It’s another brisk morning in the
state of Wisconsin. After arriving at my
tree stand, loading my gun, and quietly removing the oak leaves from the
platform I stand on, I sit down to rest my back momentarily before the sun will
rise. The morning is calm, dead quiet
and promising. Opening day of deer
season has finally arrived and with as little disturbance as our eighty acres
has seen this year, expectations of deer by the dozens to come barreling over
the hill pollute my imagination. When
thinking back on my first year in 1996 or the following seven years for that
matter, the memories of deer stampeding by me in numbers no lower than three at
a time seemed almost unrealistic. That
very rock off to the west was the landmark of the first buck fight I had ever
seen. Not just one buck, but five of
them all chasing one poor singled out doe while fighting amongst themselves. The excitement of the instance burned deep
into my memory and will last with me for as long as I live. A memory I can only hope my own son or
daughter can share in years to come. Due
to an unfortunate chain of events, I’m afraid the chances of that happening
will be few and far in between. In 2002
something happened that slowly but effectively reduced experiences like this to
be had in the north woods. The
introduction of Chronic Wasting Disease.
Chronic Wasting Disease is a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy
found primarily in the deer family. Similar to Mad Cow Disease, it is infectious
and spread through saliva. It was first recognized in the mule deer of Colorado
in 1967 and has been well documented and researched ever since. In 2002 the first case was diagnosed in
central Wisconsin near Mt. Horeb. Since
then, the DNR has exhausted resources and put in place numerous changes in the
hunting regulations allowing hunters to harvest as many deer as possible in the
attempt to wipe out a disease they know not how to control. In the fiscal year of 2005-06 Wisconsin spent
32.3 million dollars on CWD alone. Depending on how close you where to ground
zero you could be subject to what they call the Eradication Zone or the Herd Reduction
Zone. Even without any proven cases
within fifty miles for twelve years strait, my land fell on the outermost edge
of the Herd Reduction Zone and took a huge hit in herd numbers. Obviously the DNR had to step in and do
something right? But, did they need to
take such drastic measures to “bail out” mother nature? I firmly believe that CWD has been around for
over forty years and the DNR did not need to make such a statewide emergency
out of this issue. In fact, I believe
their drastic interventions have actually dug themselves, the disease, and the
sport of hunting whitetail deer into a deep unnecessary hole!
My land as I
told you, lies right on the outskirts of what they now call the CWD Unit. The county that may hold the most controversy
is Juneau County. It is understandable
that you must draw a line somewhere. Zone 54B is a special situation being split in
half. The Southern half is in the
Eradication Zone and the Northern half is in the Herd Reduction Zone. The line designated to split these two Zones
is Hwy 12. It’s a very hard concept for
anyone to stand on the road and be told by the DNR that the deer on the right
side of the road will have a higher chance of being infected then the deer on
theft side of the road, therefore the deer herd on the southern half of Hwy 12
must be more heavily eradicated then the deer on the northern side! I think anyone who has ever ridden in a car
will be able to tell you that deer are more than capable of crossing the road. When an organization makes rules based on
convenience how can they expect anyone to trust or honor their rules. The DNR has been actively testing deer in
Juneau County since the initial outbreak in 2002 and has just now found its
first positive testing for the county.
Of course this will make the headlines as breaking news and it was
difficult to research this issue without continually coming across this article. On the DNR website you can read the
headlines, First CWD-positive wild deer detected in Juneau and Portage
Counties! The article will tell you that
these two separate deer were harvested by gun hunters and brought to the DNR
for testing and both came back positive.
How do we know these deer were actually shot in the counties they were
claiming? Even if so, one deer tested
positive in an entire county over a span of twelve years does not justify the
need for mass eradication. My
grandfather along with any retired farmers from the southern half of the state
will most likely have a story about shooting a deer they thought to be
sickly. It wasn’t considered a big
deal. Most of them ate the deer anyways
or in some cases will tell you they left it for the coyotes. Zone 54B, my zone, is finally starting to
naturally wean its way out of the effects of this twelve year mass
eradication. Will the DNR now move the
entire county out of herd reduction into full swing mass eradication over one
positive testing?
In 2002 it only took three positive testing’s to put the entire southern
half of the state into mass eradication.
When the DNR reacts drastically over such small scale test results when
thousands of hunters, who are in the woods every day, aren’t seeing what the
DNR claims to be a wide spread problem, it tends to make hunters go vigilant
and “take matters into their own hands”, so to speak. By 2006, 5 years of testing, there were 651
deer that tested positive for CWD and 590 of those deer were found in Dane and
Iowa Counties. Although this may sound
like an alarming number of infected deer, the lowest number of deer harvested in
a single year for the state of Wisconsin in the last twelve years was in 2009
with a total of 329,103 deer. The DNR’s
main point of effort to try to reduce the deer population in the attempt to
fight CWD is to reduce the herd. They
also claim that the main tool in this effort is now and always has been the
hunters themselves. But the hunters
aren’t helping the DNR to reduce the herd.
In the year 2000, before the DNR’s recognition of CWD, the number of
harvested deer in Wisconsin was 618,274, a considerably average year for the
sport . In 2005, four years into the DNR;s
forced management plan, the number of deer harvested was 463,935. In 2010 the number of deer harvested was
336,871. So if the main ideology of
stopping this disease from spreading is to shoot more deer then we were before
the disease was recognized, then why has this number of deer harvested
plummeted to almost half of what it used to be?
The reason for this is that the DNR scared a
lot of hunters right out of their stands.
When the news hit about the first case of CWD being found in Wisconsin,
hunters that showed concern had many questions and vague or no answers given to
them. I remember being told that a
disease much like mad cow disease existed in deer and was now found in our
state. I initially showed concern. The mass media made it sound like infectious
zombie deer would be at my back door by the end of the month and it was up to
me to shoot as many of these deer as I can before they infect us all. When
I first started hunting, I was given one buck tag and a chance to buy what was
called a bonus tag. A bonus tag cost
twelve dollars and allowed you the chance to shoot one doe for that
season. Once CWD hit the streets, I
could barely fit all my kill tags in my back tag holder. I was given a buck tag and one free doe tag
and told I had to practice “earn a buck” meaning I had to shoot, tag, and
register a doe before I was legally able to use my buck tag. This in turn forced all hunters to shoot more
deer. Some hunters didn’t have room for
more than one deer on the back of their vehicle let alone their freezer at home.
Sociologically a lot of traditional,
older generation hunters found it to be taboo to shoot does. That’s someone’s mother or wife they were told
to kill! A lot of hunters were out there
to take on the dominant male of another species to try to prove his place on
the top of the food chain and of course bring home the ritual head piece of
that buck and claim it as a trophy.
That’s what traditional American hunting was about to a lot of
people. Now that they were legally
forced to shoot what they see as a helpless woman, a lot of them hung up their
rifles and stayed home. With the DNR’s
ideology of herd reduction with their main tool being the common hunter, how
could they not foresee this concept and think that maybe for their own benefit
it would be more beneficial to leave that choice up to the hunter. So once you shoot and tag your doe you can
now shoot your buck and have your two deer harvested for the season and your
done, right? Wrong! Not only are you awarded your buck tag to
fill but your given four additional doe tags for free! Also, once you shoot your buck, as long as
you shoot another doe you’re awarded another free buck tag as well! Given the amount of light in a single day I
calculated that within the three month regular bow season and the traditional
nine day gun season, I was able to shoot well over three hundred deer in a
single year. How is anyone supposed to
respect the DNR with those kinds of numbers! Before CWD there was an estimated 17 deer per
square mile. We have at least two active
hunters for our 80 acres. There is no
need to do the exact math because anyone can realize that the amount of tags
available well exceeds the number of deer the entire state has to offer. Most
blue and white collar hunters have been left with a bad taste in their mouth
because of this. Where I hunt the average
family income is less than sufficient to provide enough food for the family in
a year. When attending local bars you
would come across many decent yet “rough around the edges” individuals who are
not ashamed to admit poaching as many as three or four deer to fill the freezer
for the winter. In my opinion there is
nothing wrong with that. Who has the
right to tell a tax paying land owner he cannot harvest as many animals as
needed to provide for his family’s nourishment. The idea of legality may have at least
suppressed a few bullets from being fired in the past but now anyone with
twenty-four dollars has the opportunity to wipe out every deer in a thirty mile
radius. This may seem far-fetched but
where I used to see ten deer a day I now will be lucky to see ten deer in an
entire season. The numbers are down
regardless of any survey taken by any organization. Those deer that are left are being pushed
onto private land owner’s acreage where they aren’t being shot at but counted
by wildlife experts then reported that numbers are on the incline. Just because there are forty deer being hand
fed wonder bread in Goose Island doesn’t mean there are comparable numbers per
square mile in the rest of La Crosse County.
Point being, do not believe everything you are told!
Another concept that the DNR was slow to catch
on to and that discredits their survey numbers every year is the retagging of
the same doe in order to receive your buck authorization. Many hunters and their friends would drive
around with the same doe reregistering it for their friends and family so they
were able to get their buck tag. Once
the DNR caught on to this concept they instructed the registration stations to
slit the ear of the doe with a knife to identify it as already registered. But what they failed to grasp is that a lot
of these registration stations were local gas stations, liquor stores, and gun
and pawn stores owned by local disgruntled hunters themselves! If they weren’t upset about the quality of
hunting then they were definitely mad at the drop in sales over the seasons
from lack of participants. Out of state
hunters equals extra business, equals vacation money or a child’s college
tuition. At one of our registration
stations, the entire tablet of buck authorization tags was always left
unattended on the counter. All you need
to do is write your customer ID number on the coupon awarded to you by the
register. What was to stop me from
taking one and filling it out for myself?
Needless to say, there was nothing to official about this very imperfect
system. This in turn discredits every
statistic, graph, pie chart, news report, and article you read or listen to
that states the number of deer shot.
If the DNR
has one thing right in their thinking it is this. The hunters themselves are now and will
always be their number one tool in herd reduction and if they wish to know the
truth, get the truth and see positive results that better the species, and
sport then they had better start respecting hunters and land owners and involving
them in the decision making for the future of the herd and the sport
itself. I personally have never seen a
deer with the signs or symptoms of CWD.
I also have never known anyone, nor have I ever heard of anyone who has
actually witnessed a deer that had Chronic Wasting Disease. I know that it does exist. I know it has the potential to become a
problem because it has become a problem in other states. One would think that due to the fact that
this problem has been around for over forty years in multiple states, that our
Department of Natural Resources would have been better prepared for the
prevention of this disease to enter our state.
More so, one would think that they would have been better prepared to handle
the situation when the outbreak initially occurred. The Wisconsin DNR’s own statistics they use
to try to scare us about the disease and lack of knowledge in Wisconsin’s
social structure is nothing more to me then the clear cut proof that their
effort in handling and controlling this disease are now as they were in the beginning
overly drastic, ill conceived, and completely unnecessary.
