CPW Posts Picture of Sick Deer Fed Birdseed

WyoDoug

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Cheyenne, Wyoming
My neighbors feed wildlife all the time. When they see antelope or deer in town, they start tossing things to them like lettuce, carrots, etc and one lady puts food out for wildlife every day. If they only realized how much harm it actually does to wildlife.

 
Carrots are not natural food for deer nor is apples. Wyoming has a couple documented cases of deer die-off and the necropolises done by the biologists involved indicates full stomachs of alfalfa but they died of starvation anyways. Wyoming also has a case where deer have died of alcohol poisoning from eating fermented apples. Deer develop specific enzymes in their bile to help digest their food and not enzymes for food such as carrots or apples or lettuce. A little bit probably would not hurt, but a lot will. Not only that, wildlife loses the ability or urge to scrounge and forage for their food and when people stop giving them food, the affected wildlife almost never makes it through the winter.
 
so should I enforce it with the death penalty? I gave them the "no eating" command.

LOL dude, I grew up on a farm so I know how that goes. We had deer feeding off the silage pits and corn pile. Deer that grow up around alfalfa are probably OK eating it because they adapt to it and develop the enzymes to digest it. Deer that do not feed on alfalfa feeds regularly are likely to suffer when fed alfalfa if that is all they eat. Deer back east that feed on the apple orchards do fine on the apples as long as they don't eat the fermented ones. Deer especially those that feed on apples and other goodies from people in the populated areas are having problems and G&F has to put them down.
 
How did deer survive the last million years without your food stamp program? They don’t need your handouts and it’s illegal for good reasons.
Its not illegal where i live, so it must be not illegal for good reasons?
 
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Carrots are not natural food for deer nor is apples. Wyoming has a couple documented cases of deer die-off and the necropolises done by the biologists involved indicates full stomachs of alfalfa but they died of starvation anyways. Wyoming also has a case where deer have died of alcohol poisoning from eating fermented apples. Deer develop specific enzymes in their bile to help digest their food and not enzymes for food such as carrots or apples or lettuce. A little bit probably would not hurt, but a lot will. Not only that, wildlife loses the ability or urge to scrounge and forage for their food and when people stop giving them food, the affected wildlife almost never makes it through the winter.
Apple trees grow everywhere around here, and deer eat the hell out of them. Should we cut down all the apple trees? Ive never noticed dead deer around the orchards. Its almost as if it doesnt hurt them
 
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Read the official "feed 'em" policy of the CPW... it is BY DESIGN a self fullfilling prophesy to support not feeding the deer. Lots of jews died after liberation from concentration camps even though given what (arguably) was livable chow from the GI's. When you are down to a skeleton wrapped with leather being surrounded by the garden of eden may be too little too late.

If I chase them I am "harassing wildlife" If I don't I am an "illegal feeder", makes perfect sense to me. The big Brownies are coming and they can drive one to bankruptcy mighty quick at $130/bale, to say nothing of about $2000 in fence destruction and still no end in sight, I'll just wait in the barn for the CPW to show up and re-build it with their $96M in profit from last years tag sales, they will be there soon I'm sure.IMG_4976.JPG
 
It's illegal and no one should do it. Except for me, I'm special. I know I'm not hurting my deer. 😒
When i see the same deer at my house year after year, always in good health, yeah i know im not hurting them. And its not illegal where i live. The only real danger to feeding them that ive seen is when people feed them enough to concentrate them, it concentrates the predators too.
 
Read the official "feed 'em" policy of the CPW... it is BY DESIGN a self fullfilling prophesy to support not feeding the deer. Lots of jews died after liberation from concentration camps even though given what (arguably) was livable chow from the GI's. When you are down to a skeleton wrapped with leather being surrounded by the garden of eden may be too little too late.
You lost me somewhere around "prophesy."
 
One of the things you do when feeding deer is they lose their fear of humans. This will get them killed easier during hunting seasons.

That's hardly fair chase. When I hunt for a deer and it smells, sees, or hears me, I want it to spook. Not stand there waiting for a meal.
 
...it concentrates the predators too.
And spreads disease, and habituates wildlife to humans, and increases deer-vehicle collisions...but on the plus side, it makes them seem more like pets so the anti-hunters have one more reason to oppose any kind of reasonable hunting (see Rocky Mountain National Park or the lack of an archery season in many urban areas where deer are over-populated).
 
You lost me somewhere around "prophesy."
But I always throw in a picture for you and yours... those things in the back??? Those are ELK.

and here is another... chasing the thieving bastards back to the CPW office.IMG_4984.JPG
 
And spreads disease, and habituates wildlife to humans, and increases deer-vehicle collisions...but on the plus side, it makes them seem more like pets so the anti-hunters have one more reason to oppose any kind of reasonable hunting (see Rocky Mountain National Park or the lack of an archery season in many urban areas where deer are over-populated).
Also pretty irrelevant to my situation. No cwd here, only a couple other people living in the area, illegal to hunt does, low traffic road. I dont just leave food out concentrating the deer, but ill toss something to my "pet" does now and then. Nothing to create disease or traffic risks. One doe ive been feeding her since 2014, and somehow it hasnt killed her. Guarantee she will die from a lion or wolf before "acute occasional carrot toxicity."
 
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This is not a one size fits all situations. For the post part, people should avoid feeding wildlife deliberately. I don't think anyone is worried about deer that live around and eat from agriculture fields and produce. Deer adapt by producing the right enzymes in their rumen to handle that. You don't want behavior based on a food reward when you deliberately throw food out for them. As someone else said, when I hunt deer, antelope, bear, and elk and they know I am there, they should react with fear not hoping for a handout. When I was growing up on a farm, we had deer eat from the feed bunks, corn piles, hay fields and the corn that is left in the field from harvesting. That is no threat to wildlife. Wildlife gaining a dependency on humans as a food source is a danger to wildlife.
 
Also pretty irrelevant to my situation. No cwd here, only a couple other people living in the area, illegal to hunt does, low traffic road. I dont just leave food out concentrating the deer, but ill toss something to my "pet" does now and then. Nothing to create disease or traffic risks. One doe ive been feeding her since 2014, and somehow it hasnt killed her. Guarantee she will die from a lion or wolf before "acute occasional carrot toxicity."

You keep saying how different your situation is and how it's okay because at my house blah blah blah. This isn't about your backyard.

The original post was about an actual dead deer in Colorado. It's dead. They did an autopsy. There's photographic proof.

There is cwd in Colorado. There are predators in Colorado. There are a lot of deer vehicle collisions in Colorado. There are dead deer with bellies full of birdseed. This isn't a hoax.
 
One of the things you do when feeding deer is they lose their fear of humans. This will get them killed easier during hunting seasons.

That's hardly fair chase. When I hunt for a deer and it smells, sees, or hears me, I want it to spook. Not stand there waiting for a meal.

I'm just going to leave this here.. lol

 
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