I simply wanted to share the results of the study on the forum. So much for simply being the messenger...
I was hesitant to post on the open forum because we all know how thos conversation around CWD goes, I tried reaching out privately to no avail so here I am.
Yes you did, and I've had enough conversations with you on the topic to know it is unlikely to go anywhere productive. You havent changed my mind and I haven't changed yours. Fair enough. I've come to terms with that, perhaps you should too.
Since I'm limited on time and energy these days, I've sort of just given up engaging with folks like you. I've dealt with enough of them to know which ones are worth my time and looking for a reasonable discussion and which ones are simply dedicated to internet arguments with their mind already made up. But to humor you, I'll give you
one response. Outside of this response, I owe you exactly zero of my time.
You both believe CWD is the apocalypse to deer and is going decimate the herds,
Speaking for myself (though I believe the same goes for hunting wife), I don't recall ever stating what you say above at any point in time here or anywhere else. I will say, some places certainly get pretty hard, others not as much. I've publicly stated on this forum that I have "grave concerns" in regards to mule deer, but not just because of CWD. Habitat destruction, winter events, migratory disruption, and a host of things play into that concern. But its sure hard to deny some places are impacted quite heavily by CWD as an additive mortality on the landscape.
I've also said, I believe multiple times on multiple episodes of our podcast, that extinction is not really something we need to be concerned about. That there is a spectrum of impacts from high prevalence. Some of the more robust whitetail herds east of the Mississippi are able to sort of hide the impacts more. But some places with low deer densities, those impacts are more obvious to the casual observer. The population research has been done, all but 3 of those studies (WI,AR,WY) which are still ongoing or yet to be fully released, are publicly available and I think the data speaks for itself. If you choose not to believe that research or the people who conducted it, that's your right.
But if you want to keep falsely representing and proclaiming what other people think on the topic, and feel you need to do that to bring validity to your argument, be my guest.
When people like
@brocksw post these studies and take screen shots from only parts of the studies and put the sad pictures of emaciated deer it reminds of a few years ago when all we got where bits and pieces of a story and super sad sobering pictures of corpes stacked in cooler trucks.
Here is a screen shot of the study, it's actually the line right under the one
@brocksw shared his screenshot of interesting how he left that out:
View attachment 361329
Here is the full screen shot I shared before I cropped it. I don't see your quoted language above or below.
The other graphic I took a screenshot of I did not crop because I had to turn my phone sideways to capture the entire table.
The language you reference, and accuse me of hiding, is in the 3rd paragraph of the first link I shared. There for anyone to see. You'd think if I was trying to hide it I would've not shared the link?
That language is also in the second link I shared, but I could not screen shot that along with the table I shared because it was too far down the page, even in a portrait screen shot. The image below shows that. Again, I don't see what you quoted anywhere on that screen show.
I guess I felt like sharing the links to the articles with the information I was sharing was transparent enough. For you, I guess only screenshots of the entire article is acceptable.
Edit: 88% of WI counties have known CWD and multiple known cases with minimal testing so infected numbers are obviously higher than reported yet the population continues to grow?
View attachment 361330
And while those pictures are horrible to look at it brings up a bigger question: If CWD is so bad and we are saying that it is going to decimate a deer herd and we need to harvest all the deer to eliminate it than why are we knowingly letting infected deer go back out into the wild?
In my opinion, populations for the entire state are somewhat irrelevant at this point. I say that because most of Wisconsin is still unlikely to feel any effects of high prevalence of CWD because it isn't at high prevalence. Very little CWD is found in a vast majority of those counties, as shown in the most recent Map available, below.
Found here -
https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/wildlifehabitat/cwd
Here's a screen shot of Iowa County, one of the counties where CWD is the most prevalent
...and Richland county
.....and Sauk County
I think the study that was the focus of this thread, quite adequately shows that the high prevalence regions are coming to or already in, a breaking point where they will start to see a slow degradation in the deer population there. It won't be all at once. CWD doesn't work like that. There may even be years where it jumps up again. But the data and projected long term trends point to negative population impacts (just like all the population studies show). But again, I'm not going to sit here any longer and argue with you about it. That is a colossal waste of my time.
On a side note that I always find interesting, I think if the additive mortality of CWD was coming from a predator, hunters would be up in arms about it. But for some reason, since it's a slow and insidious disease with no real boogey man(or big bad wolf), hunters think it's all some malicious tool of the government.
Anyway, I'm sure none of this will deter you or your opinions, and you will continue to make the same arguments you have always made on the topic. I will continue to follow the data, as imperfect as some of it might be. If you don't like the information I share, perhaps not engaging would be the best choice for you.
Have a good one.
dnr.wisconsin.gov
