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"Scents Making Sense"
by
Lisa Price

When I heard the deliberate, marching steps coming through the leaves, I thought for sure it was another person. For one thing, it was early evening, at least two hours before dusk; for another, friends who hunted the same patch of land had told me that the deer had gone nocturnal. Plus, no one had seen anything better than a six-pointer.
But when I heard the grunts I immediately eased to my feet. Unless another person was walking along, blowing on a grunt tube as a warm up for a kazoo performance, the maker of the scrapes was on his way.
I'd hunted the property for the first time that year on the previous afternoon. Afternoons were best, and the standard modus operandi was to sneak in late afternoon, climb a tree near the edge of the field, and wait for a last-minute-of-daylight deer. The piece of land was about 80 acres, with no bedding areas, and deer seemed only to trickle through it on the way to farm fields.
But I'd been encouraged by the scrape activity at the edge of the field just inside the woods, where two sizable areas had been thrashed to the mineral soil. I was also eager to try a new product I'd heard about, called MDR 24/Seven granular scents.
It's one of those ideas, like camouflage duct tape, that once you hear about it, you wonder why it took so long for someone to do it. Mark Weiser, Pennsylvania, company owner, started out making deer repellants in a granular form. The repellants lasted for nearly a week.
One day it was light bulb time. Why not make a long-lasting deer attractant in the granular form? And he developed MDR 24/Seven scents, which don't evaporate, sink in or freeze. As a matter of fact they were both time release and weatherproof.
It made sense to me. Most hunters try the same old scent technique. They find a good spot with lots of deer sign. When they hunt the area, they use scent to attract more deer. But here is the obvious flaw in that plan - the second you apply that liquid scent, it starts to diminish in potency.
Climb into a tree at 2 p.m., and you might wait for a deer for hours. As the minutes ticks past, the scent continues to evaporate and lessen. By the time a deer checks a scent area, such as a scrape, the effect of the liquid attractant is negligible.
The other problem is that human scent is always left when you walk over and pour the liquid on the ground…usually exactly where you expect the buck to stand. Dahhh. Human scent can last up to 24 hours…so you get busted when the buck almost gets into position. They have an excellent nose, you know!
With the time releases properties of 24/Seven I could scent it one day and hunt it the next day or two. So I'd juiced the two scrapes with the MDR 24/Seven estrus doe, shaking out the granules from a short distance. The first night I didn't hunt it. The second evening right at dark I heard a deer approach, heard it check the scrapes and advance into the field. It had been too dark for a shot, and I'd waited to climb down so that I was sure not to spook the deer.
Now it was night number three, and the deer wasn't the six-pointer. I had not walked over to the scrape for three days but the granules were still working just like that pink bunny. It was a ten-pointer. The buck came in grunting, slightly bristled and headed right for the scrapes. As he passed behind hemlock trees I took a chance and drew.
It was the wrong guess. When he came out of the hemlocks he was headed straight for me. He walked to a slight knoll and visually checked the field. I was still at full draw, and the constant grunts were frazzling me. I started to shake.
He headed back towards the scrapes and I saw a chance. I did my best deer grunt imitation, which stopped him, and I shot right over his back. He jumped off and my heart sank - but soon, incredibly, I heard the grunts start up again.
I got another arrow on the string. This time the buck went to the far scrape, which I'd ranged at 30 yards. This time I made contact but skipped it over his back. The blood trail was promising at first, but soon clotted and came to an end.
I looked hard for two days. I was pretty sure my friends were beginning to doubt my buck description, saying things like, "Are you sure it wasn't the six-pointer?" But weeks later, during a gun-season drive, the big buck again eluded hunters - who then wanted to learn more about MDR 24/Seven. The time release granular scent.
In a perfect world, the story ends with me getting the deer. Hunting is never a perfect world but I do know - this year he will be bigger and I'll be waiting for him over a 24/Seven scrape.

24sevenscents.com

Editors note: Lisa did arrow a nice buck over 24/seven in Texas last January and she put that arrow right into the boiler room. I have watched 24/Seven out perform all other scents on the market because of the science involved. The granules last up to 7 days and this time release quality allows the hunter to set-up a scrape or trail and hunt it long after his human scent has dissipated. This is the first new and effective idea for scent hunting since the messy dripper was invented 20 years ago.>>>Wade Nolan
Lisa Price

Lisa Price

Where I came from and how I got here

I grew up in the coal region of northeast Pennsylvania. I spent a lot of time in a small patch of woods near our house and actually made bows and arrows, which I shot at birds, which got me sent to my room a lot. And once a girl named Debbie Cohen bet me I couldn't shoot an arrow between her legs, and she was right. I stuck it in her thigh, just above the knee. I saw my room for a long time after that.
But, no one in my family hunted, and I didn't start until I was in my late twenties. I'd bought a small farmhouse in the country near Shickshinny, Pennsylvania, (say that three times real fast) where I was surrounded by dairy farmers. One family, the Zagata's, gave me deer meat to welcome me to the neighborhood and they were shocked to learn I'd never eaten it. They soon tried to teach me to shoot a shotgun, and I didn't much like the big bang next to my ear.
But they'd interested me in hunting, and one day as I jogged a dirt road loop in the area, I came upon a yard sale. Hanging on a coat rack, its shiny blue paint drawing my eyes, a bow with a quiver of arrows caught my eye. I bought it for $10. I signed up for a hunter safety class, and started practicing with that bow.
I knew nothing about archery. It was two weeks before I could even draw it back, and I know now that the draw length was way too short for me. It was a compound bow, without sights, with a really long stabilizer. As I drew I'd keep my eye on the arrow, so I didn't pull it off the rest, and let go at that point.
In preparation for hunting season I spray-painted the bow in shades of green. I practiced until I could shoot all my arrows into a pie plate. When the season started I missed many, many deer, even emptying my quiver on one forgettable occasion involving a clueless spike buck.
When I finally arrowed my first deer, a big doe, I had to use a library book to do the field dressing, and I passed out into the gut pile. Later that night my friend Bob would have to clean me up at the car wash with the power sprayer.
But I loved hunting, every minute of it. I may have struggled along with the yard sale bow for years and years except for a very lucky problem - I was running out of arrows. I took my bow and arrows to an archery shop and the owner shook his head, and geared me up with equipment that fit.
I expanded hunting to include other states, and added antelope, bear, turkeys and hogs to my list of bow kills. Soon everything I did was in anticipation of hunting - how I spent extra money, where I planned to go on vacation, who were my closest friends, and what I did in spare time.
I moved recently, and to make it easier, I had a big yard sale first. I had one table with some old hunting stuff, and I even carried that old yard sale bow out there and put it on the table. But just for a few seconds; then I picked it up and took it back inside.
I couldn't put a price on it.
Lisa writes for Bow and Arrow Magazine.