Is human urine a deterrent to deer?
There is at least one unconventional hunter who goes against the grain when it comes to hunting.Crash was that guy in our tightly knit group.Crash swore at his mother's grave that he put two Booners on his wall because of his own urine.The room erupted in laughter.He was serious.
Tom Nelson said that he doesn't feel right about urinating on the ground when he's hunting.I don't want to alert deer that they're being hunted.
Nelson has a pee bottle in his pack.Whenever nature calls, he uses it.
All urine is made up of more than 95 percent water, regardless of whether you are talking about deer or people.Both human and deer urine contain things like ammonia and urea.
Dr. Karl Miller is a researcher at the University of Georgia.There are big differences between the urine of deer and humans.
Deer urine is different from human urine in that it is unique from deer to deer.There are at least 90 different compounds in doe urine.It's a big deal in the whitetail world that deer use urine to communicate.
According to Brian Murphy, executive director of the Quality Deer Management Association, deer can tell the difference between predator and non-predator urine.It is unlikely that deer associate human urine with humans unless a human leaves their scent behind.
Miller agrees.Humans aren't genetically programmed to be able to identify deer urine.They would have to follow a hunter around and wait for him to urinate or catch him urinating, and then check it out.
Deer and predator urine is abundant in the woods.It would never get a moment's peace if a deer bolted every time it found predator urine.Deer are told where the predator is by finding urine from humans.It is unlikely that a buck will go to the next county if he discovers human pee.
According to bowhunter and writer Jay Strangis, it doesn't bother deer, and can even arouse their curiosity.I think about urinating in the sit before I climb on the stand.I don't hesitate to urinate anywhere near the bottom of my tree if I have to.
Few studies have been done on the effects of human urine on animals.When Ben Koerth was a graduate student, he used trail cameras to monitor mock scrapes treated with buck urine, doe-in-heat urine and human urine from a car wash.Each test site was run for two weeks.They recorded how many deer came to each site.They estimated the age of the deer that visited each site.
There were deer at every one of the treatment sites.There was no statistical difference in the number of deer that came to any of the treatments.Over 90 percent of all visitors were nocturnal, and the average number of times a particular deer came to a treatment site was once.
When it comes to pee, a deer's natural curiosity explains its behavior.It is necessary for deer to be curious in order to survive.
The buck urine and human urine performed better than doe-in-estrus urine.
C.J., a wildlife biologist and hunter, said that he often relieves himself in existing wounds.Winand.Whenever I leave a hunting area, I use my boot to urinate under an overhanging branch.If a buck is walking by your stand, you have a better chance of getting a shot.
Murphy doesn't think the answer is as simple as it may seem.We don't know if human urine was the attractant, because there are a bunch of other scents around that could be having the effect.
John Eberhart believes that it depends on the type of deer you are after.
In heavily-pressured areas, mature bucks don't behave like subordinate bucks and do not do anything out of the ordinary when it comes to odors.They are gone if they experience or witness something out of the ordinary.