SpoonDog

You're gonna be worm dirt before the sturgeon that shares your birthday. All of your children will be dead. All of their children will be dead, before that fish kicks the bucket. Your life, the eighty measly years you spend on this rock- it's just as inconsequential to them as their existence is to you. From a sturgeon's perspective our species is nothing more than a glorified rat, and the only reason we're in a position to contemplate their persistence is because 200 million years ago they didn't eat our ancestor. So show a lil respect, huh?

It just adds an extra dimension to combat fishing!

You're understanding it wrong. They're comparing MDC's slice of the pie with other state agencies- MODoT, DNR, Department of Education, Social Services, etc. Of the entire Missouri state budget, MDC is only 0.6% Oh yeah, and the minks! I 'm on the bubble about sculpins and suckers in the spring branch- I mean they eat all the bugs those pellet fed hatchery trout would eat if those pellet fed hatchery trout knew bugs were food. They should consider themselves warned.

We're just focusing on different things, at all. Some folks see otters eating trout as a minor travesty. But considering all the tangled fishing line they had to avoid, all the powerbait and sinkers and plastic worms they had to pass...I think it's a minor miracle. Look at the bright side, that's all I'm sayin'. I mean if it's worth worrying about, let's kill every eagle, osprey and heron in the park while we're at it.

If the BSSP crowd just went the extra mile they could get them otters hooked on SlimJims and corn curls in no time, avoiding the need for any additional bloodshed.

Maybe that's where we differ. To me, a bunch of bumpkins (myself included) on an internet fishing forum discussing Zebra Mussels or didymo or prion disease isn't evidence the state fish and game outfit has failed to educate the public. Are zebra mussels an issue in the state? Is didymo an issue in the state? Maybe they never would've become established, maybe MDC's efforts paid dividends. I don't know. Even if that weren't the case, the idea MDC's wrong about CWD because they were wrong about didymo doesn't follow- the two things aren't related. But I'd wager that for every Zebra Mussel scenario there's an Asian carp scenario, that for every didymo scenario there's a bush honeysuckle scenario, and I'd prefer my government agencies to err on the side of caution.

See, this is a testable hypothesis. You claim there's never any outcome, I can wander over to Google Scholar and type "Missouri Department of Conservation" and in 0.06 seconds come up with half a million books, reports, theses, journal articles, etc. demonstrating otherwise. If it's a peer-reviewed journal article, there's literally a "Results" section in each one. Reintroduction of deer, of turkeys, of wood ducks, otters, prairie chickens...changes to trout regs, to SMB regs, eliminating noodling, reducing gravel mining, helping reign in hog farms, installing revetments, planting trees, keeping cows out of streams, implementing prescribed burns and forest management practices, heck- fire towers. If you think there's never any outcome to MDC's actions it's only because you haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about. If you ask me, finding the answer to "Is ______ going to kill all of the _____ in Missouri?" isn't a waste of money. I don't care what you fill in the blanks with.

Luckily it's not up to state legislators, and I'm not sure how your two positions dovetail. CWD reduces the game populations you admit are better now than at any point in your sixty years. MO's deer population is 1.5 million, reducing it by 80% leaves what? 300,000 animals? 800,000 residents bought firearms permits in 2015. Just residents. Just firearm deer permits. You tell me how many deer each of those 800,000 individuals gets to shoot when there's 300,000 deer in the state. Johnsfolly makes a good point with regard to the economics, but there's more than that. As much traction as "wholesome, traditional, hunting and fishing and outdoor activities" are in this state, going back to the days when they're wasn't enough game around for folks to hunt should be alarming. Implicit in your argument, Jerry, is the idea that your kids or grandkids shouldn't have it as good as you do. Should they be afforded the opportunity to hunt abundant, healthy game? Or not?

No, you're saying CWD isn't a concern because you don't think CWD is a concern. It's circular reasoning.

The key difference is they're looking for answers as opposed to making an uninformed guess.

I'd say it's a fair guess the guy who didn't know what CWD is hasn't the vaguest idea how it'll affect the state's deer population.

A misbehaving protein, called a prion. Think of it this way: a normal protein is fishing line wrapped around a spool. A prion is a bird's nest tangle. They're both made of the same material, just folded and different ways, and as a result they have different properties. Because the prion is folded differently, the body doesn't recognize it as useful, or as an infectious agent. Moreover, the prion particle interacts with other proteins in the body, causing them to degrade, leaving the holes in nervous tissue which cause loss of motor control. MOPanfisher did a great job summarizing the rest. There's some research CWD is native in the western United States and has been around for a very long time. But historically those deer were moving miles between summer and winter ranges, not confined to a pen eating grass contaminated with their own excrement. Large predators also played a role removing sick individuals. We killed all the top predators because they eat our precious deer and elk.

To my knowledge heat (<300 deg F) doesn't deactivate prions. The good news is they're only found in nervous tissue, so if you don't eat the brains, and you don't shoot 'em in the spine, and you don't butcher them with a saw, you might be fine. CWD's been reported in Missouri counties with high deer populations and Arkansas counties with low populations, and in CO and WY with deer populations of <1 animal per square mile. Part of the reason CWD's so dangerous is it doesn't have anything to do with population size or animal density, that it's just as likely to kill an otherwise healthy deer as it is a sick one. It isn't a bacteria or virus and I'm not aware of any research suggesting animals can build resistance to the protein involved. I'm pretty ambivalent about deer and I agree we could do with a lot fewer, but the fact is CWD is fairly new and we simply don't know whether it'd kill 10% of the population or 100%. That's why basic research documenting its range, its spread, and its lethality is so dang important.

For the exact same reason your doctor doesn't prescribe every available medication, all at once, just in case- it's an overreaction. Instead of killing as many deer as possible everywhere, MDC's approach appears to be finding where the disease actually occurs and managing it there. I don't know how having more folks killing and eating more infected deer would lower the chances of hunters getting sick. My own experience, and that of every nurse or daycare teacher I've ever met, is that increased exposure doesn't decrease the risk of infection.

'course starvation and car wrecks aren't communicable. Prion diseases like CWD are, and their symptoms don't appear for decades. We don't know the effects of CWD on human health, but I guess I can imagine why a hunter would want to know whether a disease linked to dementia was present in his venison before feeding it to his kids. I reckon there's a cost to paying some coed eight bucks an hour scooping brains out of a deer. There's a cost to long-term care of folks losing their minds, too. If you guys are saying you want to kick the can down the road, or better yet- that you want to be among the first signatories of some document forking over your income to care for sickened folks in the event CWD can be passed to humans, that should be brought up at a Commission meeting. If you're just upset a state agency is being proactive in notifying sportsmen whether the deer they killed is diseased, I'll have to find a smaller violin.

Dang! Perhaps with training, a little discipline, he'll make us all proud.

Thanks. If cases have been documented, no matter how few, then by definition it's no longer speculation. If the MDC quail guys say it happens I'm willing to believe them, and I'm not interested in debating a fact. Whatever hangup you have about bird farms is yours to explore, at your own leisure. I have a woodpecker to attend to- it gets cranky when there's not peanuts on the stump in the backyard.

This thread's gotten pretty far afield of the original topic. I'm sorry you're offended Quill, but the idea a germ consults an atlas before determining its communicability is absolutely ridiculous. And while it's true some diseases, like botulism, are found elsewhere- that doesn't change the fact they're found in bird pens. If there's really no risk from penned birds transmitting disease to wild ones, I don't think Wyoming would've destroyed all their penned birds. If there were really no risk of penned birds transmitting disease to wild ones, I don't know why MDC would place restrictions on where they can be released- and if you had such a strong argument, you wouldn't be dodging that question every time it's raised. I've already told you why they have that policy, and if you don't want to believe me, you're welcome to contact them. Thanks for getting this thread back on track. Crazy that 62% of the population needs to be removed annually just to STABILIZE the numbers.

You're being absurd, Quill. As much as I'd love to see you sit down and shame a salmonella bacterium into respecting political boundaries, diseases don't care whether it's Wyoming or Missouri. They've never looked at a map. Momentarily ignoring the fact bird flu has been reported in Missouri, moving the goalpost and insisting "it only counts if it happens in the state" bears no resemblance to rational thought. You're welcome to contact MDC and ask why they don't want penned birds stocked adjacent to theirs. Contact information's on their website.

Nowhere, anywhere, at any time, did I say MDC manages game solely on monetary value. I said it's a factor- that MDC doesn't operate in a political vacuum- you can google any number of Missouri state legislature maneuvers and learn that's a provably true statement. I'm on MDC's side 90%+ of the time, I'm just not going to pretend they don't receive money and matching funds from license sales, nor am I going to pretend they receive no input from hunters, anglers, the Conservation Federation, or even lobbyists. Thanks Quill, I did read the article- I just don't believe pheasants stop being pheasants when they're outside the arbitrary geopolitical boundaries of the state. Captive birds are captive birds, whether they're in Missouri or Georgia or Wyoming or Abu Dabi. We can pick bird flu if you want, though. Or salmonella. Or botulism. And you're right, the state-run hatchery was willing to eliminate all their birds and decontaminate everything because they could take the financial hit. I don't know that a small business would be able or willing to that and apparently MDC isn't willing to risk it, either- otherwise the regs in the Wildlife Code wouldn't be in the Wildlife Code. I keep bringing up deer farms because people pay to hunt them, just like people pay to hunt bird farms- they're analogous arrangements. If you can't see the similarities in those two business models, I have to wonder if it's because you don't want to. People pay money for these services because they see value in them. Because people see value in them, they don't want these services to disappear. Because they don't want these services to disappear, they contact MDC, they contact their legislators. Saying it's just one court case assumes you don't know about all the legislative wrangling that's been going on regarding captive deer in the state, eliminating MDC's conservation sales tax, and fiddling with the number of Conservation Commissioners. A quick google search, a conversation with a conservation federation member can help clear that up. These things have happened, irrespective of whatever you believe. All I'm saying is exactly what I just said, no need to put words in my mouth. And if it's happened with deer, I can't think of a reason it absolutely wouldn't happen with hogs.

Look- if you have a hundred penned pheasants you're gonna let me shoot just outta the goodness of your heart, I'm all ears. But I suspect lots and lots of people don't go through the trouble of buying pheasant (or quail or chukar) eggs, hatching them, raising the chicks, releasing them, or taking out ads and putting up websites advertising their bird farm because it's better than collecting stamps. And I suspect folks aren't spending five grand on a vial of deer semen because it's more sustainable than diamonds and they want to make a one-of-a-kind engagement ring for their sweetheart. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't think it's likely. The idea bird pens or high fences can be sources of disease is uncontroversial. &nbsp;. MDC hasn't asked that bird farms be banned- because as I said, there's money in bird farms. People have invested in them, those people elect legislators, and those legislators wreak havoc. But there's all sorts of regs about captive birds in the wildlife code, and if MDC really thought there were no risk from penned birds, I doubt they'd insist none are released within five miles of a conservation area. No matter how unlikely you think it is that MDC would be influenced by political pressure, it's precisely what happened with captive deer. &nbsp;. MDC pushed to manage captive deer because they were transmitting disease to wild animals, legislators and lobbyists pushed back. Once people are making money off of game- pheasants, deer, ducks, trout, whatever- it's incredibly difficult putting that genie in the bottle. That's why MDC doesn't want hogs treated as game animals.

Whether you buy it or not is immaterial. High-fence hunting operations are almost certainly the source of CWD in Missouri; we still have high-fence hunting operations in Missouri because the state decided captive deer aren't deer. Believe it or not a market exists for those facilities, and when you start regulating people's livelihoods, whether it's canned hunting or bird pens or cockfighting or bear wrestling (I still hear people upset about those), that's when the state legislature starts saber-rattling. I don't know about pen-raised birds, but for what it's worth the state's wild hog task force includes the conservation federation, Farm Bureau, MFA, and the Missouri Pork Association- so yeah, pork producers are worried about disease and are supporting the hunting ban. Which makes sense- I'd rather have diseased animals herded up over a couple hundred acres than busted up and roaming a couple thousand.

...Because there's a market for pen-raised bird operations. Even though pheasants and chukar aren't native to Missouri and even though they don't do particularly well here, folks'll still drop thousands to raise and release and hunt them and they'll get their panties in a wad if you try and shut it down. That's precisely why MDC doesn't want to cultivate a whole lot of people interested in keeping hogs around to hunt.

A whitetail reaches maturity at 12-18 months and has one or two fawns- by that time a sow hog's already had two or three litters of 4-12 piglets each. And while there's a number of native predators that can take down a poult or a fawn, not many can tangle with a 50 lb hog, much less a 350 lb one. Hogs aren't ducks. Hogs aren't turkeys. Any four year old with a See and Say knows that. They're a different species, with a different biology, and it'd be profoundly ignorant to act otherwise. Your hypothetical situation assumes enough hunters would be successful to drive the population down- and if that were the case, it'd be fantastic. I'd be all for it. It sounds great on paper, and yeah, it's worked with deer and turkeys and some other game animals. But I can't find an instance where it's worked with hogs, and those are the animals we're wanting to get rid of.

Look, I know it's a struggle. You can have the belief Missouri hunters could reduce or eliminate hog populations, you just can't demand MDC act on that belief in the absence of any supporting evidence. Public hunting would only be "zero-cost" if it were as effective as MDC's management strategy- and everything we know about how hog hunting worked here, how it worked in Arkansas, NC, TN, TX, and others indicates exactly the opposite. The cost just shifts from MDC dollars to damaged fields and fences, to higher risk of disease transmission, to greater predation of and competition with native game species. Sport hunting hogs has a cost, and IMO I'd rather pay for an efficient management system than an ineffective one. And besides, it's not as though it's some brand-new thing or some vast gov't overreach- many states had government trappers throughout the 19th and into the mid-20th century. And it is weird to think about Quill, but folks release pheasants and quail and chukar all the time. Every farm pond in the state was stocked with the idea of harvesting their offspring. And high-fence operations are all about stocking deer/elk/bison/exotics so they can be hunted. Those barriers aren't 100% effective.