For those of you familiar with this and all of the goings on, what are your thoughts? Extended seasons, unlimited $2.50 tags, kill em all mentality. Still to date only one deer. the one from last year has tested positive. Despite the facts I’m told from good sources this will continue for 3 more years.
As a landowner in WI that has been going through this for a number of years already, I hope you have a better documented path-way to the end goal and recovery. The herd in the vicinity of my farm has been decimated, and it simply sucks. I quit bow hunting, and we struggle to have the ambition to gun hunt.
Here is a copy of my last correspondence with the WI DNR
Hello,
Frequently I read all the CWD publications on the DNR website. Could you please direct me to anything that explains what the trigger point will be to end the eradication efforts (specifically for Richland County). As many years as we are now into this, I still see no documented end in sight. I’m trying hard to be understanding to the DNR’s efforts here. But as a landowner, I face two daughters every year that have yet to take a deer. With the incredibly low population in the vicinity of my farm (Near Yuba), both of my daughters are refusing to deer hunt anymore. I would like very much to be able to show them (from the WI DNR) that there is a documented process with an actual end goal, and a strategy to grow the herd back to a reasonable size.
Any help you can give me in retaining my daughters in a tradition of hunting would be great! Thank You
Sincerely,
Randy Wieland
Response:
Hi Randy, thanks for your inquiry about hunting. Richland County is within the Chronic Wasting Disease – Management Zone (CWD-MZ). We are not attempting to eradicate deer but reduce the population to slow the spread of CWD. We need to keep the disease in as small an area as possible so that future tools will be successful. Unfortunately, it is a long battle with no definitive end date using only the current tools available. More deer on the landscape equals more disease and more spread though deer to deer contact. Our hope is that hunters will have short term hardship for long term gain. Deer are herding up on the landscape much more than years past and while an area of Yuba may have few deer one year, one or two sections away may be a pocket of many. We appreciate your efforts as a landowner and wish you and your daughters and safe and happy hunting season. Please let me know if I can provide further assistance. Tim Marien DNR Wildlife Biologist
Quote:
For those of you familiar with this and all of the goings on, what are your thoughts? Extended seasons, unlimited $2.50 tags, kill em all mentality. Still to date only one deer. the one from last year has tested positive. Despite the facts I’m told from good sources this will continue for 3 more years.
We have some great land in the heart of this mess and all I can say is that this season really really stunk 
We don’t shoot any small bucks at all and after hearing what some shot in the late CWD season in that area ( shed bucks that are 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 bucks ) we didn’t see anything that was over 2 1/2 this season It just sucks and with the season open from Nov 5 to Nov 27 nothing good will come out of this and like you said it’s a 3 year plan
It makes me sick. I have 16 acres and with my neighbors land another 50 with me right in the middle and they do not hunt but allow me. I have a 1 1/2 acre food plot right in the center and really have enjoyed trying to manage the deer around my land for the last 7 years by letting the bucks mature before harvestig and taking enough does to try and keep it in check. now the DNR has taken that all away with the kill that is going on now for no reason. the deer they claim that had cwd i would bet my land on came from a game farm located 1 mile as the crow flies to the south of me. they had a tree fall on there fence from a storm in the summer of 2010 and 16 deer got out with them retieving 10 of the 16 i was told. that deer was way to old that tested positive for cwd to be in the wild. and with the winter we had last year any ill deer would never made it through. and i still have not seen any double fence around any of the game farms in the 602 zone. I have got 100 acres looked up in WIS. for next year. I will not give the MN.DNR. another dime to hunt in MN, for some years to come. am i pissed off yes. we have a whole bunch of over educated idiots running this program not all of them put together spend as much time in the woods as the average land owner/deerhunter. I could go on forever but it just raises the blood PSI to much.
I have heard it will go on for 3 years also, and I can say that from what I have seen so far, we are on track to see a LOT less deer. The shooting rampages are happening and it makes you wonder how many of the deer hunters really are sportsman? My gut feeling tells me that 1 out of every 2 deer being shot is being registered. The travelers do not want to wait the necessary days required to move their meat, and I heard of a group that drove by PI and there was a line so they kept on driving.
I only think to myself
“How many years would this disease have to run its course before it takes out as many deer as the DNR has authorized for this study? 50yrs, 100yrs?”
“How valuable is testing the extra 10,000 deer vs the number of deer under previous regulations?”
My thoughts on this just tick me right off. For the record I hunt in and out of the CWD zone. Where I hunt in the CWD zone it won’t be affected very much so I am fortunate. I feels there has to be a different motive to the madness. If the DNR was truely concerned about the deer population why would it mandate a complete decimation of the population despite a complete lack of any findings to back up their motive?
As mentioned above, I also felt it was a farm deer escaped that was shot and tested positive giving the green light for the DNR to smash all the deer in the zone for some reason. What could the reason be? Homeowner complaints, insurance company complaints for car hits, or a plain over abundance of deer in an area?
So what if one had CWD, so what if they did find a few more with random testing at registration stations. Whats the point in making it a free for all to kill them all? I can’t wrap my head around this issue what so ever, not even so much from the hunters standpoint but from a wildlife lovers point of view.
And for all of the guys in the zone taking advantage of the new regulations I sure hope you aren’t the first guys complaining when over the next few years you aren’t seeing crap. Its going to be an awful place to hunt for quite some time and when all is said and done the DNR will not have accomplished anything.
I agree with Eric R. on this issue? Like Eric, and hopefully many others of you in the 602 area, practice your own QDM: wave: I’ve chose to harvest 1, one buck deer. I thought a very decent 8, about 230#’s, 189# caped out on the hook/scale at my favorite processor. In addition,I have over the years,(including this year)harvested one or two does, as there ‘seems’ to be a plethora of them in the ‘neighborhood! 
That’s it. I refuse to get into this ‘kill all’ mentality, based on the findings fueling this debacleby the DNR’s knee jerk reaction.
In speaking with a few of those (great gals) sampling deer at the check station for nodes, it was mentioned that if NO other deer are found to test positive, the kill zone radius may be pulled back to say 10 miles rather than the near 20 it is this year, BUT, (isn’t there always a but?
or is that but with 2 T’s), anyway, she also said it is to run 3 years and that probably wouldn’t change.
Again, as Eric pointed out, this isn’t affecting my QDM deer hunting, but it is going to adversely affect a LOT of others in this area for years to come.
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