Rog's Rod & Nimrod

There’s an interesting, if not somewhat angry, editorial in the November 2019 issue of Petersen’s Hunting magazine called “Taking the Piss Out of It.” It really doesn’t affect me personally. In my many years of deer hunting, neither I nor any of my partners have ever used doe urine or any commercial attractant to lure bucks to our stands.

The editorial states that during every whitetail deer season, thousands of hunters across the country “dab a little doe-in-estrous urine on a boot, walk to a stand, dip a wick in a bottle, hang it from a limb, and wait for a buck to show up.” This doe urine business is big. The editorial suggests at least $44 million a year, and maybe twice that. Today a spray can of doe pee, namely Buck Bomb Doe N’ Estrus, costs about ten bucks.

Why the anger? The use of natural deer urine is now illegal in South Carolina, Mississippi, Virginia, and at least six other states. A few more states including Pennsylvania are considering the ban. This ban is an effort on the part of these states to combat the always fatal chronic waste disease or CWD. Although the editors are angry about not being able to use doe urine on their home turf, I certainly won’t criticize these states for looking at all possible causes.

Other than being caused by an organism called a prion, very little is known about the causes of CWD. It affects the brain. We know that deer, elk, and moose are susceptible, and that there seems to be a relationship between captive herds and CWD. CWD has been detected in 25 states including South Dakota, three Canadian provinces, Finland, Norway, and South Korea. Fortunately, there is no evidence that CWD has been transmitted to a human through contact with an infected deer species.

Thus far no research has confirmed the transmission of CWD from infected deer to healthy deer. At Colorado State University, unnatural amounts of doe urine from CWD infected deer were inoculated into healthy deer. Transmission was negative. Dr. Candace K. Mathiason of the Colorado State University Dept. of Microbiology, Immunology, & Pathology found that fawns orally inoculated with urine and feces from CWD-infected deer showed no signs of the disease. This research does not appear to justify the commercial urine ban. However, to my way of thinking, there might be something about the deer in the commercial urine gathering pens that differs from the deer in the university experiments.

An angry editor at Hunting magazine had this to say. “I hunted in a CWD zone in Saskatchewan…..The only thing I could bring back was the meat and the antlers attached to a skull plate. We know that meat can carry CWD prions, so I could be transporting the disease that way. It can be carried in the mud on my boots and on my vehicle. I’m also a farmer. We transport hay bales across state lines all the time. The plants and the soil in those bales can harbor CWD, but all everyone wants to talk about is a tiny bottle of deer urine that people use a few drops at a time.” HE MAKES A GOOD POINT!

The editorial goes on to say that no state has enacted a blanket ban on the importation of deer meat or antlers from known CWD states or even areas with high infection rates. However, it can be argued that meat is not placed in an environment where deer come in contact with it.

In 2016, partner Mike Hall and I returned to the USA from a British Colombia moose hunt with antlered skulls and 700 lbs. of moose meat. We attempted to enter the USA at the Portal, North Dakota/ Saskatchewan border. American customs paid no attention to our meat, but they wouldn’t let our skulls through until we had the brains removed. This was all about CWD and I can vouch for the above editor’s story. I’m hoping that within my lifetime, this CWD riddle will be solved.

The recent South Dakota check points have identified six CWD infected deer. Two were mule deer bucks from Harding and Meade counties respectively, and three whitetail bucks and one whitetail doe came from nearby Tripp County. This is alarming in my estimation.

I wish my faithful readers a meaningful Christmas and great New Year. May the Christ Child watch over you and yours.

See you next week.