For All the Scent-Lok users

[Outdoor Writer]

Here's an interesting tidbit that basically mirrors what I've thought ever since this product was introduced. -TONY

 

 

Suit says clothes don't pass smell test

 

Four Minnesotans claim that a company that makes scent-disguising clothing has duped hunters out of millions of dollars by selling them a product that doesn't work.

 

By Doug Smith, Star Tribune

 

September 23, 2007

 

Deer hunters know that if a whitetail's sensitive snout gets wind of human scent, it'll flee in alarm -- and the hunt is over.

 

That's why hunters, including 500,000 in Minnesota, spend millions of dollars each year buying special hunting clothing with activated carbon that promises to eliminate human odors.

 

Now that clothing, which has been on the market for about a dozen years and is sold by virtually every major outdoor retailer in the nation, is under fire.

 

A lawsuit filed Sept. 13 in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis alleges the clothing doesn't work and that hunters have been -- and continue to be -- defrauded.

 

The suit was filed against ALS Enterprises Inc. of Muskegon, Mich., which produces and licenses "Scent-Lok" clothing sold under that name and others, including ScentBlocker. The suit says the company is the largest maker of such clothing and licenses it to at least 22 others, including Gander Mountain Co., Cabela's Inc., Bass Pro Shops Inc. and Browning Arms Co. Those four firms also are named as defendants.

 

The suit alleges the five firms conspired to deceive consumers and suppressed and concealed the truth. "Consumers have been duped into spending significant amounts of money on a product that does not work as represented," the suit says.

 

A spokesman for Gander Mountain, the only Minnesota-based firm being sued, declined to comment. Mike Andrews, vice president of marketing for ALS, said the suit is without merit.

 

"We've done years of research ... we have hundreds of testimonials from consumers over the years," he said last week. "We know it works. And we're excited about the opportunity to prove to the world once and for all how effective our product is."

 

Added Andrews: "We have a written guarantee that says you'll experience unalarmed wild animals downwind. You don't build this kind of business on something that's not true."

 

The company says testing done for it by Intertek Testing Services in Cortland, N.Y., has shown its fabric performs as claimed. It also cites supportive studies by S. Holger Eichhorn of the University of Windsor in Ontario and Donald B. Thompson of North Carolina State University.

 

ALS is a privately held company, and Andrews wouldn't reveal sales figures, but some have estimated the activated carbon hunting clothing business may be worth $100 million annually.

 

Four men who bought the clothing -- Mike Buetow of Shakopee, Theodore Carlson of Edina, Gary Richardson Jr. of St. Paul and Joe Rohrbach of Shakopee -- are named as plaintiffs in the suit. But attorneys are seeking class-action status, meaning it would be argued on behalf of all those who bought the clothing. The suit says "tens of thousands" of Minnesota hunters have been deceived into buying millions of dollars of odor-eliminating clothing.

 

Buetow, a bow hunter, said he and the others can't comment on the case on the advice of attorneys. He said he bought $1,000 worth of Scent-Lok gear -- including pants, coats, face masks, hats and gloves -- in 2003.

 

The lawsuit is just the latest salvo fired at ALS and its sellers. The question of whether the company's clothing works as claimed has been the topic of Internet chat rooms for about the past year.

 

And a Minnesotan -- T.R. Michels, 57, of Burnsville, an outdoor writer, author, hunting guide and frequent hunting seminar speaker who has his own website (www.trmichels.com) -- acknowledges he is responsible for raising much of the stink.

 

"Hunters have been screwed," he said. "They have been misled. And they [companies] are making tons of money off the stuff."

 

He said he has no ax to grind and began looking at the clothing because his job as a writer and outdoor expert is to "look into myths and dispell them."

 

Said Michels: "I was lied to, and that really ticked me off."

 

He is not involved in the lawsuit, and won't be because, while he has used Scent-Lok clothing, he's never purchased it, he said. However, Michels has questioned the performance of the clothing with the U.S. Patent Office and has posted numerous exchanges he's had with the company on his website and others.

 

He said outdoor magazines won't write about the issue for fear of losing lucrative advertising dollars for the hunting clothing, and that he has lost freelance work because of his stance.

 

Everyone claims science is on their side.

 

ALS has created a new section on the company's website (www.scentlok.com) to explain how the activated carbon adsorbs human odors. (Adsorption is the adhesion of the gas or liquid molecules to the surfaces of solids.) Andrews said independent experts have verified the company's findings.

 

"It does work as described," Andrews said. "Unfortunately some people refuse to look at the data we've provided."

 

No one disputes that activated carbon adsorbs odors. But even ALS acknowledges the carbon can become saturated with odors. Andrews says the company's clothing can be "regenerated" or "reactivated" many times by putting it in a regular household dryer for 45 minutes. Then it's ready to adsorb more odors.

 

"We know that even after several years of use, it still has enough adsorption capacity to overcome big game animals' [scenting ability]," Andrews said.

 

But the lawsuit and Michels dispute that.

 

The suit says that dryer temperatures never exceed 150 degrees, but temperatures in excess of 800 degrees are needed to reactivate the carbon, and even then it wouldn't be restored to full adsorptive capacity.

 

The suit doesn't cite any independent testing done on the clothing that shows it doesn't work.

 

"Defendants knew or should have known that their odor-eliminating clothing cannot, as a matter of science, eliminate all human odors ... or render a human body scent-invisible to a deer or other game animals," the suit states.

 

The suit says that had hunters known that the clothing doesn't eliminate all human odors and cannot be regenerated in household dryers, they wouldn't have bought it.

 

The suit also claims the defendants violated the Minnesota Consumer Fraud Act, the Minnesota Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act, the Minnesota Unlawful Trade Practices Act and involved civil conspiracy.

 

Andrews said ALS will vigorously fight the suit.

 

******

 

 

The actual 42-pg lawsuit filed in MN.

 

******

 

 

The above photograph is blowup of a piece of Scent Lok fabric, about 6.25 x 6.25 inches square. The tiny black dots on the fabric are the carbon particles. You can clearly see that the powdered activated carbon particles (PAC) are not much wider than one of the threads of the fabric, and there doesn't appear to be more than 30% of the fabric covered with powdered activated carbon.

 

Odors must come into physical contact with the activated carbon before they are "bound" or "adsorbed" to the activated carbon by "electrostatic" or other forces. All odors, including human perspiration odors, will take the "path of least resistance" if they can, meaning they will go around the activated carbon and exit the suit through the large spaces between the small flecks of activated carbon if they can - and they can!

 

This means that many of the scents and/or odors on the inside of a suit made of this material can exit the suit without coming into contact with any activated carbon - they just go around the carbon. And deer, elk, bear and other animals will smell those odors!

 

Scent Lok Patent - Rejected by the Patent Office (9/14/07 1:50 PM)

 

On 9/13/07 the United States Patent Office posted a "Final Rejection Mailed" notice on their web site for Patent # 90007331, which WAS the "double patented" application of Scent Lok for activated carbon clothing for use while hunting. It is illegal to patent something that has already been patented.

 

What does this "Patent rejection" mean for those companies who have been paying royalties to Scent Lok, or for those companies who have an agreement with Scent Lok, or for those companies who have been bankrupted by Scent Lok for infringing on the now rejected patent application of Scent Lok? It may mean that Scent Lok's demand for royalties for the past 16 years was never enforceable.

 

The consequences now - who knows? Maybe new technology, with lower clothing prices, for you hunters.

 

You can find this Patent rejection at: http://www.uspto.gov/ebc/index.html and click on View "Public PAIR". On the next page check the "Application Number" circle, and then type 90007331 in the "*Enter Number" box. You can then click the "Image File Wrapper" and "Transaction History" tabs at the top of the page to view more information.

[mattys281]

Didn't these guys know that if they'd have simply taken a few minutes to bathe they wouldn't have needed all that snake oil & voo-doo anyway? Man, people will buy anything.

[Outdoor Writer]

Didn't these guys know that if they'd have simply taken a few minutes to bathe they wouldn't have needed all that snake oil & voo-doo anyway? Man, people will buy anything.

 

Bathe?

 

Wasted exercise since your body -- including your breath -- constantly and immediately produces more than 200 types of bacteria and odors that game, with a sense of smell hundreds of times better than ours, will smell.

 

The ONLY answer is to stay downwind of game. -TONY

[mattys281]

Bathe?

 

Wasted exercise since your body -- including your breath -- constantly and immediately produces more than 200 types of bacteria and odors that game, with a sense of smell hundreds of times better than ours, will smell.

 

The ONLY answer is to stay downwind of game. -TONY

 

The problem I have with that is that I honestly can't remember the last place I was at that had a steady breeze. The last two years I've been carrying a powder bottle & constantly checking the wind, only to find out that it always seems to be moving in a different direction than it was a few minutes ago.

 

The way I look at it is you'll never be able to either completely eliminate you scent or completely predict the wind, so I try to minimize the bacteria growth as much as possible with daily bathing (good idea in general - not just for hunting ), clean clothes that cover everything except my head (long sleeves & gloves), bacteria killing scent spray, & of course playing the wind as much as possible.

 

I'm currently reading up on search dog training & the book I've been reading has a great explanation on how scent is distributed & hence how the dogs find it. For example, the bacteria you mention clings to the dead skin cells that are constantly being shed off of us in little clumps called rafts. The average human sheds over 40,000 rafts carrying their scent per minute. Hence the long sleeves & gloves mentioned earlier, to impede the distribution of them. Also, ideal conditions for bacteria to grow are warm & wet, so I try to move slove & rest often to keep from perspiring.

 

As for the carbon clothing - gimmick. And a good one. They took alot of people's money.

[Outdoor Writer]

The way I look at it is you'll never be able to either completely eliminate you scent or completely predict the wind, so I try to minimize the bacteria growth as much as possible with daily bathing (good idea in general - not just for hunting ), clean clothes that cover everything except my head (long sleeves & gloves), bacteria killing scent spray, & of course playing the wind as much as possible.

 

I'm currently reading up on search dog training & the book I've been reading has a great explanation on how scent is distributed & hence how the dogs find it. For example, the bacteria you mention clings to the dead skin cells that are constantly being shed off of us in little clumps called rafts. The average human sheds over 40,000 rafts carrying their scent per minute. Hence the long sleeves & gloves mentioned earlier, to impede the distribution of them. Also, ideal conditions for bacteria to grow are warm & wet, so I try to move slove & rest often to keep from perspiring.

 

As for the carbon clothing - gimmick. And a good one. They took alot of people's money.

 

Yup on both counts in your first paragraph. And good job on the research. BUT...the rafts do not have to escape from your clothing to give off scent! Bacteria gives off its own odor regardless of where it is located. So while you keep the rafts captive, they still emit the odors. The prime example is a person with obnoxious BO; you smell it regardles of sniffing their rafts or not.

 

Now, since you mentioned dogs, here's something to consider. When I had my shorthair, she often picked up the scent of a single quail at 50 feet or more when the wind was right. If you ever shoot a quail, hold it up to your nose and smell it. You will find it has VERY LITTLE odor that the human nose can detect, yet a dog can smell that bird from many yards distant. A deer's sense of smell is even more acute than a dog's is. Likewise for most game animals and even horses.

 

Over the years, I've had horses I was riding scent bears and other game that were out of sight and more than a 1/4 mile away. By the time I got close enough to see them, the horse was usually going nutso, and I was doing a lot of work to maintain control. Sometimes, that's a difficult thing to do when you have a 5-horse pack string in tow.

 

Whole-heartedly agree about the money wasted on Scent-Lok. I have an educational background in both chemistry and biology. So when I first read the claims about the carbon -- and expecially the reactivation in a dryer part -- I just shook my head. Worst of all, the carbon is probably already saturated by the time a guy buys it off the shelf since sealing out all odors during the manufacturing, shipping and sitting on shelves would be near impossible. Reactivating carbon takes HIGH heat that is not available in a household clothes dryer. And even at that, reactivation with HIGH heat is less than complete, normally resulting in about 70% of the previous reactivation. All a clothes dryer will do is remove any absorbed moisture. -TONY

[AZcoues_addict]

I've done some research and implemented carbon filters for work, where extreme odors are filtered and remove nearly all human noticeable odors as well as harmful odors. With that said, I know a little about how carbon and odor elimination works, so this isn't all opinion, but a little more insightful.

 

In my opinion, these companies are WAY overexaggerating their claims. Carbon filtering has to be controlled, and the fact is that all odor is not going through a pressurized carbon filter and out the other side. Odors escape through your head, open clothing, and through the clothing as mentioned, not to mention the clothing itself is not capable of holding enough carbon to remove all scent.

 

The carbon does work though, so the product does reduce scent. Yes carbon works but it does have to make contact, and the odor molecules cannot simply race by at extremely high velocities, else the efficiency is very, very low. The concept is to trap odors near the body and within the clothing, not allowing it to escape while SOME of it is absorbed. If your clothing is loose, it is not used as intended. Some odor can and will pass through the clothing, some will escape, and some just plain and simple won't be absorbed. Carbon will never be at its full capacity, since everytime you use it some of the bonds will not be able to be broken. Also, once the carbone is reactivated some odorous bonds may rejoin before making it to the field and hinder the carbon efficiency further. Of course it will not eliminate scent, but I guess they should have a disclaimer now shouldn't they? Whether these individuals were educated enough to know the difference between advertisement or exaggerate claims, that's where the issue is, and companies should not be allowed to market so convincingly to unaware consumers (opinion of course). The major claim they have going for them is the dryer temperature and reactivating the carbon.

 

I think these companies have been misleading people, and fraud is more of a concern in my mind, especially since this is not such a clear yes or no answer. The bottom line is that carbon does reduce scent but nothing will completely eliminate it, only trap, reduce or move it elsewhere. I think these guys should have better scientific proof or testing before bringing such a big suit, but maybe it is the first needed step to haulting such exaggerated claims.

[Huntn coues]

Forget the carbon and JUST HUNT "with the wind in your favour"

[Outdoor Writer]

I think these companies have been misleading people, and fraud is more of a concern in my mind, especially since this is not such a clear yes or no answer. The bottom line is that carbon does reduce scent but nothing will completely eliminate it, only trap, reduce or move it elsewhere. I think these guys should have better scientific proof or testing before bringing such a big suit, but maybe it is the first needed step to haulting such exaggerated claims.

 

Everything you said is pretty much on the mark in regards to the carbon.

 

Obviously that swatch of clothing is quite telling in regards to the area of carbon available to trap anything, and even at that, those teeny particles would have to be 100% active to do much good. The probability of the latter is remote, even from the time it is first manufactured because it is never sealed from the ambient atmosphere.

 

While SOME scent would be eliminated, IMO, it would never be enough to work as advertised -- prevent game animals from smelling the wearer, mainly because of what i mentioned in my last reply.

 

As for the scientific proof behind the lawsuit, perhaps the plaintiffs DO have such and are waiting before they reveal most of it.

 

Did you read any of the actual lawsuit pages? It makes interesting reading. -TONY

[.270]

dark clothes, use the shadows, keep the wind in your face. camo, any kind, is extremely overated. it doesn't matter what you wear, if a deer sees you, or smells you, you're busted. the trick is to see them before they see or smell you. nothing makes you invisible or un-smelly. Lark.

[crazy4COUES]

This is GOOD! I hope they win the suit.

[ultramag]

cardon does work just not for this purpose. I just spent a week in ohio for air filtration and carbon beds used in filtration units, for this technology to work and someday it could you would need a suit that would weigh about 50 lbs. So don't waste your money the animals will smell you if the wind is wrong.

[Outdoor Writer]

cardon does work just not for this purpose. I just spent a week in ohio for air filtration and carbon beds used in filtration units, for this technology to work and someday it could you would need a suit that would weigh about 50 lbs. So don't waste your money the animals will smell you if the wind is wrong.

 

That's about what suits hazmat folks wear weigh. -TONY