Which CWD Approach Better - WI Let It Happen or Kill Them To Save Them?

[Cool Hand Luke]

Because no one can agree? See the thread on killing Canada thistle for an example.

Illinois sniped deer and rates went up. How much money should be spent on sniping deer? Last year ehd sniped our deer more efficiently than govt can. Nature healed itself.

I’ve never personally seen a deer with signs of CWD. Only heard of maybe 2 in my lifetime that other guys had tested (to each his own) and came back positive. I just don’t see it as the big bad virus they make it out to be. What I do see is populations getting wiped out in a state that already has trouble managing wildlife and habitat. I still don’t think the county next to mine has recovered from sharpshooting from 15 years ago. And explain to me how setting up bait piles in forest preserves with large populations is helping stop the spread???

Illinois is so jacked up. We get large parcels of land donated to the state every few years and instead of making them open to public hunting, they turn them into hippy preserves for all the Subaru people and then have to pay the DNR to sharpshoot because the populations are too high. How about letting people hunt the “public” preserves and let nature do as it’s done. Probably half the reason things are as bad as they are around here. The state takes control of the land and doesn’t allow hunting!!!

 

[Cool Hand Luke]

Here’s a recent article for IL’s CWD program. Seems like a bunch of hoopla that goes nowhere, just throwing crap at the wall and hoping it sticks.

https://v3-wp.huntillinois.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/CWDProgramUpdates2024.pdf

 

[Mortenson]

Haha, that 1st paragraph was a nice word salad. Who wrote that - Kamaltoe Harris? That report was written for the politicians and grant givers, not us hillbilly deer hunters. I stand corrected though. Illinois did reinstate the snipers this past year, after telling everyone they suspended them. I feel reassured knowing Illinois is back again to save the day.

 

[BenA]

Human transmission has been proven just as much as plant uptake transmission has, in that it hasn’t.

There is no science here. Lots of headlines and booga boogary.

Plants have been proven to be able to uptake CWD prions and transmit them to animals.

https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(23)02505-1?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS2589004223025051%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

Highlights​

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Abnormal prion protein can enter the roots of plants
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Plants can translocate detectable levels of prions to aerial tissues
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Animals exposed to prion-contaminated plant tissues can acquire disease
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Contaminated plants may represent a route of prion exposure

 

[T-Max]

We make management decisions on which deer to shoot, which deer to let live, which plants to kill, which to grow. Why shouldn't we try to manage the spread of a disease? If we "let nature take its course" and take a hands off approach, doesn't that go against what we're all trying to do as habitat and deer managers? We don't do that on our own properties. We don't take a hands off approach. We are very hands on. We kill stuff we don't want spreading all the time. There's thread after thread of how do we deal with this or that. Why do some people want to treat CWD any different from a management perspective?

I see and respect your point, but for me they aren’t quite the same. If I want to manage johnsongrass, I spray to kill the johnsongrass. If I want to manage eastern red cedar, I target and remove eastern red cedar. Unfortunately the common way to manage for CWD isn’t as straightforward. You can’t manage it in the same sense as we manage the rest.


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[BenA]

I see and respect your point, but for me they aren’t quite the same. If I want to manage johnsongrass, I spray to kill the johnsongrass. If I want to manage eastern red cedar, I target and remove eastern red cedar. Unfortunately the common way to manage for CWD isn’t as straightforward. You can’t manage it in the same sense as we manage the rest.


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I'd love to be able to kill johnsongrass and never have it again. As long as there's seed or plants near me, or animals bringing it it, I'll have more of it if the conditions are right. The same goes for sericea lespedeza. I'd love to be done with it forever. What I can do is minimize it or keep the populations low and control the spread. I don't think we've learned enough about CWD to control it. We may never do that. What I do think we should do is try to minimize the spread as much as possible. I'm not sold on letting mother nature take its course with CWD that same as I'm not comfortable with mother nature taking its course with kudzu. I think it would be a shame if we don't try to stop it.