Whitetails Scent Lures

When you are going out for whitetails first thing to do is to cover your own scent, otherwise deer will be aware of your presence and will run away; but once you have properly scout the area, identified feeding trails and selected shooting blinds, how can you attract whitetails towards your position?

Well, scent lures are the key. Deer interacts among them using not only their sight and ear senses but also smell, in fact, it's one of their main social interaction ways; through odors a dominant male deer may detect competitor on the area as well the presence of a female partner; everything without even seeing another deer yet.

Considering the above, a good way to attract whitetails towards your position is using scent lures and depending of the time on the season and the behaviour you expect from the animals, different scents must be used, otherwise the result will be negative, thus let's see what you need depending of the time of the season:

Early Season:

At this point deer are interested mainly on social interaction among them, the urgent call of reproduction has not arrived yet, thus using just doe urine will be enough to catch some individuals curiosity and attract them towards your position, especially if located on a know feeding trail, since whitetails are now interested on food more than any other thing.

Pre-Rut

Looking for "loving partners" and securing an area is critical for deer during this period, thus males, especially the big ones are more territorial and competitive, thus they will fight all competitors to kick them out their territories. With a keen smell sense capable to detect competitors several miles away, you may use buck urine to tell the big boys on the area that someone is there to defeat their throne; afterwards wait for the dominant deer to show up looking for competitors. Of course, instead of a buck, they will reach your shooting position giving you a chance to catch a trophy.

Rut

Now everyone knows their place on deer social scale and it's time for coupling, and nothing is more attractive for big males than doe estrous scent! Thus to defeat whitetails you'll need to make they think about the female presence on their territory using doe estrous scent.

Of course they won't find a couple but a rifle aiming straight to their position, obviously if you set up everything properly before.

Post Rut

Fighting to transfer genes to the next generation has ended and food is a priority again, thus basic doe urine is the smarter choice for this period; however 28 days later a second, shorter and less intense rut period may arise and you'll need to switch again to estrous scents; nevertheless don't expect to have same success as first time, after all most of the sexual energy was already spent.

At the end, a combination of hiding your own scent and cheat deer making them to believe about the presence of one of them instead of you it's a winning strategy to catch a good trophy. Of course, there's also other skills to keep in mind for success.