Stinky Boy and the Scent Rule

The following article was written by my buddy Jeremy Harrill. He's a wildlife officer and founder of Heart of a Sportsman ministries. Enjoy!


Stinky Boy and the Scent Rule


I was sitting in my hunting blind when I heard what I thought was that familiar sound. The crunch of leaves and twigs under the hoof of a deer. I readied my bow and prepared myself to draw. I sat there for several minutes and finally decided that because it was still very early in the season my ears had not yet been fully calibrated to detect the sounds of woodland critters. The curiosity killed me, so I quietly leaned forward to take a peek out the side window of the blind. BUSTED!!! There she was, a big, fat doe peering into the blind where I sat. I don’t know who was more surprised, she or I. I could almost see my reflection in her big, brown glossy eyes. She nearly tripped over her own hooves as she ran away. The last thing I saw was her long white tail waving back and forth. As she faded into the forest, she made a loud blowing noise as if to tell all the other deer that stinky man in the camo tent-thingy was in the woods. I was quickly reminded of one of deer hunting’s biggest rules: the scent rule. I was reminded again a week or so later when I heard another deer blowing after it winded me. As it ran off blowing, reminding all that lived in the forest that “stinky boy” was back; I couldn’t help but drop my head in frustration.

We hunters stink! We literally stink. A deer’s nose is hundreds of times better at detecting scent than a human’s nose is. There are those that say that deer hunting is not fair and I would agree. God gave deer such a good sniffer that it is not at all fair to the hunters that pursue them. All hunters sooner or later learn about the scent rule. The sooner we learn it, and what to do about it, the sooner we can get down to the business of filling our freezers.

Hunters try to pull the wool over the deer’s nose, so to speak, by using a variety of products to eliminate or cover our scent. Each year hunters spend millions of dollars on gels, powders, wafers, drips and sprays containing everything from earth scent to fox pee. We rub on these scents and secretions in our quest to outsmart the nose of a deer and hopefully get within range of a big buck. We wash our bodies in special soaps. We buy dryer sheets that smell like dirt. And it’s of vital importance to wash our hunting attire in a detergent that eliminates our human foulness.

After that second deer winded me, while I was vowing under my breath to get even, I couldn’t help but think about sin and how sin stinks up our lives. Sin hurts us, and others, it wreaks havoc in our lives and our world, and most of all sin’s putrid fragrance taints our lives by separating us from God. However, just like there’s a solution to the scent problem in deer hunting, there’s a solution to the stench of sin in our lives too. Fortunately for us, God loved us so much that he gave us a solution in His son Jesus Christ. Jesus shed his blood to save us from our sins. The Bible tells us that “love covers a multitude of sins,” and I can’t think of any greater love than the love that Jesus displayed for us on the cross. Therefore, to cover up sin’s terrible odor one must accept God’s gift of his son, Jesus. Once someone becomes a believer asking Jesus to be Lord and Savior of their life, God surely smiles when He takes a wiff of their new lives. 2 Corinthians 2:15 even says “for to God we are the fragrance of Christ.”

If you don’t know Him already, become friends with the greatest hunting companion one could ask for – Jesus. If you are already a follower or Christ, thank him the next time you are spraying on some type of cover scent or washing your camo preparing it for the next hunt. I just bet if you think about it long enough, you’ll even hear that old hymn playing in your mind. “Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb, are your garments spotless, are they white as snow, are you washed in the blood of the Lamb.” I’ll never hear, or sing that song the same way again.

Jeremy B. Harrill