One day my chick made me go for a walk around the neighborhood with her. I caught a whiff and followed it for near a quarter mile through a housing development. I narrowed it down to one of two houses. Who knows how much they had growing in there, but I smelled their INDOOR grow from a few football fields distance away.
Another time me and a co-worker thought we smelled something in the air catching a smoke on lunch. We walked the whole property(5 acres) losing it and catching it again every few minutes. Definitely was not a dead skunk, and we never could figure out what direction it was coming from. I own the place too and know every square inch of it, and can safely say it wasn't growing anywhere on my property.
Now on the other hand, I've never been able to smell my own outdoor grows until I am right on top of the plants. I have grown some stinky strains out there too.
I guess my point is there is no way to predict accurately.