By: Jeff Davis (Whitetails Unlimited)
There is a lot about deer hunting that I don’t understand. That statement may actually be a little harsh, because some of those things I actually may understand, but for a variety of reasons, I just don’t do a very good job with them.
Like paying attention. I’ve come out of sound sleep in a ground blind only to see that whitetail flag bouncing through the woods away from me, no doubt spooked by my snoring. On one hunt in Oklahoma, I spent a long time in a cozy plywood blind, painfully picking dozens of sand burrs off my pants. I started looking at them closely, trying to figure out why they are so sharp, but sticky at the same time. I lined up a half-dozen of them on the window sill and started taking extreme close-up photos of them. I positioned them so the light-colored burrs were against a dark pine tree background, and the needle-sharp points were catching the light just right. I was completely engrossed with working on the camera settings for exposure, ISO, and depth of field – and then I heard something to my front.
I looked over the top of my camera to see a pair of does, 20 feet away, staring right at me as if they wanted to say, “No, you fool, f/11; use f/11!”
My doe tag was still in my pocket when I left the field that evening.
I’ve never told anyone that story, so while I’m confessing here to just my best friends, another thing I’ve always struggled with is scent control. Not the concept of it, because I’ve seen deer downwind of me put their noses in the air, sniff, and immediately turn tail and bolt. And not because I’m inherently stinky or have an uncontrolled personal BO problem. As far as I know.
I’m confused because I know hunters who are obsessive about scent control and take great bucks on a regular basis. I also know hunters who take great bucks on a regular basis, and they smoke in their blinds, never shower at deer camp, and hang their clothes in the cabin where it’s bacon for breakfast and baked beans for dinner – every day.
I know one hunter who is so obsessive about scent control, he has a separate, dedicated, watch and eyeglasses just for deer hunting. He drives to his entry point, strips completely naked, and then dons his (de-scented) hunting clothes, including socks and underwear. Yes, even if it’s raining, 8 degrees and windy, or if it’s in the daylight.
That’s a little too intense for me – I’m not ready to turn scent control into a part-time job, though I do need to be better. What then to do?
As usual, I found an answer when I didn’t even know what the question was. It was an offhand comment from a public relations person when we were talking about a completely different product, and he mentioned that someone else in their company had been using new scent-control clothing that worked in a completely different way from anything else in the market; my antenna went up.
I’ve always been a science nerd, and debunking marketing claims based on “new” science is sort of a hobby for me, so my initial reaction was, “Yea, sure.”
Normally this takes but a few seconds – check out the claims, see what kind of propaganda is used, and apply a few basic logical concepts and scientific principles.
As I set out on this debunking mission something strange happened – I got deeper and deeper into the process, and everything was still making sense. Was I losing my mojo? Turns out, I wasn’t. I’ve now spent more time than a normal person should investigating a product, but it’s going to pay off – this fall I’m planning to be less odiferous the easy way!
The Product
The basics were pretty simple: a fabric was treated with an odor control product that works in two ways, regenerates between launderings, and provides clothing with long-lasting odor control performance. A company called Sciessent makes the product, and they call it Lava XL. Right now 10X (a division of Walls outdoor clothing), and Browning’s Hells Canyon clothing line use the Sciessent dual-action passive scent control technology.
Sciessent makes customized antimicrobial solutions that improve other products, like medical devices, drinking-water applications (water filters and ice-making equipment) and textiles (hunting clothing), and other apparel (like shoes). They use silver in many of these applications, which kills bacteria, and in the hunting clothing, they also use a naturally occurring mineral that traps odor molecules.
Jeff Trogolo, chief technical officer at Sciessent, explained the process to me. Trogolo has a Ph.D. in materials engineering and has been working in this area for almost 20 years. Lava XL controls odor in two ways – it kills bacteria and absorbs odor molecules.
There is no typo in that last line – adsorb is different from absorbing.
“This is a dual-action method to reduce odors,” said Trogolo. “It’s been known since the Pharaohs that silver can kill bacteria, although it took another 2,000 years to figure out what bacteria actually are. They knew that water in a silver vessel is safer than water in a clay vessel. When people sweat, bacteria on the skin start to eat the material from our sweat and sebaceous glands, and that creates bacterial odor. The silver kills the bacteria, but there are also other odors from humans, and the adsorbing mineral handles that.”
The mineral (zeolite, which comes from volcanic ash), has many nooks and crannies in its surface, and it grabs ahold of molecules – that’s the adsorbing part. “Absorbing is like when a sponge pulls material inside; adsorbing is when the material is stuck to the outside,” said Trogolo. Sciessent has discovered a method to not only have the mineral adsorb odor molecules, but also degrade and release the odor molecules without having to launder or otherwise process the garment.
So while Sciessent says this is dual-action odor control, there are actually three steps: silver kills the bacteria, the mineral adsorbs odor molecules, and then the molecules are degraded and released, making the item ready for use again.
This does not mean you don’t have to wash your nasty hunting clothes, but if you are hunting several days in a row, simply by hanging the clothes and letting them air out they get regenerated and will still help control odors the next day. After 50 washings, the clothes are still almost as effective at controlling scent as when they were new.
And how do they know that? “We spent a lot of time on testing, and we used gas chromatograph testing to verify the results,” Trogolo said. “In addition, we had human testing, and those results also verified the effectiveness.” Yes, there are companies where people sniff things for a living, and the results are repeatable and scientific, even if they are not as exact as the lab equipment.
When I asked Trogolo how Sciessent came up with the process, and how the material is applied to the fabric so it can still be effective after 50 laundry cycles, he just chuckled. His answer was a variation of the old saying, “If this was easy, everyone would be doing it.” Sciessent has spent many years developing both the material and the process, and as esoteric as this seems, there are other companies (Sciessent competitors) out there that are working on similar products. Without going into any detail, he told me that it’s important to distribute the material in the fabric evenly and that it takes a very small amount of silver and mineral to be effective in each garment.
Hunting This Fall
So, does this mean I’m on easy street to a 14-pointer this fall? No, I have no such illusion, but I am going to be more odor-free. I’ll have my nose in the 10X and Browning Hell’s Canyon catalogs, trying to find the correct mix of under and outerwear. It’s nice because the available options range from quality, wicking base layers to nice, warm outer garments, so I’m sure I’ll find whatever it is I will need.
I have already seen, touched, and tried on clothing from both 10X and Hell’s Canyon, and my early impression is that the entire line from both companies are outstanding. The real problem is they are both high quality, look and fit great, and would be great hunting clothes even without the added benefit of odor control. I’m going to have a hard time deciding.
It’s an enjoyable day when I can complain about having too many good options.
