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Allamakee CWD Meetings

T

turkeyriver

PMA Member
I attended yesterday's meeting in Harper's Ferry. Dale Garner did an excellent job of presenting the situation to a packed house of people. They are asking for 150-200 more samples from the immediate area where these positives were found. They asked for volunteers to participate in collecting them, and got a positive response from many of the local hunters/landowners. Permits will be issued immediately and they hope to have the samples by March 15. Further action will be decided after the results of these tests. There were many more ?s and answers but this is what the end result was. Hope the meeting in Waukon went as smooth as this one did. Dale did put the option out there to do nothing, but where that has been done the long term results were not good. CWD does NOT run it's course and disappear eventually.
 
Just another bit of info. Last fall, one landowner in Wisconsin found 13 deer dead or dying of CWD on his property. He was at or very near ground zero of the outbreak 13 years ago there. There is one instance, in New York, where an outbreak appears to have been contained, and that is what our DNR is trying to do here. Nipping it in the bud is our only hope.
 
I had some family things come up and couldn't attend last night, which was disappointing. Did they have a map or anything that they shared of infected areas and target ares?
 
What was there thought on how they would nip it in the bud if it continues to come from WI?
 
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Yes they had a map of the target areas. I'm from Clayton so I wasn't real familiar with the township names and roads. Roughly, a little west of Harper's Ferry.Stretching from north side of Yellow River Forest, including a bit of it, about 3 sections wide, about 5 miles north. Of course, Wisconsin deer coming across the river is a concern, but there is nothing that can be done about that.
 
Can that small of an area handle 150-200 more deer killed? I know in our area if you killed 150-200 deer you would be lucky to have any left.
 
That is a lot of deer for any area. I hunt very close to this area and over the last three to four years the deer numbers have definitely already gone down. I think with the drought years it was hit with eht. sounds like they are still debating what to do? Does anybody know if their is a link to the presentation given at harpers?
 
So you're looking at about a 15 square mile target area? I would think sacrificing 10-12 deer per mile would be worth it if there is any plausible chance at some sort of containment.

Might take awhile, but deer naturally disperse and the lesser competition for resources in the "thinned out" target area, would eventually be found, and be appealing to deer who naturally must move around to avoid inbreeding.
 
Sorry for the confusion. I meant roughly 5 miles north of Harper's. I did a quick count of sections and came up with around 30. So about 30 square miles.
 
Missouri has tried containing it, hasn't really worked. They found new cases 40-50 miles away from the original location, now they want to kill deer in that area to test this spring. I personally won't submit any deer for testing, if they find it in your area they want to kill every deer they can and test. I will say CWD is serious but I don't see it being contained and I don't want every deer in my area killed. I hope you guys have better results.
 
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Can that small of an area handle 150-200 more deer killed?
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I was at the Waukon meeting, when asked about that Willie Suchey said they estimate there are 1100 deer in the 30 or 31 square mile area.

so the extra 150-200 are 14% to 18%
 
IA ML'r said:
I was at the Waukon meeting, when asked about that Willie Suchey said they estimate there are 1100 deer in the 30 or 31 square mile area.

so the extra 150-200 are 14% to 18%
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I'm not for or against, but what are they going to do if some of these 14-18% test positive? Wisconsin has already learned that shooting all the deer don't work. Where will the killing of the deer stop. I just don't see them stopping if any of the deer test positive. I went to the davis county cwd meeting a couple years ago and there were no straight answers.
 
It just seems that they really don't know what to do, so they are at least showing that they are doing something by re-sampling. It's a bad deal for all parties involved.. the local hunters, dnr, and local economies that get a lot of much needed outside money from hunting. They will have people second guessing them forever. For instance, they have spent a ton of money / time / and effort on trying to be quick on catching cwd when it first pops up in iowa. They accomplished this goal and then did not act on it. What if after they got the first positive test they went in and killed every living deer for miles? Would it ruin this area for years...yes. Would it have contained the disease? Who knows? I'm not knocking them either way because I also am stumped. I do think that the time for containment is probably gone, we now have several positive tests back and you can be sure that the number of deer still walking cwd positive is much bigger than the samples collected.
 
we now have several positive tests back and you can be sure that the number of deer still walking cwd positive is much bigger than the samples collected.
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The positive tests are 1% of the total tests in that area. If the additional testing shows 1% again there's no reason to think this can't be kept at bay at least for a while. Illinois is apparently having success keeping CWD from growing into what Wisconsin has by jumping on small outbreaks.

35% infection rate like WI has in the worst area is not where we want to go. Like cancer, they found it too late.
 
jclaws said:
I'm not for or against, but what are they going to do if some of these 14-18% test positive? Wisconsin has already learned that shooting all the deer don't work. Where will the killing of the deer stop. I just don't see them stopping if any of the deer test positive. I went to the davis county cwd meeting a couple years ago and there were no straight answers.
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Exactly. They are chasing a ghost. It's here and it's not going anywhere. I basically asked where the killing would stop and they had no answer. This infected area will keep growing and theyre going to keep killing. He calls it surgically removing. I get what they're doing and if it makes them happy take your 200 deer and test them. There will be more positives. Then what? I would like a guarantee that when it keeps spreading that the killing will stop.
 
I also know that there's landowners in the area that are 100% against killing them off. How can you contain it if several landowners won't let you kill their deer? It's definitely a bad situation. I also liked how he said there are a large amount of people being employed by this so without CWD they're jobless. I heard the same stuff 5 or so years ago when they killed the elk. Back then he said you don't want CWD cause we're going to wipe them out if it gets here.
 
I tend to agree that it's probably here to stay. It was reported in 2014 to the dnr, and the sample was taken in 2013. That deer was an adult male and I'm fairly confident that he didn't swim over the same day that he got harvested! My point is that we might already be in this a few years already. That's at least a couple ruts where the big boys wander, and winters where we all know deer herd up and could've been spreading it around. I don't know specifics on how long it was in Wisconsin before it got bad, but I believe it's been here for a while. The question is, do we still have the time?
 
I also liked how he said there are a large amount of people being employed by this so without CWD they're jobless.
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that's absolutely NOT what he said. I'm pretty sure the DNR has fewer biologists and law enforcement officers now than they did in 2002. What he said was that there are people who's careers have become CWD over the last 13 years. (out of necessity)

There'd be plenty for them to do if they didn't have to work on CWD.
 
IA ML'r said:
that's absolutely NOT what he said. I'm pretty sure the DNR has fewer biologists and law enforcement officers now than they did in 2002. What he said was that there are people who's careers have become CWD over the last 13 years. (out of necessity)

There'd be plenty for them to do if they didn't have to work on CWD.
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I may have taken it wrong when he said there are several guys that this has turned into a career. My point is I still believe there is a lot of smoke and mirrors here. He did not go into specifics on New York. What exactly they did and by exactly I mean #s. How many were infected and how many killed etc. He did not have much to say when I asked him about Missouri. But he will go into a slideshow on WI and show how it spread which is complete bull$$$$. The reason those infected areas in WI got bigger every year is because they're testing expanded evere year. And he didn't say it would kill you to eat an infected deer but but sure hinted that it can't be good. Yet WI probably had CWD for decades before they found it and did anybody die from eating it.

Again I see what they're saying. Let's nip it in the butt now but come on let's be serious. In order to do this you'd have to remove every last deer out of that area and hope it wasn't already outside that zone. What they're doing now will only solidify that it's here which we already know.
 
If u guys get a chance look up the cwd containment plan on the dnr website. If I read it right it looks like they should already be killing deer, I think they are doing an additional round of testing. I would guess that after this round of results come back that they will start killing deer within the affected area. The sec of agriculture will give the dnr the power to hunt private lands, and it's basically eradication in that area.
 
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