Scent management means keeping the smells of cooking, waste, smoke and bodies from drifting to places where someone might notice them, by placing them downwind, sealing them and reducing them at source. Human scent carries on the wind and, as the parent article says, dogs can detect it at 300 m or more, so know the wind direction and never expect to remove smell completely.
Part of Camouflage and Concealment
Scent management is the control of cooking smells, waste, smoke and personal odour so that wind does not carry evidence of a household to people or animals that could find it.
Wind Decides Who Smells What
The parent article states that human scent carries on the wind, that dogs can detect it at 300 m or more, and that other humans can smell cooking food, smoke, waste and body odour at surprising distances. The key word is wind. A smell travels with the air, and so it reaches a listener downwind of the source, not the one upwind. A site that smells strongly to the west on a westerly day may be silent to the east.
Three working ideas follow from this:
- Reduce the source. Less frying, fewer open waste heaps, less smoke.
- Let the wind carry the smell away from the likely observers. Where the wind blows from the approach side toward you, your smells go off the far side of the site and away from them. That is what the parent article means by cooking downwind of the most likely approach direction. When the wind blows the other way, it carries your smells toward them, so delay the job.
- Seal and remove what remains. Food scraps, bones and grease go into closed containers and out of the household area.
Smell cannot be hidden completely, and none of these steps works if the wind turns. They shift the odds.
What You Need
- Knowledge of your prevailing wind — see Wind Direction Reading and Wind Patterns
- Sealable containers for scraps and waste
- A cooking place and a latrine sited with wind in mind
- A light thread or ash — to show the wind direction at the moment
Method: Find The Wind, Then Place The Smells
Step 1: Learn the wind. Note the direction it comes from at different hours and seasons. Wind is named for where it comes from.
Step 2: Mark the likely approach directions and the places an observer or a dog might stand.
Step 3: Make the wind carry each smell away from them. Cooking: Cooking Scent Control. Waste: Waste Management. Bodies and clothes: Personal Scent.
Step 4: Check the shift. When the wind changes, change what you do: delay frying, close the waste lid, wait.
Step 5: Remember the household’s own animals. A smell that attracts a stranger’s dog also attracts bears, foxes and rodents to your stores.
Common Mistakes
- Treating smell as something only dogs notice. People smell smoke and cooking too.
- Fixing the day wind and ignoring the night wind. Cold night air drains downhill (see Cold Air Drainage and Frost Pockets) and can change the direction smells travel.
- Burying waste near the house. Animals dig it up.
- Using a strong smell to cover another. It may add a second smell that does not belong in the landscape.
Safety
Food smells draw wild animals as well as people
Cooking and waste smells attract bears, large predators and rodents. Keep food sealed and away from sleeping places, and do not store waste near where children play. Do not burn plastics, treated wood or chemical waste to get rid of them: the smoke is toxic and very visible. Fires used to burn rubbish must be attended and put out completely.
What’s Next
- Learn next: Cooking Scent Control — the largest daily source
- Combine with: Guard Dog Training — your own dogs work the same wind in your favour