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Urine things to think about

Iowa1

New Member
That other thread about scents got me to thinking. I want to put four scenarios that I have personally witnessed on here to give you some things to think about.

A few years ago, you started seeing coon urine show up on the shelves of stores all across the US. Some marketing genius somewhere thought, "Hey coons live in trees, hunters sit in trees, we should use coon urine as a cover scent!" Brilliant marketing scheme, expecially when most hunters are so stupid they will fall for anything. All of the sudden, there is coon urine on the shelves in all the Wal-marts, and it's being sold in magazines, catalogs and hunting stores. Millions of bottles of coon urine mysteriously appear within a few months.

Ever wonder where this coon urine came from? Who has that many coons? How do they collect their urine? Guys I can tell you that it couldn't possibly have been coon urine. I used to raise fox (for 8 years) back in the fur boom days. I kept a coon or two around just to sample coon lures on them and because I enjoy the critters. Those gluttunous chow-hounds ate three times as much as their fur was worth even during the fur boom. There was no way you could justify raising them. Plus they dug around in their food so bad, splashed their water around, and made a general mess that it was impossible to collect clean urine from them. I was a member of an association of fur farmers and only about one percent of us were raising coon. And NONE were set up to collect their urine. If you bought coon urine, you were duped. I do not know what it was, but it was not coon urine.

Scenario #2. I was sitting around one evening at a trappers convention, talking with several other trappers and trapping supply dealers. This was back in the early 1990s when the deer hunting market was really booming. One guy there, and I won't give his name, was a major supplier of trapping lures across the US. He told me that he was supplying deer urine to a major deer lure manufacturer, and once again, I won't give a name but it's probably one of the largest if not the largest marketer of deer lure. I said, hey you don't even raise deer. He said, "yeah but they don't know that!" Seems the company was experienceing huge growth and of course was having a terrible time getting deer urine for their lures. This fellow, being an established trapping lure manufacturer, contracted with the company to sell them a 55 gallon drum of deer lure every few weeks or so. The company never checked him out. He contacted someone he knew who raised deer, and to his dismay, discovered that he could only get a fraction of what he contracted each period. A few gallons of deer urine was all he was going to have in the bottom his 55-gallon drum each time the company truck came to pick it up. So he found an outlet for cow urine (!) and still his drum was only half full. So he topped it off with a garden hose each time before the truck came. To this day, the company processed that as deer urine, and this guys says he figured they suspected something, but they didn't want to call his bluff because they needed the stuff so badly. That's the kind of qaulity scent you can buy in Wal-Mart.

Scenario #3
Years ago, probably 20, I read about using fox urine as a cover. So I tied a rag to my shoe as I walked to the stand and put some fox urine on it. Got to my stand and just got settled in when here comes this thick-necked nice 8-pointer trailing my tracks with his nose to the ground like a coonhound. Fox urine, like all urine, is an attractor. Never forget that. Animals use urine as a means of communicating. It doesn't cover anything.

Scenario #4
Sitting in a tree stand along the edge of a picked cornfield early November, I watched a doe walk by along the edge of the corn stubble from my right to my left. About an hour later, here comes a buck on a trot, straight across the field towards me. I hoped he was heading for a nearby scrape. He hit the spot where the doe crossed and literally skidded to a stop. He took three quick steps to my right with his nose to the ground where the doe had crossed, then spun around and took off after her on a dead run. He had probably gone a total of eight feet towards the direction she came before he determined that the scent was getting older. EIGHT FEET! Do you really think you can outsmart that buck's nose with some stuff you bought at Wal-Mart? It's unbelieveable what some people fall for.

Okay I'll give you scenario #5 since I just thought of one more. I was sitting in the UNI dome a couple years ago listening to a seminar by one of the most well-known deer hunters of our day, Myles Keller. I just about jumped out of my seat when he said what I'm about to relate. I could not believe it. Myles was talking about laying down a scent trail using a drag rag when he said to freshen the rag with scent often so it doesn't get weak and the deer might go the wrong way! I just lost a huge amount of respect for Myles on that one. Deer don't track by the amount of scent, they track by the AGE of the scent. There is a big difference. Come on Myles! A guy with as much experience as you surely must know that. I guess even Myles Keller doesn't understand a deer's nose. Scary isn't it?

Sorry for rambling on so much, but I hope I've given you some things to think about that you haven't thought of before.
 
Iowa1, good scenario's, but do not call most hunters stupid for trying to learn somthing on there own. Good advise is helpful but bashing is uncalled for.
 
Sorry if you interpreted my statements as bashing. I do no think anyone is stupid for trying something on their own. I do think it is stupid the way many people follow foolish trends like so many lemmings. I apologize if I offended you, that was not my intent. I was merely trying to make people think about the decisions they make and what they base those decisions on.
 
Iowa1, all in all I understood what you are trying to say here, the word is education, and like decoyguy stated in another thread were never to old to learn something.Thanks.
 
Good stuff Iowa1, anyone that works this hard gets my attention!


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