brocksw
Well-known member
Where was this?Here’s a snip of one opinion
“You are aware that the GnF gets federal funding for each positive CWD case they find?
I’d like to believe that this is non-political, but so long as the Game and Fish is getting funding from a national bill set on standards that is a one size fits all scenario from a lopsided, money seeking bio group (AFWA), I’m not buying it.
It has everything to do with monetizing wildlife at the administrative level while punishing the very people that are there to utilize and help manage the resource. Talk about typical government overreach.
It literally boils down to the states you mentioned…MT, WY, MN, WI, Sask have had bait bans in place forever it seems which have not been proven to slow the spread of CWD one bit. In fact, CWD positive cases have marched across these states with an effective bait ban, so why try to inhibit it and take a tool away from hunters. Sure, lots of deer get killed without the use of the tool, but lets think beyond ourselves. There are large groups of users that are severely impacted by a ban. Elderly, wheelchair bound, vets, youth…its easy to argue that as a “real hunter” who needs baiting and you as a “real hunter” don’t need bait to effectively harvest a deer. While for a lot of us that is true, there are a lot that a pile of grain can and will make the difference for a clean and effective kill, or at least provide the opportunity to do so. I don’t think its fair to consider anyone who might need to utilize a pile of bait any less of a hunter than myself, especially if they have a handicap that might limit their ability to effectively harvest a deer without the use of such a tool. I’m glad that this is something that up until now that we have had an option to use, but slowly that right is being eroded away due to an agenda.
There is plenty of data in our state to even show that baiting is not a detrimental factor. 3F2 has had the longest running bait ban in the state, and yet positive cases are found year after year. Interesting fact is that these are cases within the majority of the mule deer species, AND mule deer hardly ever relate or pattern to bait. We have all sorts of data that argues that baiting is not harmful and can actually help isolate groups of deer and keep them localized. This is such a deep topic and I could go on and on…its important to go listen to the testimony at the hearing. I am confident that the information presented there will shed more light onto the situation that science simply does not support a ban of baiting. The game and fish cannot even site a source that definitively says so. All they can say is that CWD is spread through saliva and feces, but cannot provide data of infection rate, mortality time frame after exposure or infection, transmission rate, etc. Heck, they still promote their own interceptive feeding program and the promotion of food plots by providing funding to farmers to set aside acreage and plant them.
And I’m going to say this, the deers best chance is exposure and developing resistance through evolution. We know that CWD can live on the landscape for an indefinite amount of time. With its prominence, a cervids best chance is to contract it and allow evolution to develop a natural resistance to it through generational resistance, and not the prescribed AFWA method of wiping out family groups and herds of deer by sharpshooters. This is not the way of natural biologic evolution to developing resistance to any disease throughout the history of our earth.”