First of all, there is no such thing as scent elimination, it's scent reduction or diluation.
I think there is certain situations where scent affects the deer more than others. If the deer isn't use to human interaction, scent control becomes more of an issue, but deer who live near humans are less likely to become jumpy when our scent is in the air. On our ranch, my ground blind is 100 yards from our hired-man's house and northwest of the most promiently used deer trail. As all of you know, the wind in the Midwest comes from the NW in the fall. Two years ago, 5 bucks, including 3 P&Y were taken from that blind and last year 4 bucks were taken. I guarantee that every deer could smell the hunter, but it wasn't an unusual scent, since we are harvesting during the day. My deer from those years were at 4 and 7 yards. I'm just saying that after enough interaction, deer can get use to anything.
Now, I'm not saying scent control isn't important, just the opposite. I own all the Scent Lok products and use them religious when I'm hunting somewhere humans normally aren't and have even gone as far as rolling in a silage pile or intentionally stepping in cow crap to cover my scent We have just noticed that wearing the same coveralls or coat that we wore while picking corn or baling doesn't spook the deer when they are use to it. Sure there are times that they smelled something they didn't like but for the most part, it works. Part of it is that I have the ground blind about as air tight as I can get it. I've even gone to the blind after my tag was filled to just watch the deer and was chewing Cherry Skoal tobacco, which is about as foreign of a smell I could find for SD in November and the deer still didn't mind. I had 15 to 20 buck, doe and yearlings eating in front of me for over 20 minutes while I'm spitting 20 yards away.
Just a different perspective from a prairie farm kid. Most guys who aren't deer hunters usually think that I'm BSing them about that ground blind situation, so I usually spare them the most unbelievable part. Can you guess...
Only 19 more care free days for SD bucks.