Ok... my two cents worth on the use of scents / attractants: it is great if those attractants are working for you. Personally, I stopped using all commercial attractant and scents years ago. Too often I found that the minute I used any brand of attractant around live scrapes those scrapes would go dead overnight. And nothing sucks more than killing a couple very promising scrapes near a prime treestand. My deer harvest results went way up when I started concentrating on complete scent control of myself... smelling as much like NOTHING as possible. If I opt to use any cover scent it is a plant or nut native to the area I am hunting in. I never wear my hunting boots ANYWHERE other than in the woods, then they go right back into a sealed plastic bag with 3 socks full of baking soda.
I know using those deer glands / legs can work, I'm 57 years-old and when I was a kid the old timers did that alot, and I used to do it too in my younger years. It's just that for me, again, the percentage of shoot-able bucks went way up when I stopped using all scent and / or metartasal glands. I used to drag around those deer legs behind me (or often just the glands,) but if you accidentally touch them yourself or touch them against your clothes, etc., it can be a problem. Where I hunt the LAST thing you want to do is smell like a deer whilst sneaking out to your ladder stand at 3:30 am... or when you are walking 3/4 of a mile back to your truck in the dark at the end of the day. The big bucks out there have charged me many times in the past, in the dark... they either wanted to fight me or "f" me... so again, I just concentrate on smelling as much like NOTHING as possible. Now, when I encounter a big buck in the dark it studies me but hardly ever charges me like it did when I smelked like a deer. The other thing you need to do if you are going to drag those glands behind you is make sure your boots are 100% de-scented and take those glands off at least 20 yards from your tree stand. Otherwise the bigger, smarter bucks will simply trail YOU to your hunting spot and watch you from out of range. I found that, over the years, using commercial scents or actual glands off of a deer, all I was doing was creating some amount of excitement with a few does and some smaller bucks. It seemed like I wasn't getting any big bucks coming in. When I stopped using all scents (except for natural cover scents) I started getting bigger bucks in close again.
For me, where I hunt, it seems like anything that alerts deer to a human presence overrides any possible advantage afforded by commercial cover scents and attractants. After killing many live scrapes with commercial scents I came to the conclusion that no matter how expensive or highly recommended those things are - there might be just the slightest bit of contaminant in the bottle or can from the factory... whether that is just a few molecules of cleaning agent used in the bottles or some sort of preservative or antifreeze agent, I am not sure... but the deer ARE... they smell things we can't. I know that doing everything else right and seeing active scrapes go dead was a real problem UNTIL I stopped using those commercial scents. Most scrapes where I hunt don't go dead overnight anymore and the ones that do go dead just more or less get normally phased out by the deer using them. With many of the commercial scents my scrapes were literally going dead overnight. I even experimented one year, using commercial scent along a 100 yard scrape line but only using it in every other scrape. The scrapes I didn't touch with scent stayed active, the ones I used scent in died overnight. Same boots worn near all the scrapes, everything else equal, just no scent in every other live scrape. Now, one caveat: in years gone by I HAVE had occasional positive results with Tinks, etc., but the problem was this: I'd never KNOW which particular scent would or would not kill scrapes, or when, BEFORE I used them. So it got to the point with me that it just wasn't even worth taking the chance that my newly purchased $25.00 bottle of the "best scent available" MIGHT kill a scrape when I knew if I just left those same scrapes alone they would probably be live the next day.
So that's what works for me as of now. If using commercial scents works for you, then great. Just keep your eyes peeled... if you start noticing scrapes going dead overnight, it might be your scent. If you are only seeing small bucks... it might very well be your choice of attractants.
Also, in my decades of hunting I have seen some scrapes that only appear to me made and used by does, and I later read some articles by wildlife biologists that confirm it, so it is something you might want to factor into your use of mock scrapes and scents, etc., you may only be attracting does.
I used to also make mock scrapes, and again, after a few years I found that my best overall results came about when I left nature alone and just tried to be an invisible, odorless part of it. Blending in, observing the natural ebb and flow of things, then putting yourself where the most or best activity is seems to work far better for me than trying to lure bucks to me. And really, the times when I had lure out and the bucks came in... I was never sure that they might have come anyway without the gimmicks.
As I said, this is what works for me, but it is all relative: relative to your hunting area, the deer IN that area, relative to your personal hunting style and your hunting / camo / scent control techniques. I only offer these words so you can factor them into your overall toolbag... I thought for years that my Tinks, etc., was working miracles until it dawned on me one day that I was only drawing in the smaller bucks and does and when I did see the big bucks they were always a couple of hundred yards away, already wise to me. More knowledge is always a good thing... so good luck on your journey and good luck with your choice of techniques...
