TheLBLman
Well-Known Member
So, would greatly reducing the deer population (by extra hunting, extra deer killing) accelerate or slow Mother Nature's solution to CWD?Reports have been coming out about genetically resistant animals, so nature is already hard at work. Eventually the resistant genes will survive while the weak die, and the herd will be that much stronger yet.
To me, it would seem a higher deer population accelerates the solution more than it accelerates the disease?
Put this in the context that most deer with the disease die prematurely, while a growing number are developing immunity, which is presumably passed on to the subsequent generations? More deer equal more immune deer, and those immune deer are a growing percentage of the deer population with each new generation of deer?
So long as the deer herd/density is managed in an otherwise healthy biological (and socio-economic) manner, perhaps whether more or fewer deer has little impact on Mother Nature's solution? But why purposefully destroy the resource by purposefully decimating the current living deer herd?
And again, the "resource" is not just the standing deer herd, but the heritage of deer hunting. Few or no deer leads to little or no deer hunting. What kind of value do we place on the heritage of deer hunting?
You can put me in the camp believing we should be doing more to protect the living deer than killing them off more or sooner, i.e. if we have less deer due to CWD, then the prescription becomes less deer hunting, not more.