Proposed 2022 WY Seasons and Regulation Changes

[PAhunter]

Thanks @Oak. From that plan, modeled population was reduced by about 35% and stayed around that level from 2004-2009, then climbed steadily back up to higher numbers than sometime before 1990.


Also from that plan:
"Based on the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission (CPWC)
CWD policy at the time, CPW attempted to manage D-4 towards a reduced CWD
prevalence rate objective, and the 2001 HMP made changes to decrease
population size and lower the buck: doe ratio. The specific post-season
population objective was “less than 7,000 deer or sufficient to result in a less
than 1% prevalence across the DAU”. At the time, sample sizes sufficient to
show higher prevalence rates in male deer had not been reached, so no
guidance was available on an optimal sex ratio to help reduce disease
prevalence."

And a bit further on, after noting lack of hunter and landowner support for more drastic reductions in GMU 9:
"After significant internal and external input, a new HMP plan was approved in
2007 that called for increasing the population at least 50% to 10,000-12,000
deer. This population alternative received overwhelming public support and
was favored by CPW staff."

I gotta say I could never be a biologist in a state wildlife agency. Seems about the time you are beginning to see a change, social pressure comes in an tanks your experiment, so you never get a chance to really know the outcome.

 

[BuzzH]

Below is the graph for the Red Feather deer herd CWD prevalence. The document states:

"Prevalence in the Red Feather/Poudre Canyon
deer herd (D-04) has declined in the decade since CPW
applied focal culling and increased harvest in the early
2000s."

I may be reading the graph wrong, but here's my interpretation.

They were pounding the piss out of bucks and harvesting few does before discovering CWD. Once discovered, they greatly reduced buck harvest and increased doe harvest, because hey, disease transmission is often density dependent, and wildlife managers know that to reduce a population (density), you harvest females. So they increase doe harvest for 5 years or so and then reduce it again, all the while keeping buck harvest much lower than it had been prior to CWD. The prevalence of CWD stayed fairly constant, until it nosedives at a point when doe harvest has pretty much been reduced to pre-CWD levels. It's not clear from the limited data here if this drop in prevalence can be explained by something like a small sample size. It would be interesting to know when they stopped mandatory testing in this herd.

Happy to hear other interpretations if I'm off base.

View attachment 217507

@Oak...would you also interpret from that data, as the TOTAL herd number starts to increase when they stop killing does, that prevalence also increases based on the graph?

I think that's what makes this tricky to tease out, are the increases and decreases in prevalence related to total deer density, less bucks, or less does, or a combination of all?

I would want to know, for sure whether its total deer density or total buck numbers before moving forward.

What I'm hearing is we need to kill more bucks, but NOT does, to keep the does on the landscape so once prevalence drops we can again grow bucks.

What I also don't know is what will be the "lag" between allowing more bucks on the landscape and once again seeing prevalence increase again and have to start killing them again?

I asked that question, what happens in 5-10 years when prevalence drops enough to be comfortable to allow buck numbers to increase and what is that threshold? What threshold in increase prevalence before having to kill down bucks again? Seems nobody knows...and I think that's true...nobody does.

Maybe I'm all wrong, but what I'm seeing happen is 5-10 years of killing bucks to (hopefully) reduce prevalence, maybe 5-10 years of having some bucks again, then killing bucks down again...rinse and repeat.

Maybe that's as good as its going to ever get and if so, that's pretty sad, for both hunters and wildlife managers...and most importantly for mule deer.

 

[BuzzH]

Show me a deer herd in Colorado that isn't hunted...

Killing mature bucks and getting to 6 bucks per 100 does is the stated goal. Straight from the biologist...that's all we need to do to save mule deer.

This will be minimum a 5 year experiment and you heard it hear first, every one of those tag numbers will be increased in upcoming years until it's 6 bucks per 100 does.

Was stated last night, 25 tags per area probably won't be enough.

But the good thing is the pronghorn are doing like shit all over SE Wyoming and soon we will wreck a good LQ elk area by making it general.

It's truly unbelievable how quickly things are sliding...but there will be all kinds of "opportunity".

So, after talking with the Biologist yesterday, apparently the goal is to only shoot bucks down to 20:100.

I never heard that mentioned at the meeting in Laramie, what I did hear several times is that we only need 6 bucks per 100 does to keep all sufficiently producing fawns.

I've heard from other GF presentations and biologists, that its 11-13 bucks per 100 does.

So, take that as presented...not sure myself anymore who/what to believe, what level of bucks to doe's to keep prevalence down, and no idea how many bucks we need to service 100 does. Apparently it can be as few as 6-8 or maybe it takes 11-13, not real sure. As to buck to doe ratios to lower prevalence...good question.

 

[Deleted member 16014]

so in 2002 there were over 2000 animals harvested from what i can tell, roughly, from looking at the graph. that's a 7% sampling rate. is that enough to statistically extrapolate across an entire herd and say with confidence what the prevalence is?

i'm sure they put error bars on that, what did the error bars look like?

I am not a statistician but I know enough to be dangerous.
7% could be enough, but it would be tough to say without knowing the parameters that the statistical model defined. Either way, you would not be able to put error bars on those numbers unless sampling was conducted at random, which it almost surely wasn't; I assume that info is available, I didn't read the whole report. That doesn't mean the results aren't useful, just limited in how they can be applied.

The big problem often comes down to scope of inference. You can only infer your results to conditions that mirror those of the study area and study population. A land or game manager might take cautious but reasonable freedom with this to adapt study results to a new management question, but you really have to be careful...and be ready to get called out, with nothing to fall back on but intangibles.

2016 also looked like maybe about a 7-8% sampling rate. so 7-8% sampling rate of the harvest translates to like, a 0.7% sampling of the entire herd... roughly. is that enough to extrapolate prevalance?

You (they) could do that test using Z-scores. You would need to plug in: the change in prevalence that you wish to detect, a significance level, and the acceptable risk of not detecting a change in prevalence. It's kind of irrelevant though if the sample was not random.

 

[Carl 9.3x62]

What I also don't know is what will be the "lag" between allowing more bucks on the landscape and once again seeing prevalence increase again and have to start killing them again?

I asked that question, what happens in 5-10 years when prevalence drops enough to be comfortable to allow buck numbers to increase and what is that threshold? What threshold in increase prevalence before having to kill down bucks again? Seems nobody knows...and I think that's true...nobody does.

This is the question that I keep thinking about.

 

[88man]

We just don't know enough about CWD to have any confidence in a plan that kills more mature bucks or deer in general that we know are allready hurting from a bunch of other factors not just CWD. Its a chit show in regards to management around the CWD issue thats what is for sure. Pick your poison.

 

[TOGIE]

The big problem often comes down to scope of inference. You can only infer your results to conditions that mirror those of the study area and study population. A land or game manager might take cautious but reasonable freedom with this to adapt study results to a new management question, but you really have to be careful...and be ready to get called out, with nothing to fall back on but intangibles.

i think this is important. I don't want game managers and the biologists to think i'm hating on them. that's the super difficult part of the job, a decision has to be made, and that "reasonable freedom" informed by experience/education/knowledge is what allows the decision to be made.

i believe (but carefully wanna qualify that i just don't actually know for sure at the moment, though am wanting to start trying to find out) that the majority of those years for the poudre/red feather herd between 2010 to present were not years of mandatory testing. which would then rely on a few guys and gals that are choosing to have their deer tested for a small fee. to me that's unreliable data to use and say "see prevalance has dropped."

51 deer tested out of i dunno 1500 killed in a herd of roughly 12-14,000? hard to feel like that's good data.

 

[BuzzH]

i think this is important. I don't want game managers and the biologists to think i'm hating on them. that's the super difficult part of the job, a decision has to be made, and that "reasonable freedom" informed by experience/education/knowledge is what allows the decision to be made.

i believe (but carefully wanna qualify that i just don't actually know for sure at the moment, though am wanting to start trying to find out) that the majority of those years for the poudre/red feather herd between 2010 to present were not years of mandatory testing. which would then rely on a few guys and gals that are choosing to have their deer tested for a small fee. to me that's unreliable data to use and say "see prevalance has dropped."

51 deer tested out of i dunno 1500 killed in a herd of roughly 12-14,000? hard to feel like that's good data.

Then you also have to ask the reason why those people that voluntarily had their deer tested took the time to do so and pay for it.

If someone shoots what appears to be a normal healthy deer or elk, nobody seems in a hurry to test.

But if someone with even a little bit of knowledge about cwd shoots one that they may be suspicious has it, standing around when it shouldn't be, maybe not as healthy, etc. those may get tested. Which again, would be putting bias into the data in regard to prevalence one way or another. I'm not suggesting that the data provided is too low or too high in regard to prevalence.

However, before I feel comfortable moving on aggressive management like this I want to know within in a pretty tight, and random sample, where we are to start with.

I am NOT confident the baseline prevalence has been established. The ranges I saw in the presentations were extreme enough to drive my decision one way or the other in regard to aggressive management. In other words and with numbers only for an example, if estimated prevalence is say 15 but the confidence interval is large, and range could be between 5-25...then what?

If I knew that it was closer to 25% prevalence than 5% that is going to influence my confidence in how I view aggressive management...and obviously vice-versa would change it as well.

For the record, I have made more than a couple suggestions, that falls on deaf ears, to try some of these more aggressive cwd management ideas on herds that are smaller, more controlled and in limited quota areas. Areas where you have to kill fewer deer to reach desired buck to doe as well as population level changes, can make mandatory testing much easier, and make it easier to establish baseline CWD prevalence.

It just seems like a herculean effort to do any of these things with herds of deer that number in the 3000-20000 range covering huge geographic areas. Tough to know where in those huge geographic areas most of the cwd is located, is it in pockets? Is it area wide? Easy to miss sampling from deer in large areas where say, landowners allow very little hunting. Having to kill a ton of deer to test the hypothesis, have to kill a ton of deer to lower buck to doe ratio's. Have to kill a ton of deer to lower deer density, etc. etc.

In other words make your control group something you can actually control and draw more decisive information and conclusions from.

If you want to see how effective rotenone is in killing fish, I think I'd rather try a teaspoon in an aquarium before I dumped 30,000 gallons into Flathead lake.

But, the thing I've learned in all these years of trying to help wildlife and the management of same, unless you're a landowner, outfitter, etc. you're just not going to get much traction.

If you ask questions and actually think about these issues and maybe even apply some of your education, work experience, and personal observations...well, you're ostracized, you're a leper.

The very people many claim they want at meetings, want on committees, want making recommendations, are, in reality, the very last people they want doing any of that. It's much easier and convenient to convince a room full of bubba's that read at a 6th grade level, than one person that thinks, cares, and understands...just the way it is.

Until that paradigm shifts, its business as usual and we can't expect positive outcomes and we aren't going to get them in many cases.

This whole cwd issue just flat sucks...its difficult to say the least.

 

[JM77]

Then you also have to ask the reason why those people that voluntarily had their deer tested took the time to do so and pay for it.

If someone shoots what appears to be a normal healthy deer or elk, nobody seems in a hurry to test.

But if someone with even a little bit of knowledge about cwd shoots one that they may be suspicious has it, standing around when it shouldn't be, maybe not as healthy, etc. those may get tested. Which again, would be putting bias into the data in regard to prevalence one way or another. I'm not suggesting that the data provided is too low or too high in regard to prevalence.

However, before I feel comfortable moving on aggressive management like this I want to know within in a pretty tight, and random sample, where we are to start with.

I am NOT confident the baseline prevalence has been established. The ranges I saw in the presentations were extreme enough to drive my decision one way or the other in regard to aggressive management. In other words and with numbers only for an example, if estimated prevalence is say 15 but the confidence interval is large, and range could be between 5-25...then what?

If I knew that it was closer to 25% prevalence than 5% that is going to influence my confidence in how I view aggressive management...and obviously vice-versa would change it as well.

For the record, I have made more than a couple suggestions, that falls on deaf ears, to try some of these more aggressive cwd management ideas on herds that are smaller, more controlled and in limited quota areas. Areas where you have to kill fewer deer to reach desired buck to doe as well as population level changes, can make mandatory testing much easier, and make it easier to establish baseline CWD prevalence.

It just seems like a herculean effort to do any of these things with herds of deer that number in the 3000-20000 range covering huge geographic areas. Tough to know where in those huge geographic areas most of the cwd is located, is it in pockets? Is it area wide? Easy to miss sampling from deer in large areas where say, landowners allow very little hunting. Having to kill a ton of deer to test the hypothesis, have to kill a ton of deer to lower buck to doe ratio's. Have to kill a ton of deer to lower deer density, etc. etc.

In other words make your control group something you can actually control and draw more decisive information and conclusions from.

If you want to see how effective rotenone is in killing fish, I think I'd rather try a teaspoon in an aquarium before I dumped 30,000 gallons into Flathead lake.

But, the thing I've learned in all these years of trying to help wildlife and the management of same, unless you're a landowner, outfitter, etc. you're just not going to get much traction.

If you ask questions and actually think about these issues and maybe even apply some of your education, work experience, and personal observations...well, you're ostracized, you're a leper.

The very people many claim they want at meetings, want on committees, want making recommendations, are, in reality, the very last people they want doing any of that. It's much easier and convenient to convince a room full of bubba's that read at a 6th grade level, than one person that thinks, cares, and understands...just the way it is.

Until that paradigm shifts, its business as usual and we can't expect positive outcomes and we aren't going to get them in many cases.

This whole cwd issue just flat sucks...its difficult to say the least.

This ^^^^^ 110%

 

[RobertD]

This ^^^^^ 110%

Lake vs aquarium analogy nailed it.

You all are making fantastic points and articulating thoughts I'm shying back from for fear of putting foot in mouth.

I do want to add, and I'm keeping a good eye on both feet, that the utility and quality of the Colorado study is one half of the equation and absolutely worth discussing... but the sense of urgency to implement a plan by authorities is important too, and I think merits some criticism..

Specifically, everyone's aware of places where cervids run around with CWD, and either a) it's hard to determine impact of the disease or b) it's hard to determine efficacy of the disease prevention practices in place, if there are any. And the world... doesn't seem to be ending.

I may be out of touch with the level of threat CWD poses but I'm just not sure I can square with the "doing anything is better than doing nothing" urgency-based thinking.

Our neighbors in Alabama just got their first CWD+ counties a few years back. It's on the Mississippi side IIRC but it still lit a fire under GA DNR to implement statewide testing protocols. I actually helped a DNR biologist collect samples a few times, which I enjoyed. I did ask her, what will GA DNR do if one of these bucks tests positive? She said she didn't know of any official policy or any policy in the works.

I asked her if we would go the buck-slaughtering route and she said she didn't know about that either, but acknowledged that it was contentious science and isn't necessarily universally supported, and wasn't a guaranteed response if/when CWD shows up here.

It's anecdotal and in a story from a guy on hunt talk dot com but for me it's worth considering when I hear anyone pressing urgently to go with the kill-all-the-old-bucks route. If anything it at least reinforces the argument of aquarium vs lake referenced above.

 

[Hunt West]

@BuzzH

Are there any landowners that actually support this? The only landowner I know there is adamantly opposed to it, but it’s a sample size of one.

 

[BuzzH]

@BuzzH

Are there any landowners that actually support this? The only landowner I know there is adamantly opposed to it, but it’s a sample size of one.

My comment was more in general to who is chosen to be listened to, and who is treated like they may as well not bother to even get involved.

 

[WYelker]

If you think I’m not invested as a NR you are sorely mistaken. My point total and what I have to spend to come there to chase deer absolutely makes me interested in the quality of the WY deer herd.

How do you suppose they get a clear understanding? Status quo? Or try something that had some success elsewhere? If you can do better what’s your plan?

How about they wait and see? Colorado
Is currently running this experiment and destroying its herd… Why do we have to follow.

The colorado basis for this is sketchy at best and just a wild guess in most. I worked for CPW in the late 90s. Watched as we killed all the deer. Some
20 Years later the rate of CWD is about the same and the total number deer in the area is way down.

If you actually read the Colorado justification and the supposed study. The entire basis for all
Of this is summarized by “drastically reducing mature bucks may decrease infection rates.”

It is a disaster as they have no proof it will work and they are ignoring some real interesting options…

 

[wytex]

Buzz, I came out against mandatory reporting, and testing , on another forum but I agree we need to test every deer coming out of say 59/60 and 64 to get good data on prevalence. Maybe lots more areas.
That is why I brought up the tooth aging on the mandatory testing for Region J, they need real data on age classes and prevalence and not just guesses.
I am swayed to the good side on mandatory reporting and testing now.
WG&F has aged 20+ years of bucks for us out of 59 and all have been 4 1/2- 10 1/2 years of age, hardly "no" mature bucks in that area.
We've also had 2 animals in 25 years test positive for CWD, an elk and a deer that both appeared healthy. By no means have all animals been tested. That will change now.

 

[seeth07]

How fast after the meetings in a few weeks for these proposals to the seasons and rule changes will we see the final approved draft?

 

[Thx1138]

How fast after the meetings in a few weeks for these proposals to the seasons and rule changes will we see the final approved draft?

Normally it’s either at the April Game and Fish Commission meeting which this year is in Lander April 19-20, or shortly thereafter to be finalized by May 1 for printing and e-publishing. I think the comment period is still open and comments also accepted at the April G&F Commission meeting.

 

[WYelker]

Knox is going to be available at a WY Woldoofe Foundation event tonight in Laramie at the Library bar… Maybe he will accept and answer hard questions?

If anyone around Laramie wants to make oppositions this might be a good opportunity!

 

[seeth07]

Anyone have the cliff notes version of the meeting from the last two days?

Website News just says they approved seasons. No details about any changes to the recommendations.

 

[Carl 9.3x62]

Doesn't sound like the late deer seasons in the Snowies were added.

 

[seeth07]

Doesn't sound like the late deer seasons in the Snowies were added.

Yeah I can't find a replay of the meeting posted anywhere to check it out to see what happened.