Staying scent-free isn’t enough to be a successful hunter. Using attractants provides an additional advantage to help bring the game to YOU, and I believe Hot Trails® Scented Hunting Candles are the best product on the market today. In addition, our new and updated mini lanterns are back in stock. When lit and safely secured in one of our lanterns, the candles will emit full-strength scent from start to finish. 

Here are some experiences our customers have had from using our candles. 

• Once I was sitting on the ground on the side of a gravel road with the candle burning near me, and a young buck came walking down the road, smelling the candle. As he got closer to me, he stopped, kept looking around, then finally put his nose down on top of the heat shield on the mini lantern and burnt his nose. He actually did a backflip, landed on his feet, then ran about 20 yards and stopped. He never knew I was sitting there watching him, he never smelled me. 
• A first-time customer from 2021 in Indiana re-ordered for 2022 and said “his deer go crazy over our candles.” They pick up the scent and come straight for it. 
• An archery dealer in New Jersey told me a story about his hunt with Hot Trails®. A buck moved toward him, stopped, smelled, and walked up to the candle. He put a great shot on him, and the buck wheeled around and ran off. He then stopped, put his nose in the air, smelled the candle and started walking back to the candle, where he dropped to the ground, dead. 
• I’ve carried the candle with me while walking and had deer stand up 15 feet from me with my gully suit and head net on, and the deer just walked away, because they couldn’t smell me. 
• A hunter in Pennsylvania said he was walking in the woods and started smelling Doe-N-Heat. The hair stood up on the back of his neck, as he knew he was in deer country. After following the scent for a couple of hundred yards, he came upon a hunter who was burning a Doe-N-Heat candle. He was disappointed, but figured that if he could smell the scent 200 yards away, how far could a deer smell it? 
• Hot Trails® works great as a cover scent. By placing the candle downwind of your location by 3 feet, your human scent is being absorbed by a much stronger smell. To illustrate, I used to hunt from an elevated stand on my truck. My eyesight was about 11 feet off the ground. I would hang one of my mini lanterns with a candle from my hitch and another over the side of the stand 11 feet up. It was an open-top stand. Often, I would rattle up bucks. Once I had five bucks on all sides of my truck, so close I had to lean over and look down to see them. They all hung around for about 10 minutes. They never smelled me. Note: Don’t ever light the candle and leave it inside and enclosed blind with you in it. 
• A customer in Alabama called to thank me for making such a great product. He was hunting in a swampy area and there were small islands surrounded by water. He had planted a small food plot at the edge of the swamp. He had seen big deer tracks in his plot but never the actual deer making them. He bought some Hot Trails® candles, walked out into the middle of his plot and lit the Doe-N-Heat candle. He returned to his blind and had just sat down, when he looked up and saw a monster buck coming through the water towards the plot. The buck never made it, as my customer successfully shot it. That buck was the second-largest deer taken in Alabama that year. He won a contest and state recognition for his trophy. 
• One year earlier, another Alabama hunter killed the biggest buck in the state using Hot Trails® Doe-N-Heat candles. 

So how did we create this synthetic, genuine-smelling scent product that is so effective? My journey started back in 1989, when I was hunting in South Texas. For years, I had been using the most commonly-known liquid scent on the market at the time, “Doe in Heat.” I never saw success using the scent as directed, but I still bought and used it. I used 35mm film canisters, inserted cotton balls soaked with liquid scent, and taped string to the sides of the canister in order to hang it. Then I would walk out in all directions, hanging them on the brush limbs. 

One day, after repeating this process, I finally saw a buck walking down one of the trails where I had placed my canisters. He walked right by it and never even glanced over at it. After the hunt, I went around gathering all of the canisters, and when I got to the one where the buck walked by, I held it up to my nose and inhaled – it didn’t smell at all like the liquid scent I poured out of the product bottle. I started thinking about this more and discovered as many already know, that liquids evaporate over time. The scent in my canisters had been in the sun and wind, and the cotton ball had started to evaporate and dry out, thus changing the deer urine smell. It was no longer working as the attractant I had hoped. 

At the time, I was working for my younger brother who had a very successful fragrance company making wax potpourri. We were making small wax chips in all different scents that would burn for hours. So one day I thought, why not a “doe in heat” scented candle? 

That was the beginning of HOT TRAILS® SCENTED HUNTING CANDLES. 

After a lot of trial, error, and testing, I was able to develop candles that burned up to 5 hours per candle and penetrated up to 500 yards – exactly as I had envisioned. Doe-N-Heat is the most popular candle, however, Hot Trails® produces 12 other scents for everything from deer to black bears. 

After 31 years of making and selling our candles, and collecting so many of your stories, I can honestly say that I think Hot Trails® Scented Hunting Candles are the best kept secret amongst successful hunters. 

Go to www.hottrails.com or amazon.com, place your order today, and LET THE HUNT BEGIN! Send us your success stories along with pictures – we’d love to hear about your experiences. 

IMPORTANT: HOT TRAILS® USES A FIRE AND MUST BE TREATED WITH CAUTION. CHECK LOCAL FORESTRY REGULATIONS ON OPEN FIRES IN THE AREA YOU ARE HUNTING. HOT WAX ON BARE SKIN CAN CAUSE INJURY. DO NOT MOVE THE CANDLE WHEN WAX IS HOT OR CANDLE IS BURNING. NEVER LEAVE A BURNING CANDLE UNATTENDED. NEVER BURN A CANDLE EXCEPT IN OUR HOT TRAILS® MINI LANTERN, OR IN SOME OTHER TYPE OF METAL BURNING CONTAINER. THE MINI LANTERNS CAN BECOME VERY HOT, SO ONLY HANDLE USING GLOVES OR BY THE HANGING LOOP. CLEAR LEAVES AND OTHER COMBUSTIBLES FROM THE AREA AROUND WHERE THE CANDLE WILL BE LOCATED. JUST LIKE USING A GUN OR BOW, CAUTION AND SAFETY SHOULD BE OBSERVED AT ALL TIMES WHEN USING A PRODUCT WITH AN OPEN FLAME. HOT TRAILS® ONLY USES SYNTHETIC SCENTS.