Friendly debate

PLEASE KEEP IT CIVIL AND AMONGST FRIENDS.

This has been debated on several forums over the past few years but I haven't seen it here(might just have been oversight).
When hunting do you pee in a bottle and take it home or out of the woods or do you just let it fly if in a tree stand or just go when on the ground.
Me I just go, reason being I remember one of the experts years ago saying that an animal,deer specificly can't tell the difference from animal or human. Seems urine is basicly amonia and it all smells the same and disipates rather quickly.

What are all of your thoughts and reasons for them?

whip it out, pee on the ground, put it back. Carry it back in a bottle? WTF? That's just gross.

I always bring a bottle. Whether or not it makes a difference, I couldn't tell you. I carry it out and throw it straight into the garbage though, not dump it on the ground.

If you forget about it in your stand though, and come back even a few days later, do not open it to fill it more. The smell is pretty foul.

once in a bottle, it is bio hazard material.

I use to do the bottle thing when I first started hunting years ago....then forgot the bottle one time, pissed at the bottom of the tree I was hunting out of and killed a deer down wind of it not long after that. Haven't carried a bottle since then.

I am in the just go on the ground camp. I dont like to go right under my stand, but I have peed on a tree before and later watched a doe sniff the spot and not seem spooked.

Not useing a bottle allows you a free hand to shoot that deer that seams to show up while your relieving yourself. With a little practice you can relieve yourself and shoot with both hands, just pay real close attention to the wind;)

on my first hunt I remember with my Dad 50+ years ago, I was peeing with my gun out of reach and a deer walked by not 15 yards from me. Oh ya on the ground no plastic bottles back then.

Deer seem to be more curious than anything. If it doesn't trip danger to them then they want to check it out, and human urine doesn't seem to do it. Now for some reason raccoons on the other hand can tell. Put 'coon pee on your boots while bowhunting and you'll have coons climbing the trees around you. Wore it 3 different times in 3 differnet properties and had 'coons all around me. Didn't wear it the next couple trips, not a 'coon in sight.

Back to deer: I had people tell me time and time again to never smoke in the stand (back when i used to smoke). One night I hadn't seen anything and then 5 minutes to shoot hours close I had a doe down wind. Watched her to leave for 10 minutes and she just stayed down wind. Decided to light a up a cigarette to spook her off, watched the smoke head right to her. Within 20 seconds she jerked her head up walked 150 yards to my stand and just stood there at 15 yards sniffing the air. After a couple of minutes she right back to grazing and finally left after about a half hour and 3 more cigarettes. Had serval other does and a couple of bucks come right in to smoke. I dunno.

Anyway, bottles are for haulin' out drinks that create urine, not taking it home with you.

in 18 contiguous years of successful deer hunting I've found 1 thing: deer know when season starts, they don't give a **** about sweat smell, pee smell, poo smell, cigarette smell, pot smell, campfire smell, beer smell. What they've plum flipped out over has been 4-legged predator stink. Kill a cougar or bobcat or coyote and drag it out and you'll have a deer free zone 100yrds either side of the drag line for a month. I've smoked and pee'd and poo'd and sweat like a pig and still found deer. One day my uncle was smoking a joint while walking with me on a hunt (no gun for him that time) and deer literally crossed our path within rock throwing distance. I've had deer and even wild turkey walk through my camp while I'm in it, cooking breakfast, of venison and eggs. Critters don't spook unless they know they should, they're otherwise working on trying like hell to get today's food stuffed into their gullet which can take all day. Interruptions in today's food intake means they have to get that food tomorrow which is always harder.

So many people tell you what spooks a deer but I think if they'd ever seen a really spooked deer they'd know the difference. A startled cautious deer (well... a blacktail anyway) will run a little ways and stop and look back. A flat spooked blacktail deer will run clear into another county.

As a first time hunter this year, this is all good to know. Would this apply to turkey hunting as far as smells and scents go? I assume the movement involved would create a problem.

I went bow huntin a few weeks ago and climbed a tree wearing my trapping boots. They reaked of fox urine. It made the deer nervous and they tracked where I had walked all the way to the base of my tree. I had 3 does under me, three more in the field and 3 bucks in the field. Once they were through investigating, the does went about their own way.

Turkeys see pretty well and in color, so staying in cover and sitting still is key as with many hunted species. In all the turkey hunting I've done, they pretty much know you're there well before you ever see one and will normally go the way they were going to go anyway. When they're on approach you'll know for sure and then sit right still and call a little and wait a lot.

Yeah turkey have what seems to be amazing eye sight. Sense of smell I do not know. Deer hunting I pee where ever. I used to do a lot of tree cutting and clearing to help people build ranges where I used to live in Virginia. The best deer call I have ever seen has been a chainsaw. Every time I have run a chainsaw in the woods the deer show up to see what it is. I can also attest to the fact that snoring will bring them around. I have done some extensive snore testing. LOL

I think that game animals gather information to give their brains information about danger. While I don't think we ever destroy our scent. I think there is a tolerance level, animals won't tolerate high scores in areas of scent, movement, noise etc... they know we are there. They smell on a molecular level. Why push it? If a deer takes a different trail because of an acumulation of human activity, you never see him. Why push it? I pee in a jar and pack it out.

That's the single most logical argument for your position I've seen so far. It's not enough to make me pee in a jar but I might alter some behaviors next deer season.

I climbed a tree with my trapping boots (fox pee) again yesterday and got similar results as last time. A spike was spooked by the scent. He picked up my scent about 40 yards out and tracked me to my tree. Once there he hung around a minute sniffing then finally trotted back to where he came from. I've never urinated from the tree I'm in, always before I go climb away from the area. Once deer are alerted to a smell it makes them jumpy. Best not to pee, just use a bottle.

I have seen and killed more deer since I stopped using all scent control BS. I pee on the ground, hunt from the ground, and always have deer all around both bow and gun hunting. I do not like to have deer downwind when bow hunting they do spook usually, but gun season in the rut nothing matters. I am just suprised how these companies still make millions off scent spray that I swear alarms deer of danger.

It might just work, I dunno. My theory is that deer know when something isn't right in the way that you know mold is alive when you look at it. You use the sprays and junk and they can't smell your clothes but they smell your breath and your fart and your sweat and your rifle and they hear you too. So they say to themselves, "Self, I think there's something trying to be plum sneaky around here. How about we exercise the better part of valor and go over to the other salad spot." FWIW, blacktails will hunker in their bunker until you darn near trip over them if they let you get within shooting distance at all.

So out of all who comented so far we have 3 taker outers(bottle use) and the rest are like me just go. I too believe that deer know when the season begins, more so because of all the activity that that of sent.
I was talking to a farmer last night and he said that up until the beginning of bird season he can tell you what field to sit in and what time to be there but once bird seasoan starts all bets are off.

I have bottled in vehicles on the road, and only then. I would never choose to when there is a perfectly good tree available.

I used to go on a couple of archery sites(not for a few years now), but this exact same post would be just the opposite of what we have for results and those of us that pee in the woods would be "tar & feathered", and banned from the deer woods.
It seems in the expert views of archers you can bring bottled pee in and spread it around or drip it from a branch but your own must be carried out.I used to hunt with 2 such hunters, so 1 day when leaving our area there was a spot on the edge of a feild that always had a scrape,so for the heck of it I peed in it. The next morning we went to see what happened if anything,well it looked like a bulldozer hit it, dirt grass leaves thrown in every direction. Coinsidence I don't know but nobody will ever convince me that where or how you pee in the woods makes a difference.
I started hunting in 1970 have never carried out my pee and except for the last 5 years( did not hunt due to an injury) I have averaged at least 1 deer per year including the 5 years I had to take off.

Thank you all for keeping this civil and friendly, on the archery sites it goes viral.

r3dn3ck - not to dispute your predator logic, but just this past Saturday the following happened. Sitting in one of my favorite spots for the second day of our (Illinois) first gun season. Had about seven does and yearlings in the area when two more does came running out of the draw to my south. I was all ready for a buck to show but instead a coyote came trotting out of the draw. As you can imagine, all the deer spooked.....coyote got a Accutip slug through the chest at about 50 yards.

Not long after the shot (less than an hour), I had a small buck and doe come through the area. Both got within feet of the dead coyote. They both got nervous but neither spooked or left. Actually, I watched the small buck breed the doe. After a few minutes of debating if I should fill a doe tag, a large buck appeared (grunting and thrashing brush). I ended up killing that buck at about 40 yards (about a 145" 10 point).

I don't buy the whole pee thing....have had deer smell the exact spot where I've relieved myself and kept right on doing their own thing. I do however buy scent control. I take a shower prior to every time I go out. I also use earth scent wafers and spray. Freshly tilled earth is a common thing around here that the deer are used to smelling.

As a bonus, my wife can't stand the fresh earth scent! :-)

I don't see it as a dispute, a massively strange thing for deer to approach a coyote carcass but clearly the rut has reduced the thinking power of those deer. We're not allowed to play during the rut here in cali so I can't speak to the breeding instinct surpassing the survival instinct other than to say, I'd stop for a hummer even if there was a serial killer in the neighborhood. Might as well die sated.

Someone on another site peed in a scrape where he had a game camera . The very night he peed in the scrape a big buck came to the scrape and peed too.

If turkeys could smell we would never kill one.

I used to pee in a bottle, but no I just let it go. Can't tell a difference in the number of deer I see. I've got friends that make fake buck scrapes and wizz in them, then put a camera up. Sometimes within the day bucks are already checking the scrape and peeing in it. I don't think they can tell the difference between our pee and another animals. The most important thing is to hunt the wind. If you don't do that, nothing else matters....and if you get the wind right, nothing else matters! Except during the peak of the rut, and then all rules are off!