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The rut is on.
Does are coming into heat.
Bucks are chasing them and fighting with each other.
New scrapes and rubs are showing up daily.
It's a fun time to be a deer hunter.
Last Monday morning, I started working scent lures into my setups.
I prepared two drag lines — one with doe-in-heat urine and one with dominant buck urine — which I trailed on the ground behind me on my walk to my stand.
Also, at two fresh scrapes I encountered along the way, I took the buck urine and dribbled some onto the pawed earth.
Like many of you, I've been doing this for years.
It works.
Many of the bucks I've shot in Pennsylvania's archery deer season have been enticed to within bow range by urine-based scent lures.
If the Pennsylvania Game Commission's wildlife veterinarian has his way, though, this tactic might someday be outlawed here.
At the Board of Game Commissioners' fall meeting Oct. 5, Dr. Walt Cottrell reported that allowing hunters to pour deer urine on the ground could promote the spread of chronic wasting disease in Pennsylvania.
CWD is an always-fatal disease which attacks the brains and nervous systems of elk, deer and other cervids. Wildlife officials are crossing their fingers and toes CWD never turns up here.
"Once CWD shows up in the state, we have it forever," Cottrell said. "You don't get rid of it."
CWD now exists in two Canadian provinces and 14 states. Most of those states are in the West and Midwest, but CWD has been found in two of Pennsylvania's neighbors in recent years — West Virginia and New York.
Biologists have long known CWD is transmitted directly from animal to animal.
But Cottrell said a study conducted this summer on mice — genetically altered so that they are similar to cervids — indicates urine from a CWD-infected cervid that gets into the soil can infect other cervids for a long time after the urine is deposited.
"And actually, when CWD prions get in the soil, they are 680 times more infectious because the soil acts as a host to carry the prions into the cervid's digestive tract," he said.
How long the soil can hold the infectious disease is unknown.
But Cottrell said scientists know that scrappie — a CWD-like disease that infects sheep — can contaminate soil for up to 18 years.
There is no test to determine if urine contains CWD.
The only way, in fact, to detect the disease is to test an animal's brain after it's dead.
But a deer can carry CWD for more than a year before it shows symptoms of the disease.
If that animal lives on a deer farm where urine is collected and bottled for sale to hunters, Cottrell said, there would be no way of knowing that urine is infected until after the animal dies.
So the threat of hunters introducing CWD to the Pennsylvania environment by pouring commercially produced deer urine on the ground is real, Cottrell said.
"It's certainly possible," he said. "There's so much involving CWD that we have no control over.
"If we do nothing, and CWD comes into the state because a hunter puts contaminated urine on the ground, then shame on us."
Cottrell said he did not actually recommend to the Game Commissioners Oct. 5 that the board adopt a ban on the use of urine-based deer lures.
"I just presented them with information," he said. "But I feel like the Pennsylvania Game Commission has all the scientific basis it needs to make such a ban."
Greg Isabella, president of the board of Game Commissioners, said he's not sure of that.
"There's a lot more information that needs to be gathered before we'd even think about such a ban," he said.
To date, Saskatchewan is the only province or state in North America where the use of urine-based deer lures is banned.
That fact speaks volumes about the validity of Cottrell's fears, said Bainbridge resident Stephen L. Mohr — a former member of the board of Game Commissioners, current president of Unified Sportsmen of Pennsylvania and owner of the Mohr's Widow-Maker company, which produces deer lures and scents.
"If using scents really was a threat, Colorado would have banned them years ago," he said. "The science is unfounded."
Mohr said deer farmers who produce and sell deer lures take great care to make sure the animals in their herds come from CWD-free farms.
"Whenever one of my deer dies, it's tested for CWD," he said. "That doesn't happen in the wild."
Since 1998, the Game Commission has tested hunter-killed deer for CWD.
The agency now tests about 4,200 deer each year, and the disease has never been found here among those samples.
But many other deer killed by hunters, automobiles and natural causes each year go untested.
"It's more likely one of my deer will get [CWD] from a wild deer than the other way around," Mohr said.
Isabella believes one of the reasons CWD has not been found in Pennsylvania is due to the Game Commission's efforts to reduce deer numbers across the state the past seven years.
"In my opinion, the reason we have not seen CWD here is because we've lowered the herd in parts of the state," he said. "And that makes me feel confident about my votes for the deer management program in the past."
When deer congregate in large numbers, CWD stands a better chance of spreading.
Any move to ban the sale of urine-based deer lures in Pennsylvania is sure to meet a landslide of opposition, since Pennsylvania is among the nation's top hunting states, in terms of license sales.
Selling deer lures is big business here.
"You can bet the big companies aren't going to sit back and lose millions of dollars in Pennsylvania," Mohr said.
Isabella said he's heard some companies in the industry are working on urine-based products that would be certified as "CWD-free."
But he doesn't know where that work stands or if such a certification can be made.
Cottrell's report about deer urine put the issue "on the radar" for the board of Game Commissioners, Isabella said.
"This is something that we are now aware of, and we will be gathering as much information on this as we can," he said. "We would have to have a lot of discussions before we start banning scents."
