Rain and scent question

[JHannah92]

I've always been told it's best to scout before a rain so your scent will wash away. Recently I've seen several posts regarding tracking dogs having no issues finding deer after a rain. Even seen a couple handlers say the rain can "hold" the scent. Those two thoughts can't both be true. Which is it?

 

[sportsman94]

I could be wrong, but I think it’s somewhat dependent on how much rain. I’d guess a lot of scent is diluted in a gully washer rain whereas tracking conditions would be made more favorable for the deer/dog in a light rain. I would also think a dog specifically trained to track a wounded deer (or any other specific thing) is a little more focused than a deer that just smells some aged and diluted human scent. I have no real idea though. That’s just my guess

 

[bany]

My animal nose isn’t as primitive as it could be but to me there are a lot more scents after a rain.
Scents we leave behind aren’t much compared to what an animal leaves behind.
But, I may not be a smart man.

 

[chrislibby88]

Couple things here, deer have glands on their legs and feet, that produce scent oils. We don’t have that. When we walk through the woods the weight of our steps releases a lot of ground disturbance scent that the deer can smell for a long time, and we are steadily dropping human scent that settles but decays rather quickly, like the “human” part of the scent is only there for a few hours. We also carry alot of secondary scents on us, deodorant, clothing wash, food, etc that I believe deer learn to associate with humans. No clue how long those scents persist, but synthetic fragrance is the worst. As hunters most of us try to limit the secondary scent as much as possible, I think if we do a good job of this then there isn’t gonna be much offensive scent left, so rain or not, it won’t mess the deer up too bad, unless you do it alot.

My brother, several guys that I hunt with, and myself regularly scout WMAs while we hunt, and setup on what we find either immediately, or within 12 hours, and we still see deer, lots of them, and sometimes some nice ones.

If you need to scout something then scout it. Scout it throughly and get it in one go. Not knowing what is in there is worse than leaving a little ground scent.

 

[GeorgeShu]

Chrislibby stated it well.
When we walk through the woods we are constantly dropping human scent of two forms flaked off skin etc and tiny particles from clothing and boots. We also create ground scent in the form of crushed vegetation, broken twigs, overturned leaves, disturbed soil, etc. Each of these forms of scents or odors break down at different rates. Each of these scents have a different “alarm value” and detection level to deer or other critters. The weather will also degrade different scents at different rates.
Generally hot windy dry days will degrade all scents more rapidly while cool, moist or wet calm days will allow some Of the scents to linger longer.
Generally, a good rain will wash away a lot of the scents created by recent activity. It will also allow a more humid air that is conducive to transporting any remaining scent into the turbinates of scent sensitive animals like deer or dogs.
So it is a bit of a paradox. A good rain reduces most induced odors but not all and it may make some of the odors more easily detected.
Good advise is to always limit incursions and reduce your scent distribution as much as possible when you do go in. Oh and hope the rain starts right after you lock the gate on the way out.