MDC reports halfway mark on results of deer samples being tested for CWD

[Johnsfolly]

Jerry

The MDC has a write up on the economics of hunting in MO in Protecting Missouri's Whitetail Deer. If you want a more objective article look at the one put together by the National Shooting Sports Foundation in 2011. It's titled Hunting in America: An Economic Force for Conservation. I couldn't provide the link here, but it's easy to find.

[fishinwrench]

20 minutes ago, SpoonDog said:

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. 

 

Good and fair point.   I have never said that they do absolutely nothing, and I do enjoy and have benefitted from the things they have done.  But for the amount of money they have to work with they are slacking pretty bad on several important fronts, and spending stupidly in other areas that nobody even cares about.....And spending even more attempting to convince us why we should care.   All the research and propaganda that went along with Zebra mussels and Didymo for example.  

Who hunts Grouse (prairie chickens) in Mo.?  And what hog farms got reigned in ?  Where has gravel mining been stopped ?  What trout reg changes have been beneficial ?

[SpoonDog]

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.