MDC reports 33 CWD positives out of nearly 24,500 samples tested

[tjm]

Scrapie infected sheep kept in the same pen with deer that were later released to wild again with CWD? Guess by strictest definition not man made but it did not happen in nature.

I really think it is antlers more than venison with the money people.

Rules and laws about interstate movement has never deterred the transport of exotic animals why would it stop captive deer being smuggled around?  We are always going to have the CWD or the threat of it, until research develops a remedy. I heard a tale of three herds of goats getting sick and the remnants of all three herds being shipped to meat markets on yonder coasts. The symptoms were of scrapie and I saw deer in that immediate vicinity with like symptoms, no reports made of the goats and I had no samples of the deer, so that area remains "clean". 

[BilletHead]

        

29 minutes ago, MoCarp said:

 I don't plan on eating any venison anytime soon

         Well I will and plan on eating it until it jumps to a human and if I am that first one so be it. It has been shown that taking illegal and some legal drugs, smoking, drinking, obesity, driving your vehicle, flying across the country and even walking down the street for your health is dangerous for you and still folks roll the dice everyday taking that chance. I pick my fights and venison would still be the safest off all that I mentioned. It would be far more dangerous for any of us to sit in our easy chair watching TV and the computer and doing nothing than being in the outdoors deer hunting. 

   Billethead

5 minutes ago, tjm said:

Scrapie infected sheep kept in the same pen with deer that were later released to wild again with CWD? Guess by strictest definition not man made but it did not happen in nature.

           Guess I should look into things more. I was still at the point believing it was caused by feeding captive animals meat by products like in the case of mad cow. I still think it all boils down to man screwing with nature like moving invasive species ,

  BilletHead

[fishinwrench]

2 hours ago, MOPanfisher said:

There is some truth in there, however the disease was NOT made in a university, it was first identified by a university in their captive deer herd, but is not a man made disease. 

Well now wait a minute.....

Captive deer, 

Fed what?

Bred with what? 

Injected with what?

Sprayed with what?

It never was an issue before those deer....who were under the care of who?

 

Yes, sorry, I think we are talking about a man made/man induced disease.   As was Mad Cow.    Take man out of the equation and it likely never would have happened.

Agree, or no?  I'll not argue further.

[tjm]

In away deer are an invasive, my older brothers could remember the release of the first deer in this area and now they are most as numerous as squirrels, I see way more deer than rabbits or snakes or coyotes.

Really hard to make a judgement of whether restoration of species or even habitat is going to be good or bad until after the fact. As humans we have altered the planet to the extent that we live in an essentially contrived or alien place. Wild things and places have taken on an amusement park aura.  Wildlife and wild fish no longer have intrinsic value as survival needs.

[MOPanfisher]

Do I agree, no.  It was not man made, certainly spread by activities of man, probably exacerbated by activities of man.  Could be a difference in what I consider man made.  It was not a disease created in a lab and given to animals to see what would happen, that would be man made.  I certainly could understand the argument for CWD or Mad Cow to be a Man made disease, but to me they are not, there are very few man made diseases I would think by my definition.

[MOPanfisher]

LOL, I have to apologize, I just did a Google search for man made diseases, the vast majority of hits claim nearly all diseases to be man made, we are all going to die.  Well that last part is true, ain't none of us going to live forever.

[tjm]

 

1 hour ago, BilletHead said:

Guess I should look into things more.

BilletHead , the grad student that held the deer for a study he was doing (on feed?)wrote of the happenings a long time ago, its probably on the net some where. 

[BilletHead]

             No way deer are invasive. What makes you say that? Deer were once plentiful ,very plentiful. I used to shoot archery with a bunch of older than me at the time guys. They said for a time when someone seen a deer it made the newspaper. We are lucky to live in the time we do now to have laws to protect and conserve game animals. To make a right from a wrong.  

   I will repeat again and again. Man is his own worst enemy. 

  BilletHead

[tjm]

I think my grand dad was near 60 yo when they stocked deer in this county, he certainly considered them a mistake on MDC's part,  and I recall when they were scarce enough to be reported on the store porch.

I said "in a way" the habitat MDC stocked with deer was nothing like the habitat that once supported elk and bison here. The deer stocked were foreign to this area, I don't know where they came from.  We've had carp in this county longer than deer.

[BilletHead]

      TJM,

 How do you figure deer were not here in quantities?     Yes deer were restocked with what was still here from Michigan. They were here in numbers, great nunbers before man with his wisdom at the time killed them out in various ways. By the way carp were never here before Europeans. What part of Missouri are you from that had carp before deer?

During presettlement times, the whitetail was abundant in Missouri, especially in the more fertile and diverse habitats of northern Missouri. The influx of European settlers to Missouri during the last half of the 19th century coincided with a rapid decline in the deer population. Unrestricted market hunting and
habitat destruction, such as cutting, burning, farming and grazing forest lands, contributed most to this decline.
    Token laws restricting the killing of deer were passed in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but they went largely unenforced. In 1925, the state’s deer herd was estimated to be only around 400. In response to these findings, the Missouri State Legislature declared deer season closed and made the first substantial effort to enforce its regulation. At the same time, deer brought to Missouri from Michigan were released onto five refuges in the Ozarks. In 1931, deer season reopened but resulted in a small harvest, which indicated a low population that was stable or declining.
     Missouri’s deer management program has come a long way since 1944. That year, 7,557 hunters took 583 deer during a two-day, bucks-only season in 20 southern Missouri counties. In recent years, nearly 500,000 gun and bow hunters typically harvest around 300,000 deer annually during statewide seasons

   BilletHead