yoderjac
5 year old buck +
I dont have an issue with anything Jack listed, my issue is with the mass killing of thousands of deer in the surrounding areas (which is what they are doing in Missouri). It just seems to me that the deer herds best chance for a cure is natural selection. A dead deer shot over a corn pile in the summer will not survive and pass that trait on to their young.
Well, I can't speak to the efficacy of significant population reduction in managing CWD. It will probably take a generation (of people not deer) to understand the effects of population reduction. It makes sense in general terms, but we don't know enough about all the disease vectors of CWD to say if it is the right or wrong management method (re homej's point). We can't oversimplify this. Just because we know this is a spongiform disease driven by prions and we know prions can be viable for tens of thousands of years, that doesn't mean they can infect deer. If these prions can be viable for that long in the future, they have been there that long into the past. There is much we don't know. And radical population reduction could be the best thing we can do and should do or it could turn out to be futile.
The problem with you "natural selection" idea (genetics and epigenetics) is that the results are booms and busts. It works over the long haul as it is the algorithm of nature. The question becomes, are you wiling to take deer hunting unavailable to your kids and maybe their kids to allow natural selection to take its course? That may be what it takes. I think most game departments aim for a sustainable healthy population of deer with natural up and down cycles but not the extreme boom and bust. Will a dramatic population reduction ruin deer hunting for you and perhaps your kids and save it for your grandkids? No one knows for sure yet.
Here is the theory: Deer breed at a fixed rate. If deer are killed indiscriminately over a wide, it doesn't generally impact the gene pool one way or the other. Fewer deer means that the disease is transmitted at a lower rate (fewer infected deer and fewer interactions with uninfected deer). Epigenetics can take several generations to express. So if there are deer in the population that are resistant to the pathogen, those genes will generally be expressed. Keep in mind, this might not be a direct resistance, it may be behavioral. In other words, the genes expressed may affect a deer's behavior in such a way that it is less likely to be exposed. Changes in the underlying gene pool take much longer than epigenetic expressions. They are typically only achievable in free ranging deer by huge population reductions. Why culling deer for larger antlers only works behind a fence or by killing a very large number of deer over a wide area. With culling you can only remove deer based on 50% of the genetics (male). With general severe population reduction you are not removing deer based on any genetic characteristic, just removing deer and then letting the disease cull naturally. I'm not saying this works, just that there is a valid basis to consider it. The professionals debate it.
Fortunately those kinds of measures have not been necessary here...yet. Will the proactive steps our state is taking make them unnecessary or delay them? I don't know, but I'm glad they are trying early rather than waiting for the problem to severe as is the case in many areas.
Thanks,
Jack