Ok - this is one of those questions that I probably should have asked someone years ago, but never did and can't figure out the answer. After getting skunked this year - it's really burning my feeble little brain. It relates to deer's sense of smell and wind direction:
I had been told and led to believe that deer travel into the wind, and will button-hook back every so often to sniff if anything is creeping up behind them. And they alway come out into a field with the wind in their face - usually milling about just inside the timber sniffing to see if the coast was clear before heading into the open. This makes sense to me.
If that is so - how do you set up so that you're upwind of them. I've always tried to set-up crosswind of where their trail connected to a feeding area because in my mind there was no way possible to get "downwind" of them without them smelling you first (since they're always facing/moving into the wind).
Does anyone know what the practical range of a deer's sense of smell is? I've read that in theory they can detect odours almost half a mile away. So can I if a certain someone has been eating chili, but obviously my sense of smell is more accurately measured in feet.
'Little help?