Beech Tree News Network

At my house, you can tell when it’s deer season, because it’s the one time during the year when my husband, Garey, does laundry.  Let’s rephrase, when Garey does his own laundry.  I am not allowed to touch it, and that’s fine by me.  It is collected into special heaps in our bedroom, which I am careful not to fall over or even brush up against for fear of contamination—not what the clothes will pass on to me, rather what I will pass on to the clothes.
Garey does his laundry during deer season, because he washes and dries, or hangs, the special clothes he reserves for that time of year in detergents produced by designer deer companies to camouflage his human scent.  The products have names like, “No Scent,” “Scent-Away,” and “Dead Downwind.”  These companies offer a complete line of products, including but not limited to, soap, body wash, shampoo, deodorant, detergent and dryer sheets.  (I think, they’re missing out on the lion’s share by not offering a camouflage HAZMAT suit, but that’s just me.)
During this time of year, it is not unusual to find Garey’s clothes airing in a laundry basket on top of our metal storage building or hanging from the green house joists or sealed up in black plastic trash bags in his pickup.  The body washes and soaps take up every available space on the edge of the tub and are sealed up in Ziplock bags to prevent contamination from non-deer stalkers like myself, my daughter and my granddaughter.  If we have guests, they are forced to use the bathroom at the other end of the house.  (I’m surprised that I have yet to be banished to the bathroom at the other end of the house, but then deer season isn’t over.)
There are half-empty bottles of detergents and body washes from years past that have fallen out of favor for newer, more effective products.  The scents, or lack-thereof, have progressed from products like “Buck-in-Rut” to “Earth Scent” to “No Scent.”  I’m a big recycler, but I’m at a loss to know what to do with a product called “Doe-in-Heat.”
I have made some serious snafus with deer laundry and products in the past that I am careful never to repeat.  I washed Scent Lock carbon pants in Tide and softened them with Downy.  I threw out an old cigar box full of camouflage paint.  (In my defense, it was pushed to the back of the top shelf in the linen closet, covered in three inches of dust, and we were running out of room for all of the other hunting-related products.)  I combined half-empty bottles of body washes.  How was I to know “Earth Scent” would clash with “Nature Scent?”  I’m not a chemist, after all.
It is becoming ever so clear to me why the Native American Indians were so much better at deer hunting than their progeny.  They were actually in the woods, not back at the teepee laundering their clothes in the latest scent-free products.  All they had to do was get up, put on their loin cloths and moccasins, grab their bows, and head out for the hunt.
 I think, Garey and his counterparts could take a lesson from the Indians.  They, too, should dress in deer skin loin cloths and moccasins, and carry bows made from native woods.  Yeah, it might not work for them, but it would provide much-needed entertainment for the rest of us during this stressful time of the year.