Smoke 'Em

While there are many brands of scent-free hunting clothes on the market today and many brands and "flavors" of cover scent there is also the age-old smell of a campfire to help hide our human scents in the woods. This is important for hunters and trackers who try to avoid detection due to an errant smell.

I set up a ring around my fire pit the other day to smoke all my camouflage clothes and closed in two sides with poly tarps to prevent the wind from carrying my smoke away before passing through the fabric in the clothes. The wind was blowing through pretty strong so I had to take care when hanging the shirts and wrapped the sleeves around the line multiple times to keep the items from blowing to the ground.

The distance from the fire and smoke to the clothes plus the wind speed factored in to my calculations (all very non-scientific) about the duration of the smoking as well as the intensity of the fire. Basically I sniffed the clothes every 30 minutes or so until I felt the human smells had been adequately replaced by smokiness.

I fed the fire with sticks and branches that had fallen in the yard as well as seasoned wood from my wood pile and kept it burning for several hours. This, combined with the circular "clothesline," gave me a decent amount of smokiness without going too overboard. I then pulled the clothes down and put them in a black garbage bag to protect the scent and prevent contamination with less natural scents like fabric softener, snack food, and gasoline (all things I may encounter between here and the woods.)

When I'm ready to get started I will pull the clothes from the garbage bag and put them on. Then I'll put my "street clothes" in the bag and wrap it up tight to prevent those smells from getting out.

Will it work in my favor? I'll let you know. :)

Thanks for reading,


B