Next up: Implementing the CWD plan

jm77

Long Time Member
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I thought Wyo would be bright enough to learn from Colo's proven mistakes? It sure makes a lot of sense to hammer the best genetics in the herd.....mature muley bucks???? Some say that mature bucks move around more during the rut and spread CWD but the truth is the coyotes and lions get the few truly sick CWD deer in the herd.
 
Jims,

What was Colorado's plan? How did it turn it out? Did the end result even put a dent into CWD...

I am doing my own study. I keep eating my positive result whiteys.. 80 percent of my meat goes to jerky. Its what we enjoy the most. I even just got 10 pounds of deer meat now to whip a batch up soon. Got to make some freezer space for the incoming meat
 
I thought Wyo would be bright enough to learn from Colo's proven mistakes?
A Colorado study is what the Wy G&F is using to further their case to kill mature bucks, even though public outcry in Colo put an end to it before verifiable results were obtained.
 
Colorado (then the CDOW) attempted to eradicated cwd in Northern CO back about 20 years ago by issuing lots of bucks tags, 2 for one Doe tags and culling. Deer numbers tanked, of course, and cwd is still around...
 
Let Mother Nature sort it out. The Colorado plan is going to do nothing to stop CWD. Only going to wreck the good thing Colorado had going. Please be smarter than that Wyoming, your deer herds are already struggling. What about the growing elk herds? Don’t they carry the prawns?
 
Did I miss something? Is there a cure for CWD? if not, why are we killing off the animals? Until there's a cure, are we going with no deer?

Some days I wonder if Faucci is in charge of G&F departments.

The choice is have lots of deer that a percentage die from CWD, or have no deer that a percentage die from CWD.

Ummmmmmm, I'll take the more deer option.

Too much time in college is directly in opposition to common sense
 
It’s more or less the CPW’s lame excuse in colo to sell more tags.

As Himtnhunter mentioned, even where the CPW tried to exterminate deer there is still cwd. Cwd is similar to covid where only a super low % of the population are sick and even show cwd signs. The predators kill those few sick animals and the remaining animals are healthy.

It would be like trying to get rid of covid by killing off a bunch of humans when only a small fraction of humans are carriers. It won’t solve the problem.
 
I'm very confident in the Casper District the public will be a hard no to this plan. I'm also sure many hunters across the state feel the same way. How that works out in the meetings we will see, but they will be enticing hunters to agree by possible offerings of late season rut tags, which will finish off what's left of the bigger bucks in many general areas.
 
This study has some interesting results.
It seems to show that some areas will actually have a lower prevalence over time id the deer have the 225F allele.
Laramie Peak area landowners will not go for this plan either.

 
This study has some interesting results.
It seems to show that some areas will actually have a lower prevalence over time id the deer have the 225F allele.
Laramie Peak area landowners will not go for this plan either.

In some ways they already did Pam. Several years ago, under the guise that private land controlled the general area 65 deer herd, managers implemented an extended season until Oct 31st. Also, your Laramie office is pushing forward with a plan to reduce mature bucks in that region. You should contact Lee Knox and see what he has to say.
 
I had a convo with Martin, he knows we're not a fan of the plan.
Gonna be some interesting meetings when this comes up locally.
I like the Oct 15-31 season, all we need to "control" mature bucks.
At the CWD Laramie meeting there were about 5 folks there, and 1 task force member. They hardly touched on the plan.
 
It’s more or less the CPW’s lame excuse in colo to sell more tags.

As Himtnhunter mentioned, even where the CPW tried to exterminate deer there is still cwd. Cwd is similar to covid where only a super low % of the population are sick and even show cwd signs. The predators kill those few sick animals and the remaining animals are healthy.

It would be like trying to get rid of covid by killing off a bunch of humans when only a small fraction of humans are carriers. It won’t solve the problem.
That's what Coumo did in NY.
 
There is so much wrong with the current approach to CWD I have a hard time knowing where to start.

As mentioned CPW has dicked around with the idea of killing it out for close to 30 years. In 1997 I worked for the CPW in the Ft. Collins Field Office, I was part of the team who removed the lymph nodes from thousands of deer. As mentioned at the time, they were intent on killing the deer out in the area. Theory was, if the deer go away the disease will go away. It has not proven to really work that way. From my understanding of the efforts in FT. Collins, the killing of every deer they could temporarily reduced infection rates, but as the herd grew the rates ticked up and eventually are at or very near the same levels.

The one thing that occurred for certain is that the deer hunting was destroyed. The quality of bucks were destroyed. It took the area nearly 15 years to resemble anything like the hunting and opportunity prior to the CPW allowing people to shoot 4 does and a buck each year in the unit.

Fast forward to the recent Colorado CWD plan. NW Colorado had pockets (this is what really pisses me off) small pockets where mature bucks were testing positive at high rates. The latest plan was to kill all the mature bucks. They did not hide that fact. They were pretty open. The issue is this, the Mature bucks were testing high infection rates but none of other animals. Further making things worse they literally had that showed it was no just mature bucks, but specifically but in a couple certain drainages. I remember seeing a map that indicated the areas. So instead of doing a targeted removal of mature bucks in an identified hot spot area they decided that it was much better to kill off mature bucks not only unit wide but pretty regionally.

The strange part and non of them could ever answer... Colorado Mule Deer Unit 22 is a major winter range for all the areas where the "CWD" hot spots occur. It also had some of the highest population concentrations and at one point not long ago had some of the highest Buck to Doe ratios in the state and also boasted one of the oldest age classes for buck in the state. During this time, there was a massive deer study in 22. I worked with it for several years. Long story short, the CWD infection rate in 22 never reached above 3% and most years in the study it was below 2%. No one could answer the one question... Why does Unit 22 show almost no infection rate with an older buck population, a higher concentration of deer and the fact that deer from many areas winter and comingle with deer from several herds.

Long story short, the tag allocations in NW Colorado went through the roof. The seasons are now shifted later, and mule deer hunting and trophy quality are absolutely destroyed.

I am a hard no on the whole kill all the mature bucks issue. It has not proven to provide any relief at all in the long run. It has proven to destroy hunting for an entire generation it has proved that the managers are willing to kill 10+ years of hunting and get no real net results.

I will try hard to hit the meetings in the Big Horn area.. I love how they time these meeting right with the start of hunting seasons...
 
The biggest reason killing all the nature bucks will never work as CWD has become systemic to the soil and the plants. Areas where CWD has become a “hot spot” with high infection rates always remains a hot spot because the Prions are now in the plants and in the soil. Many recent studies have shown how the Prions are absorbed into the plant roots and remain systemic in the surrounding soil after contaminated by deer urine, feces, blood etc. This contamination may remain in the plants and soil indefinitely. Unless they literally treated it like an environmental toxic waste site it will always remain. The best hope we now have is new studies showing that the Allele which causes CWD can be bred out of them with a variation in a gene which causes CWD.

“This is an exciting finding, providing a biochemical mechanism for what has been suspected from surveys of deer populations: that the prion protein gene variant, the 96 allele, confers a significant level of protection from CWD infection. This will be an important tool to slow or stop the spread of this inevitably fatal brain disease,” said study co-author Judd Aiken, professor in the Faculty of Agricultural, Life & Environmental Sciences.”

One potential application of this research is in game farming for now but if they can figure out a way to get this variation into wild populations it would be a game changer. Killing off all mature bucks isn’t a long term solution, just a waste of many deer who likely would never contract it.

 
So will somebody share that with the biologist in Colorado before they wreck havoc on the few trophy bucks they have left.
 

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