SWANTON, Vt. (AP) – Many of the thousands of hunters who took to the woods this weekend for the opening of deer season scattered food at their hunting spots.

Apples, carrots, pumpkins and cracked corn were among the items laid down in hopes of attracting deer, in a practice that is drawing increasing debate as it grows.

Deer baiting was once used mainly during bow season, which precedes the annual deer hunt with rifles. An explosion in popularity of bow hunting in the last decade helped spread the practice of baiting to rifle season, hunters and state fish and wildlife officials say.

“It would be a bad thing to let a tradition of deer baiting develop,” said Fish and Wildlife Commissioner Wayne Laroche. “It’s something we’re thinking about farther down the road, but it’s something we may well end up recommending banning.”

Those who support deer baiting say it slightly increases hunters’ odds of bringing home venison and gives them a better chance to make a clean and efficient shot. Those who oppose baiting say it has turned hunters into a generation of stump-sitters who have failed to sharpen their outdoor skills and learn the way of the animal.

Stanley Bannister of Alburg brought home a young buck on Saturday that he shot without the help of bait.

“I do it during bow season, that’s it,” Bannister said of baiting. “I hunt in an orchard anyway, the same spot every year, so I don’t need to.”

Jeff Young, a Swanton hunter, is an advocate of baiting, saying it gives him and others who do it a better chance at deer.

“I know a lot of hunters who do it. Yeah, it’s an attraction, but it’s a natural attraction,” Young said. “If they outlaw it, that’s taking away from a lot of people who do their hunting that way.”

Retailers, too, have caught on. Orchards, farm stands, country stores and quick stops sell deer apples and cracked corn these days. Low quality apples – those not good enough for picking or juice – cost $6 to $8 for a grain-bag-sized sack.

“It’s absolutely effective,” said Dan Swainbank, a game warden in northwestern Vermont, “but it seems like the hunters today don’t have the woodsmanship we were taught by our fathers and grandfathers.

Swainbank said he saw a number of hunters out Saturday who simply drove their ATVs to their spots, climbed up in their stands and waited for deer to come to the pile of bait nearby.

“That’s their hunting,” Swainbank said.