Every other load in the house is washed to make it smell good. Hunting gear is washed to make it smell like nothing at all, and the ordinary detergent under the sink works directly against that aim. It also leaves something behind in the fabric that nobody sees in daylight, which is a residue that glows under ultraviolet light.
Why hunting gear is washed backwards from everything else
Scent is the whole point and everything else is secondary to it.
An animal works out what is upwind long before it sees anything, and a jacket carrying perfume, softener or a week of kitchen air announces itself well ahead of the person wearing it.
So the target for hunting gear is clothing that is clean, rinsed until nothing is left in it, and then kept in air that has nothing in it either.
That reverses most household laundry habits at once. No scented detergent, no dryer sheets, no softener, and no drying it over a radiator in a kitchen.
With hunting gear the wash is only half the job. Where clothing dries, and where it lives between outings, carries as much weight as what it was washed in.
None of this is difficult. It is a different routine rather than a harder one, and it starts by taking the household detergent off the list.
Optical brighteners, which is the part most people miss
Ordinary detergent contains fluorescent whitening agents, and they are in very nearly everything sold for household laundry.
They are dyes that deliberately stay in the fabric after the rinse. They take in ultraviolet light, which human eyes do not register, and give it back as visible blue.
On a white shirt the effect is that it looks brighter than white. That is the entire purpose and it works well.
On camouflage it does something less helpful. The fabric now returns light in a range people cannot see, and a pattern matched to brush in daylight is not necessarily matched for an animal that sees further into the blue and ultraviolet end than we do.
How much practical difference that makes in the field is argued about honestly and at length, and reasonable people land in different places on it. The relevant point is that removing brighteners costs nothing and takes no extra effort.
They also build up. Every wash in ordinary detergent lays down more, so a jacket washed that way across three seasons is carrying a great deal of it.
What to wash it in instead
Scent free technical washes made for hunting gear leave out brighteners, perfume and softening agents by design. That is the whole reason they exist.
An unscented free and clear detergent is the next best option, though not all of them omit brighteners, and the label is the only way to tell. Free of dyes and perfumes is a different claim from free of brighteners.
Baking soda in the wash is the old approach and it still earns its place as an odour absorber, and it adds nothing of its own.
Use less than feels right. Residue of any kind is scent, and a garment that has not rinsed clean carries whatever it was washed in out into the field.
Run an extra rinse every single time. That one change does more than any other, because the goal is fabric with nothing left in it.
Do not put ordinary detergent anywhere near a waterproof shell, which it either strips or clogs. Those garments have their own technical washes and their own instructions, and both are worth following.
The machine matters as much as the detergent
A machine that has been washing towels in scented detergent all week is holding residue in the drum, the dispenser and the door seal.
Run it empty and hot first with nothing in it, or with a cup of baking soda, and let the dispenser drawer rinse itself through at the same time.
Wipe the door seal out by hand, since it holds more residue than any other part of the machine.
Then wash the hunting gear on its own, never mixed in with a household load.
Use cool or warm water rather than hot, because heat is hard on printed camouflage and on any membrane built into the garment.
Do base layers and outerwear as separate loads where one has a technical wash and the other does not, rather than compromising on both.
Drying without putting the scent straight back on
A dryer that has been run with sheets in it is coated inside, and clean clothing tumbling in there comes out scented.
Where a dryer has to be used, run it empty and hot first with a damp cloth in it to pick up residue, then dry the hunting gear on low with nothing added to the drum.
A line outside is better where the weather allows, and it costs nothing.
Where the line sits matters as much as using one. Away from a kitchen extractor, away from a road, away from anything burning, and not beside a vehicle left idling.
Do not dry it in a garage. A garage holds fuel, oil, solvent and exhaust, and fabric takes all of that up quickly and holds onto it.
Bring it in as soon as it is dry rather than leaving it out another day collecting whatever drifts past.
Storage, which is where the work usually gets undone
A wardrobe is the wrong place for hunting gear. It holds the smell of everything else hanging in there, plus whatever the house smells of that week.
Store it sealed. A plastic tote with a tight lid, or heavy sealed bags, and only once the clothing is bone dry.
Put natural material in with it. Leaves, bark, pine or earth from where you hunt, either loose in the tote or in a mesh bag.
Keep the tote somewhere that does not smell of anything itself, which rules out a garage and rules out a basement with damp in it.
Dress at the vehicle or at the edge of the field rather than at the house, so the outer layers never spend an hour indoors picking things up.
Handle it with clean hands, and keep it off the seats of a vehicle that has carried fuel or food.
Blaze orange, boots and packs
Blaze orange is the one item with the opposite goal, since the whole purpose is being seen, and a faded vest is a safety item that has quietly stopped doing its job.
It fades in sunlight and in hot water. Wash it cool, dry it out of direct sun, and replace it once the colour has gone dull rather than trying to bring it back.
It is also a fabric where brighteners do nothing useful, so it can go through the same scent free load as everything else.
Boots get a scrub with water and a brush and nothing more, then dry away from any heat source, since heat cracks leather and separates soles.
Packs and bags go through a cool gentle cycle where the label allows it and every pocket has been emptied, or they get scrubbed by hand and air dried.
Store boots and packs with the rest of the hunting gear rather than leaving them in a garage, since a pack that has spent a summer in a garage carries the garage out into the field with it.
The Omaha part
The season here belongs to autumn and early winter, and the cold still mornings before first light are the conditions the whole scent routine is built around. Cold air holds close to the ground and moves in one steady direction, which is exactly when a carefully prepared set of clothing earns back the trouble it took.
Cold also changes how hunting gear gets worn. Layers go on and come off across a morning, which means more garments in rotation and more of them needing the same treatment. The outer jacket is not the whole job, and a fleece mid layer washed in ordinary detergent undoes the jacket above it.
Autumn air here is dry enough that a line outside works well for most of the season, and outdoor line drying is the simplest scent free drying there is. That window closes once the weather turns, and the fallback is a spare room with a fan rather than a garage, for the reasons already covered.
Water in this part of the state is hard, and mineral rich water leaves deposit in fabric. Deposit holds odour instead of shedding it, and it is also what makes a washed garment feel stiff and slightly chalky. Half a cup of washing soda in the wash takes the hardness out of play without adding any scent of its own, and an extra rinse carries the rest of it away.
Where a scent free wash actually rinses out
The extra rinse is what decides this one, and rinsing is a question of water volume rather than effort or technique.
The machines at our self-service laundry on Ames Avenue move far more water through a cycle than a home unit does and take a full set of outerwear in one drum, which is what lets a scent free detergent rinse away completely instead of sitting in a heavy jacket.
Our machines and the store are cleaned daily.
Our wash-dry-fold service covers the everyday laundry.
For general guidance, The American Cleaning Institute publishes a fabric care guide that is a useful cross-check.
The short version
Wash hunting gear to remove scent rather than to add any. Ordinary detergent contains optical brighteners, which stay in the fabric and return ultraviolet light as visible blue, and they build up with every wash. Use a scent free technical wash or an unscented detergent that states it has no brighteners, skip softener entirely, and add an extra rinse every time. Run the machine empty first to clear residue from previous loads and wipe the door seal. Dry on a line away from exhaust, cooking and burning, or in a dryer run clean with nothing added. Store it sealed in a tote with natural material from where you hunt, never in a wardrobe or a garage.
WaveMAX Omaha is at 5092 Ames Ave, easy to reach from Omaha and the surrounding area. If you have bedding that will not fit at home, call us at 531-466-2847.