re: Harrison County, MS CWD

It's more likely than not that people can't get it. Even if people can't get it, it's still not a good thing. We need to stop feed piles and stop farming deer. If nothing else, it gives the antis ammunition for less hunters and more predators.

I think I’m in the same boat. I acknowledge its existence.

I am more cautious in dealing with brain matter and I don’t do bone in neck roasts anymore.

I don’t think I’ll ever not eat a healthy deer because of it. Colorado has had cwd for 60 years and they have a great deer and elk population with lots of hammers walking around. Like drought years concentrate stagnant water sources and lead to ehd problems, I think corn probably does the same for cwd.

I mainly research it or care about it because I have reservations about feeding it or giving it to people who may not understand anything about it. I think everybody should understand what we know about it and make their own decision. If you read about prions, you’d believe it’s too far gone anyway.

I subscribe to this as well. It would be much better for deer and turkeys if we went away from supplemental feeding of corn/rice bran/protein but with the corn and rice lobby, I don’t see it happening short of wildlife agencies using the “red scare” of CWD to prohibit it.

Two wrongs don’t make a right and I don’t like agencies having as much power as they do so it will take a grassroots effort from QDM minded hunters to get feeding prohibited.

I agree; never had hog damage on my property until I allowed a friend to place corn out at his stand location…within weeks the hogs were tearing up ground there.

Which brings up a case in opposites…agencies have declared open season on hogs, which carry all kinds of nasty stuff, yet their efforts to reduce populations are like pissing in the wind. The hog problem is exponentially worse in locations that allow baiting.

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rather it’s about keeping it from potentially wiping out herds of deer.

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Nah. The current en vogue method of control is wiping out herds of cervids through shooting and predator reintroductions. For me, it's 100% about spread to humans. Animal densities self regulate. I dont wanna die from cwd.

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What “things” do you believe have shown objective evidence work in “slowing” spread of CWD?

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That we still have plenty of deer? What objective evidence do you have that, without these measures, things wouldn’t be worse?

We agree completely on the baiting. The contradiction on that topic, though, is coming from the commission, not agency. Biologists and agency would get rid of it; commissioners will not.

What Deep South agencies are proposing extirpation?

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there is no way to objectively identify the what-ifs re: failure to act.

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If you believe the threat is even close to existential, then the consequences of failure to act are known inherently. I think both our arguments are strawmanly.

I went back and reread some. Still trying to understand your position. If someone thinks it’s no more abnormal than EHD, then I can understand why they’d favor inaction, business as normal. Why, then, do you think it warrants study?

I have few thoughts on issues addressed in this thread.

CWD was first found in a wild elk in 1981.Deer started being tested here and there around the country and is found in various places.
CJD is found in humans at a rate of 3 1/2 cases per million people over the years.
I suspect it has always been in deer but was not known because it wasn’t tested for.
It seems to me that if CWD was transmissible to humans,considering the millions of pounds of elk and deer meat eaten by hunters and their families and friends since 1981,that CJD would be epidemic amongst humans.
Yet the rate continues to stay very low.

As far as corn feeders,I have 4 on my property and have had them at least 12 years.
My stands are from 100 yards to 225 yards from the feeders,it is very seldom that I ever see a deer feeding under them in daylight and have only ever seen 1 buck.
I get pictures of deer at night but that is all.
Only bucks I’ve ever killed are traveling down wind of them scent checking the feeders.
My strategy is the feeders attract does that linger close to the feeders which attracts bucks.
I don’t see any difference in hunting corn or white oaks dropping acorns or persimmon trees dropping fruit.
I was in a club that had a cluster of white oaks and years they had acorns I had much better luck shooting bucks under them than I ever did hunting corn,I killed several eating acorns.The ground was covered in tracks so it was definitely a hotspot,I wish I would have a camera in those days.

People dumping on cameras,I don’t understand.I have 10 and love them.I don’t think they have particularly helped me kill any bucks.I have killed bucks I had pictures of and probably more that I never had a picture of.I’ve gotten pictures of trophy bucks just passing through,pictures once and never again nor saw them hunting.I’ve had pictures of some bucks with screwed up antlers I really wanted to shoot but never saw them.
I’ve gotten pictures of 2 separate piebald does in the summer but never saw them during hunting season
I have a cellular camera on the road before my driveway and I get pictures of all kinds of critters-deer,coyotes,bobcats,foxes,feral cats and occasional wandering dog.