Also a scent hound owner here, can confirm. For her, the sniffer is The Source of Truth™. When I enter the house, she comes up and gives me a thorough sniffdown, as if she weren't confident in me being me until she confirmed that I smell like me.

Anecdote time, when i lived with my parents on their farm we would regularly have sniffer dogs come to our property because they got lost on a scent trail in the forest with a hunter, this happened every year with different hunters/dogs, i always wondered how they can find something in the forest but not find back to their owner :)

It's not that they can't find their way back. It's just that whatever they're sniffing and tracking is more interesting!