By Dan Kibler

As October looms over the horizon, the end of September offers sportsmen in North Carolina a really full plate.

The statewide archery season for deer is underway, and plenty of hunters have been taking advantage. I’ve got a buddy facing an upcoming back surgery and three months of inactivity; he’s killed six whitetails already, knowing he needed to fill his freezer as soon as possible.

But deer hunting isn’t the be-all and end-all for outdoorsmen.

Saturday offered kids a chance to do some special hunting under special N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission regulations. It was designated as Youth Deer Hunting Day — established in 2015 to give youths more opportunities to increase their deer-hunting success.

Those 17 years and younger could use guns or any other legal hunting equipment to take a whitetail; the rest of the hunting population could use only archery gear.

Now young hunters will go back to the regulations that everyone else is required to use for the season in the area they’re hunting.

In terms of fishing, the month-long recreational flounder season ends Sept. 30. Fishermen were given the month of September to keep flounder, and they could only keep one a day. Makes you wonder why anybody tried, huh? In many cases, flounder are caught incidentally while anglers are targeting speckled trout, redfish or bluefish in North Carolina’s coastal waters. And still, the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries says we’re catching too many — while commercial fishermen deck-load 72% of all the flounder caught in state waters.

On Saturday, Oct. 1, the commission will put Delayed Harvest Trout Waters regulations back in place on 36 streams or other bodies of water — some of them among North Carolina’s most-popular fishing spots.

These special waters allow anglers to keep seven trout daily between the first Saturday in June and the first Friday in October, with no bait or size restrictions. The rest of the year, it’s catch-and-release fishing with only single-hook, artificial lures allowed.

The commission stocks these waters heavily from fall through spring to allow anglers to catch plenty of rainbows, brookies and browns. Most of the streams are marginal in terms of habitat for supporting trout year-round — higher water temperatures are the key factor during the warm months — so allowing trout to be kept from June through September takes out fish that might likely not make it through the summer anyway.

CWD public forums planned

The commission has scheduled three Know CWD public forums in Northwest North Carolina. The forums are aimed at teaching hunters more about chronic wasting disease — found in two Yadkin County deer over the past 10 months — and addressing special regulations.

One forum was held Thursday in Winston-Salem. A second  will be Thursday, Sept. 29, at the Wilkes County Cooperative Extension Center (416 Executive Drive) in WIlkesboro, and another will be Thursday, Oct. 4, at the Yadkin County Cooperative Extension Center (2051 Agricultural Way) in Yadkinville from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

The forums will also be streamed live on the commission’s Facebook Page.

Davie, Forsyth, Stokes, Surrey and Yadkin counties fall within either the Primary Surveillance Area (a rough circle with a 5-mile radius around the cite of the CWD deer kills) or Secondary Surveillance Area (a rough circle with a 30-mile radius).

 

CWD is a neurological disease that affects white-tailed deer and other cervids, including elk and caribou. It is always fatal. The commission’s response to CWD can be viewed in a 6-minute video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCNmNRsIh3U or at ncwildlife.org/CWD.

 

Dan Kibler is an outdoors writer based in Clemmons.