CWD in CO and WY

[antlerradar]

Just last week I was at a sportsman's club meeting with two FWP biologist . Both nice guys. The topic was CWD. CWD has been found in Montana south of Billings and to the north. The SE is where FWP expects it to show up next. CWD is likely already hear but has yet to be detected. The talk was informative and I learned quite a bit about CWD. What troubled me the most about the talk was that the main over riding theme was. Montana is doing the right thing with CWD. CWD is over running CO and WY and the way to combat it was to keep management the same or we will end up like CO and WY.
My question for you CO and WY guy is just how bad is CWD in your states?

On another note. For all you that are planing to hunt in SE Montana this year. FWP is implementing some much more stringent regulations on the handling of the deer and elk you take. Anyone that is planing a SE Montana hunt should look into the new regulations.

 

[88man]

I have said it a few times on these boards. I truly believe cwd is the biggest threat to hunting.

 

[Deleted member 16014]

Antler, to my eye the preponderance of evidence indicates that the "right thing" is pretty cloudy. It seems hard to argue that there are not population level effects on deer. However, with herd units using the landscape so differently across each state and confounding factors abounding, anyone who says they've got the answer makes me pretty skeptical.

 

[rideold]

I figure we don't know a ton about the disease so it is better to be careful.

 

[timmy]

I have briefly went through Montana’s plan and it appears they want to keep the population so low it can’t spread. I think other states have tried this and it doesn’t work. Even if it was a good plan private guys aren’t going to shoot all the deer it’s flawed from the start. I remember seeing a quote from fwp that Montana won’t stand by and allow cwd to do what it has done to Colorado. I hunted a cwd area in Colorado last year and it was a great hunt. I saw as many “big” bucks in a week as I have my whole life in Montana. I have no reference to what it was like in previous years though. Montana public land hunting will continue to decline and I think they may even start getting rid of more draw areas like they did south of Billings. Older age bucks need to be eliminated because they are the most likely to have it.

 

[bigsky2]

I feel like the arrival of CWD will just give FWP another excuse to stick with their tried and true method of managing our mule deer. They will say we need to keep hammering on the mule deer bucks since they are the ones that wander so much and are most likely to spread the disease.

 

[AvidIndoorsman]

I feel like the arrival of CWD will just give FWP another excuse to stick with their tried and true method of managing our mule deer. They will say we need to keep hammering on the mule deer bucks since they are the ones that wander so much and are most likely to spread the disease.

Say a deer gets CWD at 4 months, it probably won't show symptoms and die for 2 years... are there deer older than 2.5 in Montana?

 

[AvidIndoorsman]

Interesting article...https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3904308/

"Could avian scavengers translocate infectious prions to disease-free areas initiating new foci of chronic wasting disease?"

 

[antlerradar]

Timmy and bigsky. That is pretty much the same stuff I herd at the meeting. Another sportsman and I pointed out that we were doomed to fail if we didn't address big concentrations of on the game farms without fences. The answer to that was we have to try. I agree that FWP needs to try to keep CWD to a minimum. Is keeping for the most part the same management trying? I am not sure it is. I suggested that doe tags no longer be valid on the big blocks of Public like the Custer. This would force hunters to harvest does form private and small bits of public were numbers may need to be reduced. It might all so build the doe numbers on the public so bucks will not feel the need to travel so much during the rut.
If FWP is serious about CWD steps need to be taken to address the game farms with out fences. I under stand it is not going to be easy and the likely hood of failure to make a dent in the big concentrations of deer on private is high. I agree that we do need to try and feel that continuing to do the same management as that of the past is not really trying.

 

[sbhooper]

I think that the only reason this disease has garnered attention, is that it got into the captive herds and they gave it a name. There have always been cases of deer dying and no one cared, until suddenly it had a name and some attention. I believe that it is much to do about nothing. Let nature take its course. They have not come up with an effective way to address it, except to try to slaughter everything and they have not proven that to be effective either. Wisconsin panicked and killed everything in sight and I doubt that it made any difference. If you are concerned with the health of an animal, don't harvest it. If you kill one, don't eat the brains, or spine and there will be no problem.

If you don't go hunting, because you are scared of cwd, then that is your decision. I have hunted in cwd areas for years. Game and Parks here finds one once-in-a-while, when they check for it during center-fire deer season. No big deal and I doubt that concentrations of animals really changes the equation.

Just my opinion.

 

[COEngineer]

I think that the only reason this disease has garnered attention, is that it got into the captive herds and they gave it a name. There have always been cases of deer dying and no one cared, until suddenly it had a name and some attention. I believe that it is much to do about nothing. Let nature take its course. They have not come up with an effective way to address it, except to try to slaughter everything and they have not proven that to be effective either. Wisconsin panicked and killed everything in sight and I doubt that it made any difference. If you are concerned with the health of an animal, don't harvest it. If you kill one, don't eat the brains, or spine and there will be no problem.

If you don't go hunting, because you are scared of cwd, then that is your decision. I have hunted in cwd areas for years. Game and Parks here finds one once-in-a-while, when they check for it during center-fire deer season. No big deal and I doubt that concentrations of animals really changes the equation.

Just my opinion.

Is this your opinion because it is convenient or because it is based on facts? I would like to think that it's not a big deal, but when people I respect speak up about CWD, I find it hard to ignore them: Pat Durkin on CWD Jan 2019

 

[EYJONAS!]

Alberta thought they were doing the "right thing" by gunning down any and every Mule Deer and maybe even whitetails on their Eastern boarder next to Saskatchewan. Wiping out an entire population of not only quality deer but a huge herd that will most likely never recover. And guess what........how ever many years later...... they still have CWD. Go figure right?

 

[Dougfirtree]

A biologist in Wyoming recently told me some pretty startling numbers about the disease in mule deer there. He was talking about a (large) area where testing is showing about 40% infected (and interestingly, only single digits in elk in the same area). And it's always fatal.... pretty scary stuff. Sounds like hunters changing the way we deal with carcasses and body parts could be a big part of the effort to slow this down.
I have to admit, I didn't put a lot of thought or worry into it at first. But, as I've started to learn more in the last year or two, I'm becoming increasingly concerned.

 

[hank4elk]

I have been reading about CWD for 30 yrs & dealing with it.
Even in CA where it has never been detected,there were protocols for hunters & regulations put on farmers of game. The game animals still got out of their enclosures....
I just got the most recent report & info on distribution. Neighbor sent it to me & I tried to load here but failed. USGS on expanding range of CWD.
I did know it had supposedly been found in units 34 & 36 & they had protocols in place.
Now it seems the map marks the units near El Paso & up in Socorro County ,next to Catron & 34 & 36 area is not on map. As far as I know only place detected last few years was 34&36.
So either NMG&F is full of it & knows less than I thought or no one knows where it has spread now.
The ignoring it or "it makes no nevermind" part does worry me....those people worry me.

 

[timmy]

At the end of the day Mother Nature always wins. No reason to kill all our deer when we are surrounded by states and provinces that don’t manage in a similar way. Is it scary sure. But we don’t know much about it my guess is it’s been around much longer than anybody knows. No science to that just my opinion.

 

[Big Fin]

These two scientist-hunters that were kind enough to be on my podcast were very enlightening for me. A lot of misinformation on the issue.

You can listen to it here - https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/hu...rg-unfiltered-hunting-conservation/e/56376551

 

[antlerradar]

At the end of the day Mother Nature always wins. No reason to kill all our deer when we are surrounded by states and provinces that don’t manage in a similar way. Is it scary sure. But we don’t know much about it my guess is it’s been around much longer than anybody knows. No science to that just my opinion.

FWP told us that a likely start was a research lab in CO was working on domestic sheep with scabies and did not properly sanitize the pen and the scabies made the species jump to deer when deer were held in the same pen. FWP also added that the is plenty of debate on if this is the true origin of CWD. I can certainly see how CWD could jump to deer in an uncleaned pen. On the other hand lots sheep have had scabies, you would think that there would be a correlation between sheep producing areas and CWD. Maybe there is? If domestic sheep are the source of CWD you would expect wild sheep to highly susceptible to CWD.
I also think that timmy could be right and that CWD has been around a long time. CWD may have been nearly wiped out in the early twentieth century when market hunting reduced deer and elk populations to near zero. Recently game farms and high concentrations of deer and elk on agriculture have created ideal conditions for CWD to reemerge.
No one knows for sure how CWD got its start and efforts to control it have had limited success at best. Bottom line is we may just have to learn to live with CWD at least in the near future.

 

[sbhooper]

Is this your opinion because it is convenient or because it is based on facts? I would like to think that it's not a big deal, but when people I respect speak up about CWD, I find it hard to ignore them: Pat Durkin on CWD Jan 2019

It is based on logic and the fact that nothing has ever been accomplished to change the equation. The "EXPERTS" have not done one thing to curb the disease, in fact, I think that I read one time where the prions were actually in the soil, but I cannot remember where I read it. Much to do about nothing.

It sure gives the libtards another reason to disallow hunting, though-for the "SAFETY" of people.

 

[COEngineer]

It is based on logic and the fact that nothing has ever been accomplished to change the equation. The "EXPERTS" have not done one thing to curb the disease, in fact, I think that I read one time where the prions were actually in the soil, but I cannot remember where I read it. Much to do about nothing.

It sure gives the libtards another reason to disallow hunting, though-for the "SAFETY" of people.

Great. Another anti-intellectual. Anyone with an education is suspect, right? And the name-calling right after just to prove that you don't have anything worth sharing, just opinions and vitriol. Do us a favor and let people that actually care enough to do some research and share information use this forum for positive change.

 

[ClearCreek]

antlerradar:

You did the same rearranging of letters in describing the ailment that I did when I posted a response on the MM website.

CWD and scrapie in sheep are similar as they are both TSE diseases, see below. There is no treatment for scrapie in sheep.

Scabies in sheep is totally different and there is a treatment for scabies.


Scrapie is a fatal, degenerative disease affecting the central nervous system of sheep and goats. It is among a number of diseases classified as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE).


ClearCreek