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He needs to stick to strumming his guitar. Only someone who's never seen what that stuff can do to a herd would spout such nonsense I'm not sure what the various agencies are attempting will help, but I do know that stuff can devestate a herd.
Three studies have been published recently from central Colorado and southeast Wyoming, the area where CWD was first documented in wild deer (Miller et al. 2008, DeVivo 2015, Edmunds et al. 2016). All three studies measured survival and reproduction of deer with CWD and deer without detectable CWD. Survival of CWD-positive deer was 20–40% lower than CWD-negative deer. Curiously, no difference was noted in reproductive rates as a result of CWD status. Two of the studies had good population monitoring programs that showed declines in population size of 40–50% in the past 10–20 years. Finally, authors in all 3 studies used reproductive rates and mortality rates to calculate annual changes in population size as a result of CWD. Populations with CWD declined 3–20% per year but would have been stable or increasing without CWD.
Chronic wasting disease has an ecologic, economic and social effect, with deep impact on the viability of cervid populations. An experimental study found a 60% decline in full-term viable offspring born to CWD-positive muntjac dams. Modeling studies have shown an annual population decline of 10.4% in white-tailed deer and 21% in sympatric mule deer populations in southeastern Wyoming, corroborating the population-limiting impact of CWD
There are few studies on population-level effects of CWD on cervid populations. One such study was conducted on a mule deer population near Boulder, Colorado, USA [10]. Deer abundance declined 45% during 1988–2006. It was believed CWD had been endemic since 1985 and was highly prevalent (males = 41%; females = 20%). The decline was attributed to high prevalence of CWD resulting in low overall adult survival (0.72).
I’ll be hunting the La sals in about 4 weeks, reports are the deer population is doing very well down there. I don’t doubt your experience but it has not been mine. Good luck! Beautiful area to hunt. Went down with my nephew two years ago after a few years away. Found him a buck, but area was still no where near what it used to be. Stopped at the cwd checking station on the way home and wardens said hunt had been extremely slow. Told us numbers were improving a bit, but still way down. Most of the deer they had checked had been taken on the big cwmus in the area.Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk