DNR sharpshooters kill 2 COWS!!

just over a week ago DNR hired sharp shooters using their night vision shot two beef cows within the high fence of the former elk farm just south of PIne Island.
the owner of the cattle has said “He lost two Beef cattle but i am not allowed to talk about it” well it happened and he was compensated by public tax payer money for his losses. now how the DNR has kept this out of the media i dont know but if we are paying sharpshooters to CULL our deer herd and now paying farmers for their loss of cattle……. we the public should no where our money is being spent especially when its spent on things like a sharp shooter killing cows!!

Accidents do happen whether we like it or not.

I do not know this answer but I will ask.

Has the DNR stated that they are culling deer or are they shooting deer that may have CWD?

There is a difference and I am sure you are aware of that.

I highly doubt that they targeted cows as you may suggest. I believe they know they are there for the herd control for CWD.

If this is true, accidents should not be happening by trained sharpshooters. It does seem that they have a problem judging size so this wouldn’t amaze me in the least to find out that they can’t tell a cow from a deer.

Good thing no Llama farm around. They’d be wiped out.

I’m sorry. There has to be more to this story…

Rule #1 Know Your Target.

That is crazy I hunt ALLOT, and shoot deer every year last year I got five. I have one spot that is in a cow pasture with beef cows, and to me I don’t know how you can mix a 200lb deer up with a 1000 pound cow. I guess it shocks me more as the fact of always know your target, and someone with sharpshooting training I think would know that. Accidents do happen but that would be like the game warden keeping a limit and a half of walleye, and saying he forgot what the limit was when he went to school to stop people from doing it.

All I can say is “WOW”

I think the real question is, if theyre mistaking cows for deer… how big are the deer up there???

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I think the real question is, if theyre mistaking cows for deer… how big are the deer up there???

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Not that big…

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I’m sorry. There has to be more to this story…

Rule #1 Know Your Target.

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. And what’s beyond. In WI they have to be bonded.

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“I do not know this answer but I will ask.

Has the DNR stated that they are culling deer or are they shooting deer that may have CWD?

There is a difference and I am sure you are aware of that.”

Yes i am aware of that Cornicelli finnally came out and said it in this weeks Outdoor News that there goals are to test for CWD and are trying to reduce the herd in the CWD Zone in my opinion they are there too reduce a deer herd if they were there to test the herd they wouldnt shoot fawns. cornicelli claims you cant tell the difference between yearlings and adults thats bull crap ask any one who has participated in the CWD hunt you can tell the difference…. i was on the band wagon and shot deer myself and you can tell the difference! the DNR are going to far with this

my 2 cents

test all road kills

make it manditory to test all kills during the 2011 fall hunting season no and or buts about it then they can get there tests without destroying any more of the resource we have all worked hard to get in SE MN.

also if they realy want to shoot fawns and we cant stop them least they can do is quit spending our tax money to test them…. its a fact that the disease cannot be found in a yearling deer.

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I’m sorry. There has to be more to this story…

Rule #1 Know Your Target.

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…and what is BEYOND!!!

Mark

Well with the weather warming and the deer dispersing the sharpshooter hunt is about over. Maybe they needed a couple cows for the big bbq party to celebrate their success.

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“also if they realy want to shoot fawns and we cant stop them least they can do is quit spending our tax money to test them…. its a fact that the disease cannot be found in a yearling deer.”

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I do not want to be disrespectful, but yearling and fawns cannot get CWD??? I do not believe that…

Mark

they can get it Mbenson but the disease cannot be traced in their blood work untill they are at least a year old. so testing them is pointless and a waste of money.

Yearling deer are a lost cause in this testing any shot are no good for testing, and don’t count in the total number they are trying to get. What worries me if they mess up this many times I sure hope they are shooting in safe directions.

From what I have read Mark, WI has tested thousands of fawns with only one positive. Not that they can’t get it. Just not as prevalent as in adults.

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I’m sorry. There has to be more to this story…

Rule #1 Know Your Target.

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Brian, there are plenty of loose spots in the carpet of this story and plenty of places where it can be lifted to sweep stuff like this underneath and out of the public’s eye. I don’t doubt that this could have happened since these “trained professional” snipers cannot tell the difference between a fully adult deer and a fawn or smaller yearling….both of which do not have a chance in the world of carrying the disease as confirmed by the dnr. The DNR says the deer have to be 2 1/2 years of age to contract the disease. So why shoot the small deer? And why aren’t they FORCED to include the un-born fawns in their overall count?

The word I am hearing from a whole lot of people is that they should have made a rule that any deer taken within this “hotspot” be required to be tested during the up-coming season. Deer taken then are not carrying fawns, they are dead anyway and are part of a regulated harvest.

Your comment on there being “more to the story” I think starts a long time ago and has nothing at all to do with CWD. And I also feel that those responsible for this travisity, starting with Cornicelli, should be made to pay to replace these animals from their own pockets [as in put liens and garnishments on any and all proerty, wages or salaries] after they’ve been fired. This over-load of ineptitude should be chased to the very end in prosecution.

As far as the public paying for things they shouldn’t have to…..that elk range was likked off with tax payer monies and the owner of those elk was paid by your tax dollars and mine to cover his supposed loss. Why not just make insurance a part of the requirement for any licensing so they can pay to cover their own losses.

Personally I think a mid-night blanket party should be next on the list and invite some of the upper echilon of the dnr to attent and explain things to the common public.

CWD Testing There is mention in this article of positive yearling deer…

CWD Testing On a Deer Farm From this scientific journal comes a lot of jargon that most of us laypeople will not understand, therefore, I only took an excerpt from it.

Sixty animals (79%) were positive by IHC staining of at least one tissue. Of the PrPCWD-positive animals, 58 of 60 (96.7%) had PrPCWD in RLN, 49 of 56 (87.5%) had detectable PrPCWD staining in the obex, and 48 of 58 (82.7%) had detectable PrPCWD in RAMALT (Table 1); 48 (85.7%) had deposits of PrPCWD in the obex and lymphoid tissues, 7 (12.5%) had deposits only in lymphoid tissue, and 1 (1.8%) had deposits only in brainstem. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first report of a white-tailed deer with PrPCWD deposits limited to the brainstem, although the pattern is relatively high (14%) in Rocky Mountain elk.19 Interestingly, this animal was a fawn of wt/wt genotype, and the PrPCWD staining was minimal, with very small amounts of stain around 2 neurons. Thirty-two of the 37 adult animals (86.5%), 12 of 16 yearlings (75.0%), and 15 of 22 fawns aged 6 to 9 months (68.2%) were positive. There did not appear to be a difference in the distribution of CWD antigen in tissues among the various age groups. Infection rates between males (23/29, 79.3%) and females (37/47, 78.7%) were not significantly different. Highest rates of PrPCWD were found in the RLN and tonsil tissues (Table 1), a finding that is consistent with earlier reports in mule deer,5,22–24 white-tailed deer,11 and Rocky Mountain elk.19 Prion protein was detected in the retina in only 4 animals, all with marked prion accumulation in the obex, as indicated by an obex score of 4. Prion protein was primarily located in the inner and outer plexiform layers of the retina; all other regions within the eye were free of prion.

Now as best I can tell from this last paragraph is there is a chance that yearling and fawns have a chance of getting it as they were testing for a prions in the early stages of the disease…

Remember I am a layman with just enough biological knowledge to make me dangerous…

So my two cents, right or wrong, just saying…

Mark

I would agree that we in no way have all the facts or maybe even part of them. We can assume all we want but that is nothing short of gossip.

We also do not know exaclty why or how the cows were shot.

I also agree that fawns can get CWD.

One thing we can all agree on is that CWD is bad right along with shooting and testing them or letting it go and possibly wipe out a whole herd.

Either avenue we take, deer will die and lots of them.

Maybe we should put more interest in these game farms where most of the CWD seems to stem from.

I only hope fopr the best and who knows what that avenue is?

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All I can say is “WOW”

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My first thought was “Holey Cow”.

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Accidents do happen whether we like it or not.

I do not know this answer but I will ask.

Has the DNR stated that they are culling deer or are they shooting deer that may have CWD?

There is a difference and I am sure you are aware of that.

I highly doubt that they targeted cows as you may suggest. I believe they know they are there for the herd control for CWD.

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Accidents do happen when hunting season is going on and untrained people are out shooting. I’m not buying into “accidents happen” when you are PAYING sharp shooters to do this!! I don’t hear of many cows being shot during hunting season. Now are tax dollars are going to folks who are supposed to be professionals and on top we have to pay off people who had livestock shot?

Ridiculous!

so if i had a mound of hay with a couple needles in it representing the one or two fawns that you might be able to find a trace of disease in and i had a pin cusion with 900 needles in it representing the 900 adult deer that we no for a fact can carry the disease where would you spend your money (or in our case MN tax payers money ) to test for the disease??

you dont seem dangerous too me at all…….

Not buying the accident thing either, if you can’t tell the difference between a cow and a deer you shouldn’t be there…I doubt these guys were “experts”.

And some wonder why many of us doubt the DNR has a clue as to what it’s doing…

Al

Is there any proof of exactly what went down?

Just looking for the real story.

I agree if they shot them knowing they were cows that it would be a very bad deal.

I just question that went down.

Drew ,not sure where this rumour mill started.But what everyone is missing here is why are their cattle inside the pen? The pen is suppossed to be quaranteened from anything getting in or out. And if the USDA sharpshooters were in there, why ? And why would taxpayers reimburse any cattle that were killed. I think this whole story is spun out of control. Some of the events may have happened but i think the chain of events are just to odd to believe. Just my opinion though.Didnt mean to upset anyone here.

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so if i had a mound of hay with a couple needles in it representing the one or two fawns that you might be able to find a trace of disease in and i had a pin cusion with 900 needles in it representing the 900 adult deer that we no for a fact can carry the disease where would you spend your money (or in our case MN tax payers money ) to test for the disease??

you dont seem dangerous too me at all…….

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Drew:

I don’t know… I know that I am not emotionally tied to this therefore making it harder for me to jump on/off the fence regarding… I had not seen your earlier posts regarding the professionals and learned a lot more about others thoughts on it. I have some more thoughts on it, but have an appointment with a crappie or two and therefore am going to leave it with this thought…

Sharpshooters should not be mistaking cows for deer of any size!!! More later!!!

Mark

the area is quaurentine so that deer dont get in cattle cannot contract the disease for anyone that is from the area and drives on highway 52 south of Pine Island they would have seen a large herd of beef cattle in the high fence for the most part of the winter. two weeks ago they moved that herd from the highway fence to one of the fences away from the highway (still part of the old elk farm) now is when questions rise of where and how the cattle were killed because the owner of these cows (i will not say his name for now) claims he can not talk about it. He will not even tell his own son but talking with his son he beleives either two cows were left in the original fence and sharp shooters spotted them with night vision in the pines and shot them……. or they spotted cattle in one of the new areas that they were moved too didnt expect too see anything there assumed they were deer and shot them…. the weird thing is that the DNR checks the high fence almost daily for deer so how they would mistake one of the cows for a deer??

who knows your guess is as much as mine……

Who shot the cows? Was it the sharphooters? Or did someone else shoot them (maybe not associated with the dnr like a hunter who is upset about this process) and they just happen to do it in the area where they are sampling deer?

Don’t get me wrong if they did shoot it they should be held accountable. But I am not jumping the gun on vague information

im not jumping the gun either i new about this right after it happened over a week ago, i waited to get as many of the facts as i could before i went public with it all the locals have been talking about it for a week now and nobody knows the exact facts but i would think if it were not the sharp shooters then it would have hit the news immediately but it didnt and we have a owner of two dead cows that will publicly say he is not allowed to talk about it not even with his own son. so the facts are

2 dead cows
located on the old elk farm property
1 farmer (owner of dead cattle) not allowed to talk about it

the rest is pretty much fill in the blank and there are a million rumors of what happened but i have herd nothing about anyone but the DNR sharpshooters being responsible for the shooting of 2 cows.

I would assume something will hit the media about this and wether we here the true story or not we will here something……