Notes On: RL Scent Tracking

Stolen from somewhere:
If you don't have a dead skunk laying around, take a bottle of old perfume or something similar and saturate a rag with it. Then, while your back is turned, have someone set the rag a hundred paces or so out in an open grassy field. Be sure to choose a day with a steady moderate breeze. Now walk the downwind perimeter of the field until you pick up the scent. Extended rapid, short canine-style sniffs or repeated large inhales to test the air, dull our olfactory sensors. Take sporadic long, slow sniffs, which give our less acute sniffer time to analyze the subtleties of the scent. [T]ake in just enough air to catch the scent.

Continue walking until you lose the scent. You now know the boundaries and width of your scent trail. Face upwind and walk back into the scent trail and progress upwind, occasionally veering to the right and left to keep tabs on the trail boundaries. If you lose the trail and you are angling to the right, turn left until you pick it back up, and vice versa.

To determine the distance to the source, consider these modifying factors:
• The wider the track, the farther away the source.
• The stronger the wind, the narrower the scent trail; the weaker the wind, the wider the scent trail.
• Vegetation, rocks, and landforms in or near the scent trail can modify it, either spreading, narrowing, or diffusing it.
• Scent is carried by moisture in the air, so the greater the humidity, the stronger the scent. Air temperature is next in importance, as warmer air holds more moisture. The gradation in the scent-carrying capacity of air is as follows, from strongest to weakest -- warm moist, cool moist, warm dry, cool dry.
• Heat increases the scent released by some plants and animals, and hastens decomposition, which causes dead animals (skunks included) to smell stronger.