Bernie Barringer gives you his top ways on how to bring deer to your stand using different scents.

 ‘Fresh’ urine The first thing I did was quite “offbeat,” but it really worked. I deposited some of my own fresh urine in a scrape. Don’t laugh—I’m dead serious. Most store-bought deer urine has an ammonia smell to it and doesn’t have the “fresh deer smell” that is expected near a scrape. After doing this for several years, I no longer feel weird standing over a scrape emptying my bladder. My urine is fresh and the deer are very curious about it. I have killed bucks over scrapes with my urine in them, and in one case, less than an hour after I put it there. I freshen the scrapes with my urine each time I check the trail cameras, and I try to do it whenever I am hunting over a scrape. I no longer carry a “potty bottle” to the stand with me. If I feel the urge I’ll just climb down and anoint a scrape. If you have the guts to try this you will be convinced.

Import foreign dirt Bucks and does alike know all the other deer in their home areas; they communicate throughout the year, mostly with scent. If a different deer moves into the area, they notice right away and focus some energy on learning it. I have found that I can use this tendency to activate a scrape. I carry a few clean zipper-seal bags with me at all times. When I come across a scrape, I often scoop a bag-full of the musty-smelling scrape dirt and take it with me. When I get back to the area I am hunting, I’ll dump the bag in a scrape near my treestand.

Introducing this new scent to the area will arouse the curiosity and often the aggressiveness in the local bucks. Use a Scrape Dripper Wildlife Research Center makes a bottle that you can hang over your scrape called the Scrape Dripper. It has a rubber tube on the bottom that allows the lure from the bottle to drip slowly onto the scrape, continually adding fresh lure. Because of its design, it tends to drip more slowly when the weather is cold, so it adds more scent to the scrape during the daytime when it’s warmer. I have used these quite a bit and I am convinced they do attract more deer to the scrapes. In an area with multiple scrapes, I often use Active Scrape Lure in one and a doe-in-heat lure in another. And yes, I have used my own fresh urine in these too. In fact, to save money I’ll fill the bottle half-full with commercial scent and top it off with my own. A 4-ounce bottle of lure in the dispenser will last about two weeks when it is really cold, and a few days when it’s warm.

To learn  how to effectively bring deer to your location using scent, be sure to check out Bernie Barringer’s full article the November issue of MidWest Outdoors magazine, available the first full week of November at a newsstand near you.