Pennsylvania Game News - October 2017 - 11

appear to make much of a difference.
In the most-recent Pennsylvania deer
hunter survey, hunters who used urine
lures had an 18-percent success rate taking
a buck. Those who didn't had a 17 percent
success rate.

ABOUT CWD
It's hard to imagine our deer hunting
going south. It's as good as it's ever been,
maybe better.
But the chronic wasting disease threat
looms large in our future.
Each year since it's discovery, the
number of wild whitetails harboring the
disease has increased exponentially.
It's hard to wrap your head around the
sobering reality that the future of Pennsylvania whitetails is so troubled and with
no identifiable way to resolve their plight.
Recognizing what they're up against is
part of every deer hunter's season.
First and foremost, don't shoot sicklooking deer. Report them to the nearest
Game Commission region office.
Telephone numbers are found online,
in the Pennsylvania Hunting & Trapping
Digest, as well as the handout brochure
given with every hunting license.
If you're hunting within a Disease
Management Area (DMA), follow the
regulations that govern deer hunting
there. Unfamiliar with them? Visit pages
35 through 37 of the online digest, or the
CWD web page.
If you take a deer, know that the only
certain way to determine whether it has
CWD is through testing, which isn't
cheap.
The risk associated with eating venison
from deer taken well outside Pennsylvania's two established DMAs currently
seems minor. But if you've followed
CWD's spread in the Commonwealth,
OCTOBER 2017

you know that its spread has been somewhat irregular, jumpy.
So pick a healthy-looking deer and
make an informed decision on what to
do next.

FALL FOODS

Whitetails are looking for opportunity
in the fall. You'll find them wherever
nature's or man's bounty provides easy
meals.
This means finding trees dropping
large quantities of mast - soft or hard - or
ample crops on forest edges.
Whitetails need about 5 pounds of
food a night to pack on what they'll need
to overwinter. They're pretty indifferent
about where they get it, willing to seize
opportunities whenever or wherever
they're encountered.
That means hot feeding locations
sometimes can go cold, because deer are
hitting something else.
But it doesn't mean they won't be back.
More than a quarter of Pennsylvania -
11,920 square miles - remained in farm
country in 2016, a slight decline from
2015, according to U.S. Department of
Agriculture statistics.
Hayfields continue to represent the
largest land investment in agriculture:
more than 3,500 square miles. Cornfields
followed with 2,100 squares miles, about
even with 2015's statistics.
Soybeans were planted on about 900
square miles, also on par with 2015.
Hunters used to hunting farmland
know how deer take advantage of standing corn and even hayfields to lay low. In
some cases, hunting in an area won't meet
expectations until the corn is harvested.
In the woods, hunters might have to
scout a little more to ensure they've lined
up enough territory to keep them busy
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Pennsylvania Game News - October 2017

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