Just saw another CWD report on the Slate creek slaughter in Unit 14, Idaho. 555 Muledeer and Whitetail shot by the dept. Including 9 elk. 27 positives, for a whopping 5% infection rate. The article went on to call it all successful and that a culling needed to happen in that area. Thanks to all that helped it went on. If my math is right, 528 animals were shot that were perfectly healthy. What a shame.
Deer killers
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andrew12gauge
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While it sucks that many had to die, what if next year Idaho ends up without CWD? Idaho is literally the only state that has ever had the opportunity to stop it before it has spread, now we wait and see, has it left slate creek? If it has then we will know pretty quickly, then stop the slaughter and take a different approach
Arrowelk
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Those numbers do show a success. If you were paying attention, the ratio was way higher early on in the cull. When they were focusing in the known areas. They expanded it to a couple more drainages North and south, and then across the river in 18 as well. That is when the ratio went down. THAT is a GOOD thing, it indicates that it has not spread widely out of the hot "zone". They are still putting the pressure as much as possible on those herds. the muley tags are doubled and xtra whitetail tags were added as well. I bet they still will do a cull hunt in the hot area again next year.
customweld
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It will be up the main Salmon this fall. They had a positive test in the fall that was in Nut Basin. It is present in the dirt and apparently can be carried by ticks. There are a ton of salt licks between Slate Creek and Allison Creek. There is no putting that toothpaste back in the tube. It made it 7 air miles southeast in less than a year.
customweld
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Weiserbucks
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Trust the science, it's for your safety, we have to kill the deer to crush the curve.
Soj51hopeful
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All the talk about deer I never hear of elk being infected. With such a contagious disease why are only deer getting the attention.
Weiserbucks
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I've heard about it infecting elk in CO and WY but my knowledge is very limited.
customweld
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I don’t think it is as prevalent in elk, but one of the first few animals to show it was a cow elk by Whitebird. Obviously the 2 muleys were first in Slate Creek but that cow was just a couple of months after. Elk carry it, but if they don’t present faster than deer, they are spreading those prions much farther and longer. There is a good podcast on the Rokslide with the one of the biologists from IFG that goes pretty in depth on the subject.
PacificFork
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Well since CWD lives in the soil for 7-10 years I don’t think it’s going away in slate creek anytime soon.
Elk/deer don’t have kissing parties so that’s probably one factor as to why elk aren’t as affected right now.
I’m still on the fence with CWD management practices. Part of me thinks it’s been around so long that it’s not an issue worth killing off the herds for. Part of me also thinks 50 years from now CWD will still be here and we will think back as to why we killed off so many deer year after year.
Who knows…
customweld
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They don’t have kissing parties, but they do share salt/mineral licks. One of the articles I read stated that for some reason elk aren’t as susceptible as deer are and moose are even less than elk.
Arrowelk
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I would think that the MGT plan for slate creek would be a low density of deer for the next 7-10 years.
If there is excess habitat in that area due to low density of deer, (and elk which is a problem) then they would be less inclined to move out in search of better habitat. Outside deer would be inclined to move into that habitat and then be more likely to be killed by hunters due to more tags/seasons/culling. The idea would be that, that is a better situation than having infected critters searching out new ground.
Not a perfect plan, like has been mentioned one ridge over (nut basin) and they would be in another huge drainage and likely start the cycle over. While not a huge migrating population, there are certainly deer and elk that travel in and out of Slate Creek.
I think the only real solution will be with science catching up, and possibly if there is some hope for a natural resistance to build up. The way Prion's work, i don't have much hope for that though.
andrew12gauge
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It’s possible somebody ignored CWD transport rules and dumped a carcass up there. IDFG has been testing deer in different areas since 2016 at least and never caught it until the slate creek animals. ??
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