Lots of stuff has a finite life span. The problem with we humans, is we can see the hole in our socks, but we don't have a very good nose so we don't know exactly when the capability of an activated carbon garment is "fading" or "getting holes." You basically have to go with the manufacturers recommendation. How long it lasts depends largely on how closely you follow the manufacturer's recommendations. If you eat breakfast in it, sit around a fire, gas your vehicle, wear it in the house, field dress a deer while wearing it, it won't last all that long. However, if you keep it sealed in a container at all times, only touch it after you have showered with gloved hands, take it off immediately after the hunt is finished, it will last for years. In that respect it is no different than a pair of rubber boots. If you let them sit outside in direct sunlight for a year, you will ruin them. I f you store them properly in a closed area, they may last you 10 years.

Nonetheless, without question, the manufacturers convinced the court that their clothing was effective and could be regenerated.

Well if you did that with a plain set of camo clothes wouldn't you get the same results???? If you washed them and yourself in scent reducing soap and did everything else you said you would get the same results. So why spend 10 times the money on the carbon stuff??

Exactly. And my question STILL has not been answered regarding just how much regeneration can occur (we KNOW it's not 100%), and never will, because they either don't know, or they do, and they don't want to say, because then anyone with basic math skills will able to deduce how many drying it can take before it's just very expensive rain gear.

If a full set of carbon clothing costs you $300.00, then with a regeneration rate of 90% that means that after 10 dryings that it won't regenerate at all, and then it's costs you $30.00 everytime you put it in the dryer.

That's one REAL expensive dryer!!!!

And this doesn't even take into account the fact that the science of carbon technology shows that you need temperatures of 1200 to 1500 degrees to regenerate carbon. If you could buy a dryer that got that hot (and you can't), the clothing would be incinerated. But let's not consider this, and just go by what the Scent Lok/Block folks are NOW saying what the "truth" is about their product. It can be regenerated, but not by 100%.

OK then. WHAT percentage can it be regenerated to? Take a guess. Heck, give me a RANGE if you want.

[bmorris]

ORIGINAL: bioactive

Talk about myths being perpetuated in spite of the facts.

You are not stating the real facts concerning the lawsuit. Just a quick look shows that your statements are way off base and are based on wanting something to be true when the court case provides facts that indicate you are not providing the truth. I believe you have reasons to support your statements other then the truth.

During the lawsuit, the court determined that carbon suits from both Scent-Lok and Scent-Blocker were effective at eliminating scent and could be reactivated at dryer temperatures. Nothing did so much to prove the case for the benefits of carbon clothing than that court case did.

This conclusion is not supperted by the trial statement and from sworn testimony of experts. The statements you quote are from a settlement agreement of guilt and are not what you claim as facts.

The only issues were related to Scent-Lok using terminology like 100% elimination. They have since changed their marketing to "virtually" eliminates.

Here are some threads related to independent testing by Robinson (ScentBlocker) that was done during the trial.

Most important is this finding by the court (see second link):

II. IT IS FURTHER ORDERED

Robinson is hereby permitted to continue to use its phrase “odor eliminating technology” but only in conjunction with other words or phrases that expressly make clear that the clothing in question can only reduce the release of human odor. Robinson may not use the phrases “elimination” or “odor eliminating” or “scent eliminating” alone or in conjunction with words or graphics that say or depict “scent-free,” “odor free,” “100%,” “all” or “every trace” or “every bit” of odor as removed by the clothing.

Reduce how much? Certainly testimony revealed the hunters were being winded.

Robinson is hereby permitted to continue to use the word “regenerate” or “reactivate” as a description of the process of removal of some trapped odor from the clothing, as long as they do not include additional words or graphics that say or depict regeneration or reactivation as a process that will restore the clothing to pristine or like new condition.

Robinson used the compound "hextane " to test. It is a gas deriative and has nothing to do with real human odor. It has a boiling point of around 135 and was chosen so that the dryer temperature would have an effect on it. In my opinion hextane was chosen to confuse and trick the court and to fool hunters

Removing some but which ones ?

http://www.bowhunting.net/artman/pub..._printer.shtml

http://www.bowhunting.net/artman/pub..._Finding.shtml

Independent testing by Scent-Lok is back up on their site now that the trial is over and is located here:

Scentlok bought and paided for the testing and it was done on ETA which has a boiling point of 96.8 , has nothing to do with human odor, and is easily effected by a dryer because of a low boiling point and a dryer will have no effect on human odors with boiling points over 200 degrees.

http://www.scentlokscience.com/

Scentlok science is a joke and goes against scientific studies of carbon as testified by Scentloks expert at the trial. If their claims are true then the army would be using their product.

Virtually everything you have heard about carbon suits not working has come from sports writers who made stuff up based on misinterpreting scientific literature or putting expectations on scent reduction that they would never consider putting on visibility reduction. I pointed out this nonsense 4 years ago in an article located here:

Why did Lee Lakowski have stated in the trial that he was being winded ? He has a chemist background and is on the prostaff of Scentlok and yet he stated he was be winded. Why ?
Phil Philipps is also on the prostall and he complained he was being winded in the court record. Why ?
Myles Keller also removed his statement and complained to Greg Sesselman that the carbon wasn't working. The responce to him was to wear two suits according to court testimony. Why ?

http://app4.websitetonight.com/proje...bunk_Final.pdf

The fact that a bloodhound can still find you while wearing an activated carbon suit is no more meaningful than a blood hound still being able to see you while wearing camouflage. The notion or idea of complete scent elimination was always just silly marketing hyperbole. It's like saying camouflage makes you completely invisible. Neither statement makes rational sense. Just because camou does not make you invisible, are you not going to use it? Same goes for activated carbon clothing. It doesn't make you unsmellable, it makes you harder to smell.

Be seriuos this is the weakest arugement I have seen. If a dog can smell you a deer can PERIOD. You have to be kidding

[bioactive]

If a full set of carbon clothing costs you $300.00, then with a regeneration rate of 90% that means that after 10 dryings that it won't regenerate at all, and then it's costs you $30.00 everytime you put it in the dryer.

Actually, that is not how the decay curve would look at all. Let's suppose you have a 90% efficiency of regeneration, and for the sake of working with round numbers, you collect 1,000,000 molecules, and after regeneration, 100,000 remain behind, and lets' suppose they are permanently stuck there. Now, your garment has a capacity of 900,000 molecules, and when you wash it, 190,000 remain stuck, now, it has a capacity of 810,000, and when you wash it, there will be 271,000 stuck, and so forth.

The curve looks like this (expressed as percent remaining space):



After 10 washes, 40% of the capacity of the suit would remain. That is how decay curves work.

Add to that the fact that it is very unlikely you are going to fill all the space on the carbon between regenerations, (it has a huge capacity to adsorb molecules) and if you carefully take care of it, using it per manufacturers suggestions, you can probably get several years of use out of a suit.

[Woods Walker]

That would be fine, if you could trust the manufactured...which you can't.

How do we know when they are lying and when they're not? Two DECADES of false advertising doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

But OK, I accept your curve. But the question STILL remains unanswered.......just HOW MUCH does it allegedly regenerate? And by who's numbers?

[bioactive]

Be seriuos this is the weakest arugement I have seen. If a dog can smell you a deer can PERIOD. You have to be kidding

But that is entirely the point. Of course the dog and deer can both smell you if you are close enough to them. There is no question about that. In fact there is some evidence that the deer can smell you better. But from how far away, and at what point will it raise an alert for the deer? In the case of the dog, it is trained to go and find you, no matter what level of scent it detects, and it will do so. Now, when I am standing in my yard at my farm, with the wind blowing from the north, the deer in the beds 200 yards south of me can smell me. And if they were trained to come find me, they could do so with no problem. They don't care, they won't run, because they can gauge how far away I am by the number of odor molecules reaching them, and they expect to smell odors coming from my house. Suppose I reduce the number of odor molecules leaving my body by 90%, can I get closer without alerting them? That's the question. Can I reduce the limit of the distance at which they can detect me at all? That's the question. The answer from almost every professional hunter I am familiar with (there are only a very few hold outs) is that you can get closer to mature deer using activated carbon. There are very, very few who do not use it, along with a host of other efforts to reduce their scent.

The question isn't whether a deer can smell you under a given circumstance. It is whether your odor is going to cause an alert response or not. If they are 200 yards away, and I use extreme scent control, they might not be able to smell me at all. I might have to get to within 30 or 40 yards for them to detect enough odor to put them on alert.

A deer can still see me in camouflage, but I wear it anyway, because it reduces their ability to see me. The same is true with activated carbon, or any other scent control method. You cannot completely eliminate your odor, but you can reduce the ability of a deer to smell you.

Arguments against activated carbon only make sense if you live in a world where you only use a product that is 100% effective. If you applied the same argument to camouflage, you would never use it because both a dog and deer can still see you when you are wearing it.

[Huntingdad]

Ok Bio that I can understand. But do not say almost all pros use it becuase it is so good etc. They use it because they are sponsored by them. Send me frre clothes and I will wear them. Send me clothes and cash I will say how good they work etc. Stick to your argument about amount of oder molecules in the air. I can see a reason to use carbon with that argument.

[bioactive]

ORIGINAL: Woods Walker

That would be fine, if you could trust the manufactured...which you can't.

How do we know when they are lying and when they're not? Two DECADES of false advertising doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

But OK, I accept your curve. But the question STILL remains unanswered.......just HOW MUCH does it allegedly regenerate? And by who's numbers?

Don't know. In the end it is like every other consumer product. You have to try it out and see if it works. I don't have a shadow of a doubt (from my personal experience) that activated carbon garments reduce the ability of deer to detect me. But you cannot put perfume on a pig and make it smell good. Activated carbon is useless unless the person is practicing a full, rigorous scent control program. For example, if you carry a leather billfold or watch band into the woods, or money for example (ever smell money?) it is game set and match for the mature whitetail. Carbon clothes can't overcome that sort of thing.

If you wash your clothes in a machine that still has the odor of fabric softener in the fabric softener container, or has residue of detergent on the outside of the tub, don't waste your money on the carbon clothes. If you wear any of the clothes you are going to wear into the woods in the house, might as well not waste your money on it the carbon clothes. If you wear cologne all week, and think you can remove it before hunting with one shower, forget it, the residue will be there for days. Wear scented deodorant all week and then use unscented on the day of the hunt? Forget it. The scented stuff is still there.

There are a lot of ways to make sure your activated carbon clothing won't work. Just because you get busted while wearing it does not mean it will not work. The big problem with all this is not that the clothing doesn't work, it is that most hunters don't think through all the different ways in which they can carry strong odors out to the woods that no amount of activated carbon can overcome. Walk by the tailpipe of your truck after gearing up and it is still running. Game over.

Wear the boots you are going to use hunting in your truck and you will leave a day-glow trail for the deer to check out at night. You have left them 100% positive evidence that a human has invaded their territory. Carbon clothing can't help you if you make that mistake. Touch your bare hands to the rung of the tree stand when climbing up it? Don't wear an activated carbon cover over your face? Haven't cleaned the wax out of your ears?

It is not magic. You have to do 100 other things right. If you do those 100 other things, it is a real advantage to use activated carbon.

[Woods Walker]

Kinda sounds to me like the old "Miracle Diet Pills" that were guaranteed to help a person lose weight. If you read the fine print on the label it further states that "This product will produce results when used in conjunction with reduced calorie intake, and a RIGOROUS EXERCISE PROGRAM".

Well gee, is if eat less and excercise, then you don't need the pills in the first place!

You believe in carbon clothing. That's great. I do all those things that you recommend and I don't use it and I can count on less than one hand the number of times I've been scent busted.

But my question still remains unanswered. The claim is that it can be regenereted, but no one seems to have any idea as to how often. It could be ONCE for all we know.

[1Morgan]

If you pour a box of your favorite laundry soap, bath soap, and deodorant under your stand and kept it fresh all year...it would become a "normal" smell for the area. You wouldn't have to worry about anything unless you smoke. Should probably keep some fresh coffee out there too so ya can carry a thermos to keep warm. Hang some dryer sheets maybe.

[bmorris]

Bioactive - why not answer my questions in a responce written in #51 ?

Tell me why Scentlok prostaffers ( Lee lakowski and Phil Phillipps) testified under oath that they stated to Gregg Sesselmann that the product didn't work. ( Statements are recorded in court records from trial )

I realize your responces are slanted towards carbon but you should accept scientific facts. I see you have a carbon product so your responces are understandable.

Just remenber that you are starting from 27% and not 100% according to court records. You have less that a 1 in 4 chance
in stopping human odor before you even use it the first time according to court records if it worked in the first place.

You can't remove a human odor with a boiling point over 200 degrees in a dryer with a temp of 150 degrees. Why do you think Scentlok used EMA (boiling point of 96.8) or Scent Blocker using Hexane (boiling point of around 135) for their testing. They knew before the test that these compounds would react to the dryer temperature. These test were used to fool the hunting public and the court in my opinion