Wyoming Game and Fish Commission Approves Chronic Wasting Disease Management Plan

Long way from increased quota's and longer seasons.

Everything has to go through the public process and there is going to be a lot of opposition to hammering bucks during the rut, greatly reducing over-all numbers etc.

One of my big concerns is that there will be some hunters who look at this as only another way to increase their odds of killing a buck deer and increased opportunity to kill more deer. That isn't the intent, the intent is to try a few things, in select areas, to see if some management changes can reduce the prevalence or slow the spread, not give some road hunting clowns more opportunity.

It all sounds like a good idea until the management plans are implemented in your favorite deer area. I also think its going to be a tough sell to sportsmen, when, for the past several decades, we've been asked to help mule deer via shorter seasons, less antlerless tags, etc. Now we're being asked to kill the chit out of them, reduce numbers, etc. when there is very little known about how well those types of management practices work.

I'm all about giving things a try in a handful of places, we wont learn if we don't. But if this starts to become a management "norm", and just another excuse to raise revenue and provide opportunity with no substantial results in slowing or reducing prevalence...the GF better realize that many WY hunters are going to get in their face about it. I also believe that this has to be conducted in places where its mandatory for 100% of the animals harvested to be tested. As well as in places where its easy to decrease bucks enough via issuing more LQ tags and not conducted in general areas where you cant control harvest as easily. It has to happen in a precise and concise way or its all for nothing and our deer herds will suffer.

Finally, the one nagging problem that I've had all along, and brought up in public testimony is that the Biologists are claiming in some of the high prevalence areas that there are virtually no bucks over 3-4 years old. If that's the case, then why are they so gung-ho to reduce the older age classed bucks via hunting them later...targeting the very deer they claim don't exist in the first place. From what I've seen, that's simply not true, even in high prevalence areas, there are deer present in the older age classes (4+). I would like to see how much difference there is in age classes between easy access lots of hunters areas with low prevalence to harder to access fewer hunters high prevalence areas. I think there's more older aged deer out there in the high prevalence areas than is being portrayed by the department, at least in areas I'm familiar with.

We'll see what shakes out during the public process, but I think its going to be a bumpy road ahead and there is going to be opposition when it comes to hammering deer...
 
It would be nice to at least try this in an organized, statistically valid and sustained way to get some data. The big hurdle, as always with CWD, is the time scale. I doubt Wyoming is going to fare any better than any other states have in being able to carry out this treatment long enough to actually obtain meaningful results. As @BuzzH said, it will not be popular.

Any of you have a link to their proposal handy? I would be interested in reading what they’ve ended up with so far.
 
Buzz,

I have always been concerned with the kill the older bucks approach to CWD. I also don't believe that it is killing all of the older class bucks in the units. Do they say what units don't have any mature bucks, I'm sure the hunters of Wyoming could tell you if that is true including yourself. It seems to me that the right approach would be measured. I agree that Wyoming has been protecting the mule deer herd, now go out and kill them all the old bucks is not the approach. Please keep us updated on this one.

Rich
 
Hunting Wife said:
It would be nice to at least try this in an organized, statistically valid and sustained way to get some data. The big hurdle, as always with CWD, is the time scale. I doubt Wyoming is going to fare any better than any other states have in being able to carry out this treatment long enough to actually obtain meaningful results. As @BuzzH said, it will not be popular.

Any of you have a link to their proposal handy? I would be interested in reading what they’ve ended up with so far.
Click to expand...
 
I personally have reservations about the plan. I think it would last only a few years and in my opinion, there needs to be a sustained effort over longer time and wider population groups to get accurate data on CWD and whether any plan works or not. But to take out a significant number of older bucks out of a herd has to have a negative effect on the herd as a whole, so I myself would probably do my public comments against it.
 
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Here is the problem with just simply knocking down population numbers: if your prevalence numbers are at 50% for 100 animals in a herd, you have 50 animals with CWD. Lets say you kill at random via hunters 50 of them. Just using the assumption that the kill was even among cwd free and positive animals, you now have 50 total animals with 25 having cwd. Your prevalence is still 50 percent. These animals will still eat, drink and bred and therefore doing nothing but likely further increase your prevalence of the herd and it's even more likely to spread among them.

Maybe I'm missing about how mule deer behave compared to whitetail that makes my example above invalid
 
You might be able to effectively implement a plan to kill older buck on a unit that is mostly public land but on a unit that has a good percentage of private the landowners are not going to give the access you would need to get the job done. Those older bucks are just too valuable. I guess you could bring in the helicopters. Sure that would be popular.
Is there solid science to back up the need to shoot older bucks or is it just a theory that older bucks travel more during the rut and there for spread CWD?
 
antlerradar said:
You might be able to effectively implement a plan to kill older buck on a unit that is mostly public land but on a unit that has a good percentage of private the landowners are not going to give the access you would need to get the job done. Those older bucks are just too valuable. I guess you could bring in the helicopters. Sure that would be popular.
Is there solid science to back up the need to shoot older bucks or is it just a theory that older bucks travel more during the rut and there for spread CWD?
Click to expand...
There is a relationship between bucks and spread of cwd. Well whitetail I guess. Its not just old bucks but 1 1/2 yo as well.
 
What are the regulations for transporting a deer, elk or moose carcass? Butcher in the field leaving the head with spinal column at the kill site? No transport of whole carcasses? What about non resident hunters taking their kills out of state, thereby spreading CWD if their animal is positive? Lots of unanswered questions regarding the disease.
 
The problem is that there are confounding transmission factors contributing to prevalence and spread that require somewhat different actions to address. It’s generally more complicated than a simple blanket population reduction.

First, CWD prevalence is not evenly distributed within most populations. Demographics play a large role, with highest prevalences almost always among older age class males (this has been documented in nearly every study published with regards to CWD and demographics, particularly in mule deer). Which is why they are proposing to increase harvest of that highest-prevalence demographic.

Second, in places where you have high density and high prevalence, you would need to reduce contacts (same idea as social distancing here) to reduce transmission before you may see a drop in prevalence. Overall population reduction would theoretically make sense in this scenario. But it has to be sustained if you want to see results. 4 or 5 years isn’t going to cut it.

The huge caveats with both of these are:
1- The prion load in the environment. Does environmental contamination at some point reach a level that will negate any population management efforts to reduce transmission?

2- It’s going to take more than 5 or 6 years to get an idea of whether this is working or not. CWD is a chronic, long time scale disease. Population level changes, both bad and good, take a long time to become detectable. The public usually can’t handle it and agencies throw in the towel long before any meaningful results occur.

When we started down this road a few decades ago, people would get upset about disease folks saying things like “its possible prevalences could reach very high levels” or “there could potentially be population-level impacts“. Since we didn’t know those things “for sure”, it was better to do nothing. Well, here we are, and we still haven’t made an honest effort to try and get a handle on what strategies might be effective. I applaud Wyoming for trying. But it will not be easy. I hope it’s not too little, too late.

@shootbrownelk - transport restrictions have been in place for years. Not looking up specifics for Wyoming, but generally most states are similar: meat must be boned out, or at minimum cannot be attached to the spinal column. Cleaned skulls or skull plates only. Bones and such must be left in the field or disposed of at an approved landfill facility.
 
shootbrownelk said:
What are the regulations for transporting a deer, elk or moose carcass? Butcher in the field leaving the head with spinal column at the kill site? No transport of whole carcasses? What about non resident hunters taking their kills out of state, thereby spreading CWD if their animal is positive? Lots of unanswered questions regarding the disease.
Click to expand...

Meat has to be deboned and all brain/spinal column has to be removed prior to transport out of State.
 
The issue why cwd is so hard to stop is because the pryons are expelled from one animal and can be present in the environment for years. This means that gathering areas like feed, bedding and watering locations are where unaffected animals most commonly get the disease. This is why the older class animals have the highest prevalence. They have spent enough time around these various areas to pick it up. One of the best strategies for stopping cwd in my opinion is to disrupt the natural population from these traditional congregation areas. This could mean removing that wintering feed ground from having any feed. Or other similar actions.
 
Biologist say they want to implement the plan for about 10 years I believe.
I know 8,500 acres that will not be reducing the mature buck population, we've worked hard for years to get the bucks to more mature ages and we're not going to start culling them.
The ranch we manage literally shares a fence with the Sybille Unit where they study cwd. We have not taken a buck younger than 4 1/2 yrs old in 15 years of hunting, 3-4 bucks a year. No positive cwd tests either.
It will be a very hard sell to landowners.
 
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