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<blockquote data-quote="BSK" data-source="post: 333488" data-attributes="member: 17"><p>Darkthirty II,</p><p></p><p>Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that we are producing large-scale die-offs at the present time from feeding. However, those who feed are ABSOLUTELY opening the door to massive spread of contagious disease.</p><p></p><p>I always hate broaching this subject because nothing makes hunters madder than hinting or outright stating that they don't know what their talking about. Experienced hunters generally pride themselves on their powers of keen observation, and they believe what they see above all other things. But as a professional manger of deer that has worked just about everywhere across the eastern US, I can tell you I rarely, rarely meet hunters/landowners who really have any idea what is going on with their local deer herd. They simply don't realize that health problems in deer herds are not easily observed. Heck, I work with deer for a living and I can't look at deer in a field and tell if they are healthy or not. I need to inspect internal organs and body condition to make that determination. I wish I had a dollar for every time a landowner told me his deer herd and habitat were in great shape, yet I could see the massive habitat degradation from deer over-browsing when I pulled up to his/her front gate.</p><p></p><p>In addition, I can state case after case of known major deer die-offs in various locations around the U.S. that were never reported by a single hunter. A third of the deer population died-off in a single summer and not one hunter reported finding a dead deer and not a single hunter reported lower than average deer sightings that hunting season.</p><p></p><p>All I can tell you is that in a talk that the head of the Southeast Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study group gave a few years ago, he stated that the two greatest threats to wildlife in the U.S. are: 1) the translocation of wildlife (the moving of wildlife from one area of the country to another--such as the legal and illegal trade in "breeder animals"); and 2) the artificial feeding of wildlife. Numerous infectious diseases exist that will rapidly spread at feeder sites, which has occurred repeatedly in the North. But what is even more worrisome is the potential for new, never before seen contagious diseases to develop. And this is much more of a threat than most realize. Diseases mutate incredibly rapidly. Every year the flu that goes around is a different variety of flu. It mutates annually to the point that last year's flu vaccine is not effective against this year's variety of flu. Nature abhors a vacuum. If a biological system will allow for the rapid spread of contagious disease yet no disease exists, a contagious disease will eventually develop. Maybe not this year, next year or in ten years, but a contagious disease WILL develop (see the Black Death in Medieval times). And as of the talk I heard given by the Disease Study head, he mentioned two new wildlife disease in deer that have been recently observed but could not be identified as any known disease. And not surprisingly, these new diseases were only appearing in the Southeast in states/areas that allowed baiting. As soon as you left the regions that allowed baiting, those diseases disappeared from the herds.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="BSK, post: 333488, member: 17"] Darkthirty II, Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that we are producing large-scale die-offs at the present time from feeding. However, those who feed are ABSOLUTELY opening the door to massive spread of contagious disease. I always hate broaching this subject because nothing makes hunters madder than hinting or outright stating that they don't know what their talking about. Experienced hunters generally pride themselves on their powers of keen observation, and they believe what they see above all other things. But as a professional manger of deer that has worked just about everywhere across the eastern US, I can tell you I rarely, rarely meet hunters/landowners who really have any idea what is going on with their local deer herd. They simply don't realize that health problems in deer herds are not easily observed. Heck, I work with deer for a living and I can't look at deer in a field and tell if they are healthy or not. I need to inspect internal organs and body condition to make that determination. I wish I had a dollar for every time a landowner told me his deer herd and habitat were in great shape, yet I could see the massive habitat degradation from deer over-browsing when I pulled up to his/her front gate. In addition, I can state case after case of known major deer die-offs in various locations around the U.S. that were never reported by a single hunter. A third of the deer population died-off in a single summer and not one hunter reported finding a dead deer and not a single hunter reported lower than average deer sightings that hunting season. All I can tell you is that in a talk that the head of the Southeast Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study group gave a few years ago, he stated that the two greatest threats to wildlife in the U.S. are: 1) the translocation of wildlife (the moving of wildlife from one area of the country to another--such as the legal and illegal trade in "breeder animals"); and 2) the artificial feeding of wildlife. Numerous infectious diseases exist that will rapidly spread at feeder sites, which has occurred repeatedly in the North. But what is even more worrisome is the potential for new, never before seen contagious diseases to develop. And this is much more of a threat than most realize. Diseases mutate incredibly rapidly. Every year the flu that goes around is a different variety of flu. It mutates annually to the point that last year's flu vaccine is not effective against this year's variety of flu. Nature abhors a vacuum. If a biological system will allow for the rapid spread of contagious disease yet no disease exists, a contagious disease will eventually develop. Maybe not this year, next year or in ten years, but a contagious disease WILL develop (see the Black Death in Medieval times). And as of the talk I heard given by the Disease Study head, he mentioned two new wildlife disease in deer that have been recently observed but could not be identified as any known disease. And not surprisingly, these new diseases were only appearing in the Southeast in states/areas that allowed baiting. As soon as you left the regions that allowed baiting, those diseases disappeared from the herds. [/QUOTE]
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