Rally For Whitetails On April 16

[Kathy E.]

Brandon Butler, executive director of the Conservation Federation of Missouri, has just shared with me the exciting news that CFM is going modern. The organization already had a Facebook presence and they are getting ready to join the Twitter-verse.

CFM is gearing up to confront, head on, those who would thwart the 550,000 hunters of wild deer in Missouri by supporting the 300+ deer breeders whose very presence in the state -- and continued transport of deer across state lines -- threatens the health of our wonderful wild whitetail.s

Legislators in Jefferson City not only are trying to change the definition of captive deer from 'wildlife' to 'livestock,' which even the Agriculture Department opposes, they are trying to remove the Conservation Department from having anything at all to do with captive deer, including assuring that the deer are healthy and not infested with disease or deer lice.

The Conservation Department already has many, many wildlife biologists and wildlife veterinarians on staff; the Department of Agriculture has no wildlife biologists nor do they have any wildlife veterinarians. Misguided legislators, such as Representative Rocky Miller, have stated to me (paraphrasing here) that all someone has to do is look up the fix in a book, that Missourians don't need a wildlife specialist to work with deer to know what's best for the animals.

Really?

Mr. Miller is a civil engineer. Would he be qualified to retrofit a utility company's substation transformer??? Could he 'look up what to do' in a book?? Not in a timely manner, I'll wager he couldn't.

Anyway, this foolishness has gone on long enough. Our wild deer are at an ever-increasing threat from pathogens being brought unnaturally into our state by the captive deer breeders and operators of shooting pens. These folks are 'greasing the palms' of our legislators to such an extent that our legislators really believe that deer hunters simply don't care about the health of our wild deer.

Look to southeastern Wyoming where over 50% of the deer are now infected with CWD -- and where population declines of 10% are occurring every year because deer are dropping right and left. Is this the future we want for Missouri?

Captive deer breeders and owners of shooting pens don't care about wild deer. More than once they have told me that they don't care if every wild deer gets sick and dies. They say that if that happens they will simply sterilize the soil in their pens, double-fence, dam streams, and re-stock with healthy deer. Then the only way someone can shoot a healthy deer is by paying to shoot in one of their pens.

Their aim is to put the Conservation Department and other wildlife agencies out of the deer hunting business. With CWD now found in 22 states, they are doing a pretty good job of it, too.

Make plans now to attend the Rally for Whitetails which will be held on April 16 in Jefferson City. The legislators have prodded a sleeping giant -- the deer hunters of Missouri. If this isn't worth a day of your time, than I don't know what is.

In the meantime, if you use Twitter #superbucks2050 to get all the latest information on this and other topics of interest to deer hunters.

A good resource for those who are unfamiliar with the captive deer industry is this article: http://www.indystar.com/longform/news/investigations/2014/03/27/buck-fever-chapter-one/6865283/ It's a long article, but one that you'll be glad you read.

[Kathy E.]

More details: from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., third floor, Capitol rotunda. CFM will be grilling hot dogs and burgers for attendees.

[jdmidwest]

Funny, most deer breeders I know are avid hunters of wild game. They just raise deer to shoot in pens for the lazy, clumsy hunters that pay for the prize of a big set of horns.

I think it is way out of line to bash deer breeders. The ones that I know are all responsible sportsmen and very meticulious about their herds. If they have a diseased deer in the herd, it would do them a very big financial deficit to their wallets. Why would they want to promote the spread of disease into the wild when they would stand to lose so much in their own herd?

[Kathy E.]

Did you read the article? CWD in 22 states now, and counting. Follow the deer breeders and you'll find CWD.

There probably are some good deer breeders who would never do anything unethical. Unfortunately, there are others who aren't so ethical -- or legal.

How do you tell them apart?

One night hauler (person who illegally transports whitetails) testified in court that he had made thousands of illegal hauling trips taking deer from CWD-endemic zones in Saskatchewan to fenced areas in Texas and elsewhere. And that is just ONE hauler! How many more just like him remain in operation as this is being written?

And the people who pay to go to deer pens can't by any stretch of the imagination be termed 'hunters.' They are shooters, plain and simple, and judging from some of the tales not very good ones at that.

[Chief Grey Bear]

Funny, most deer breeders I know are avid hunters of wild game. They just raise deer to shoot in pens for the lazy, clumsy hunters that pay for the prize of a big set of horns.

I think it is way out of line to bash deer breeders. The ones that I know are all responsible sportsmen and very meticulious about their herds. If they have a diseased deer in the herd, it would do them a very big financial deficit to their wallets. Why would they want to promote the spread of disease into the wild when they would stand to lose so much in their own herd?

How many do you know?

I thought the one you did know was out of business?

What did he do with his heard? Free Range them??

It certainly isn't out of line to point the finger at the very people that brought this disease into this state.

[jdmidwest]

How many do you know? Dozens, many of them are local here in SE MO. I could fire a rifle and hit one less than 1 mile down the valley.

I thought the one you did know was out of business? He is, he lost his half of his herd to a cattle disease, EHD.

What did he do with his heard? Free Range them?? He sold them to a registered breeder in Michigan. At 5K to 20k per deer, you don't just free range them.

It certainly isn't out of line to point the finger at the very people that brought this disease into this state. Did they? Or were they infected by a wild deer? Much like didgymo and felt soles, there is just a knee jerk reaction and someone needs a fall guy. There is simply not enough known about the disease at this point to draw any real conclusions.

Most of the professionals have a lot of money invested in their herds. They raise them for many reasons, pets, urine, antler products, resell, genetics, and high fence hunting. Many of the products and research done by them is beneficial to the average, one weekend a year deer hunter. Bashing the group as a whole is like condemning all sportsmen based on the actions of a few poachers.

[Kathy E.]

First of all, there is no such thing as coincidence. Follow the trail of CWD and you will almost always find a game farm nearby. If there is no game farm, there is a high probability that the infection was caused by a night hauler having had an accident and losing his (infected) animals OR a captive deer person releasing infected deer (that I admit he may not have known were infected) back into the wild. A slight chance exists that a hunter might have brought back an infected deer from a CWD zone and not disposed of its brain and spinal cord properly and deer got infected that way. But the preponderance of evidence suggests that the CWD plague has followed on the heels of the game farms.

No one is wanting to put these folks out of business. But did you know?

1.) The game farmers are lobbying the Missouri legislature to remove oversight of their deer from the Conservation department, with all of their many wildlife biologists and veterinarians, to the Ag Dept, which has not a single wildlife biologist NOR wildlife veterinarian?

2.) The game farmers have got the Missouri legislature well on their way to declaring captive deer 'livestock' and not wildlife? How can it be that they are livestock when they are roaming the pens, according to the game farmers, and immediately become 'wildlife' when one of their shooters downs one of them?

3.) Before the legislators got involved some years back, the Conservation Dept. was testing around every captive pen for the presence of this disease. Threats from the legislature of this being a 'discriminatory practice' shut this testing down. We need this started back up immediately.

4.) The CWD testing programs is now voluntary, not mandatory as it was a few years ago. Do you really believe that EVERY game farmer, when confronted with an obviously sick deer, is going to do the right thing and have it tested? The game farmers are the ones who initiated the phrase "Shoot, shovel, and shut up." A percentage will hide the evidence and let the wild deer be darned. Mandatory testing won't solve every problem -- the captive folks could still cheat -- but at least the Conservation dept. would have an occasional presence at these places, with access to their documents, and the ability to ask questions. Right now, the department is pretty well hamstrung.

These are all common sense measures designed to protect our native wild whitetails and, by extension, Missouri's more than 550,000 deer hunters and the more than $1 billion annual economic impact that deer hunting contributes to the state.

There are only slightly more than 300 captive deer operations, with an annual economic impact so small that it doesn't even get broken out of the Ag. Dept.'s budget.

Doesn't common sense require that we at least try to strengthen the regulations that affect our wild deer -- as well as the jobs of over 27,000 Missourians who find full time employment in some aspect of hunting for wild whitetails?

[jdmidwest]

1: Dept of Ag should be the governing body on pen raise domestic deer, not the MDC. MDC is tasked at protecting our wildlife, forests, and riverways. They should not be burdened by the problem as there are no licenses purchased to fund it in deer farming other than some permits to raise the deer. A hunter in a high fence does not buy a license for the deer he shoots, he pays for it. The sale and trade of the deer creates taxable dollars that do not go to the MDC the same way as licenses, fees, and Pittman Roberts. That money goes to state and federal coffers that fund the Dept. of Ag. If they lack biologists, let them hire some to do the job.

2: Captive deer are livestock. They have been raised in a pen, they are fed and watered by humans, they are tagged in the ear like cattle or hogs, and they are bought and sold for profit. Wildlife can't be treated that way.

3 and 4: They relaxed that testing when the EHD epidemic broke out during the drought. They knew what was causing the deaths and knew it probably was not CWD. I am not aware of the current requirements, since my friend has been out of the business, I have not really kept up with it. It was before the EHD, every head of a deer that died had to be sent for testing. They are numbered and there is little room for cheating. Records are kept of deer populations in a farm herd and the tags they possess.

The bottom line is that legitmate deer farmers try real hard to prevent any disease in their herds. They go out of their way to install barriers between their herds and the outside world. Wild deer carry disease too. They sure don't want to get blue toungue in their high priced herd deer. Its just a matter of common sense.

I am not aware of how other states manage captive deer, but MO has a pretty good program and track record. To my knowledge, there is no current live test you can perform on a deer to see if it is carrying CWD. Little is really known about it. What needs to be done is finding out more about the desease, not pointing fingers and saying the sky is falling.

[Kathy E.]

Blue tongue is not transmissible from whitetail to whitetail. It is NOT transmissible from cattle to deer or from deer to cattle. It is carried by a midge that gets into the deer's nose and lays its eggs there and which then proceed to release a virus that then raises havoc in the deer's system. Here is one scientific journal's description: A deer must be bitten by a midge carrying the virus to become infected. The disease is not transmitted directly from one deer to another but must go through the insect vector. And then there is this: Cattle SELDOM EXHIBIT signs of EHD, and even when they do the symptoms are mild. So, your game farm friend may have lost cattle to a disease but odds are great that it wasn't EHD. If you are that misinformed about EHD, no wonder you believe everything you are being told by the captive deer folks about testing requirements, etc. Do some research, at least, before you post things that are so obviously incorrect.

The EHD epidemic had nothing to do with the relaxation of testing.

If the captive folks 'go out of their way to install barriers,' as you state, they would be installing double fencing and damming their water sources so that nothing could reach outside the pen. They would be inspecting their fences so that nothing could escape; in fact, deer escape high-fenced ranches with regularity. That game farmers don't and won't double-fence their properties speaks volumes about these folks. In fact, the mere suggestion, by the Conservation department, that they start to double-fence their properties -- and this was back in the early 1990s -- sent the game farmers into a tailspin. They don't care if their animals infect the wild deer; more than once I and others have heard them bragging about how, if that happens, then the only place hunters will be able to go to hunt guaranteed non-diseased whitetails will be a game farm. Because when OUR deer are all infected, THEN the game farmers will sterilize their soil, double-fence their holdings, and repopulate with truly non-diseased deer, if they are able to find any at the rate they are going of infecting our wild herds.

Whitetail deer, whether in a pen or in the wild, are wild animals. The are NOT livestock. What other 'livestock' do you know of that cannot bear to be handled, and which will die at a high rate of 'capture myopathy' whether they have been in a pen for 5 years or were just trapped? Plus, as long as disease can be transmitted from these penned whitetails TO WILD WHITETAILS, which are owned BY EVERY MISSOURIAN AND EVERY AMERICAN, not just a select few, then the governing agency of the animals which would suffer the most harm and which would result in the most harm to the general public, namely, the Missouri Dept. of Conservation, should be in charge. This is an issue that should be of major concern to any North American who enjoys watching, hunting, photographing or eating non-diseased wild whitetails.

There is no point in arguing with you any further. You obviously have no idea of the seriousness of the situation, nor do you even bother to check your so-called 'facts' before posting them here. And you obviously do not care whether or not future generations will have non-diseased whitetails to hunt or to otherwise enjoy.

EHD kills some whitetails, not all. CWD kills every whitetail, with no exceptions. Whitetails can build up a resistance to EHD, since it is a virus, so that future generations may not be as susceptible to the biting midge that causes it; CWD has no way of stimulating a whitetail's immune system because it is a TSE -- transmissible spongiform encephalopathy. There is no cure and researchers are no closer to discovering one than they were 50 years ago. The disease-causing prions can be transferred into the soil and into the food supply. No one yet knows what that means for the humans who will be eating the prions contained in our bread, tomatoes, and other ag crops. How many will it take to cause vCJD -- the always fatal new variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease in humans? No one knows, but the roulette wheel of chance is spinning. That is one risk that I and millions of other thinking people feel would rather do without. And the best way to do that is to try our best to keep CWD contained, which will never happen as long as game farmers are allowed carte blanche to operate in the same reckless manner they have been all along. Common sense measures should prevail.

[jdmidwest]

I give up, your coolaid is too strong. Keep carrying your torch and wander along.

I never run across any deer farm where they trapped a wild deer and started a herd. All were bought and sold at an auction. They are livestock and should be governed as such. There are no wild captive deer.