TALKING POINT

DEER URINE DEBATE

Deer hunters who like to lure their quarry with a dab of eau de doe-in-rut will have to find another way to attract a trophy buck in New York if state wildlife biologists have their way. Proposed regulations would add New York to a growing list of states and Canadian provinces banning deer urine lures in an effort to prevent the spread of chronic wasting disease, a deadly brain infection that’s working its way through North American deer, elk and moose populations. The disease is similar to so-called mad cow disease, which affects cattle. Both diseases are caused by infectious proteins called prions, which are believed to be shed in saliva, feces and urine and can contaminate forage plants and build up in soil. Since the disease was first recognized in captive mule deer in Colorado about 50 years ago, it has slowly spread to 24 states and two Canadian provinces. States have spent millions of dollars trying to halt it; Wisconsin even hired sharpshooters to kill deer in an infected area. The ban doesn’t sit well with deer farmers who collect and sell urine, manufacturers who market it under names like Code Blue and Buck Bomb, and hunters who dribble the foul-smelling fluid on foliage or cotton balls hung near their tree stands. “When you’re bowhunting, you have to draw the deer in close,” said Dave Vanderzee, president of the New York Deer Farmers Association and operator of a private hunting preserve. “Attractant is the only way to do it in New York because you’re not allowed to have a bait pile.” Ed Gorch, an upstate New York hunter who has been bowhunting for 45 years, said he uses deer urine and other scents, even skunk, to distract deer from his own smell. “As for switching to synthetic scents, I don’t think it would make much difference,” Gorch said. “I think most sportsmen would go along with that once they realize the danger of chronic wasting disease.”