The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission found a positive case of chronic wasting disease in a deer killed in Independence County.
That's a long jump over mountains and rivers from the primary and secondary CWD zones, and it reinforces my belief that eventually CWD will be confirmed to be present in every county.
Deer news is afoot all over the country. Much of it is CWD related. Some is ethics related. Some is heritage related.
For example, state Rep. Michele Hoitenga, a republican from Michigan, has sponsored House Bill 4687 in her state's legislature to repeal a ban on baiting and feeding deer and also to end mandatory antler point restrictions. The bill passed the Michigan house and senate overwhelmingly. It returned to the house for some tweaking, where it passed with four additional votes (61-44). Ted Nugent, a musician, hunter-rights advocate and Michigan native and resident, campaigned with Hoitenga to advocate the bill.
Michigan experienced a decline of 20,000 deer hunters in 2019 compared to 2018, a 7% decrease. Hunters are active partners in managing deer populations. Losing 20,000 partners dramatically compromises the state's ability to manage deer populations.
It also triggers a significant economic impact. In 2018, the Michigan Wildlife Council estimated that state's hunters generate about $2.3 billion in economic impact, which supports about 34,000 jobs. In 2019, small businesses that rely on deer hunting have reported sharp declines in sales.
In terms of overall numbers of deer killed annually, Michigan ranked No. 3 in a 2014-18 average with 345,000. Texas ranked No. 1 with 737,000 deer killed annually. Arkansas ranked No. 10 with 205,000.
Wisconsin, which set the national record for deer killed in 2000 with 618,274, ranked No. 5 with 307,000. That's a 50% decrease in 18 years, and it is the lowest on record since 1980. In 2019, hunters in Wisconsin killed 219,000 deer, which is close to the number killed in Arkansas for the last five or six years.
You can interpret that as a negative or a positive. As a negative, a 50% deer-kill reduction might suggest a precipitous reduction in deer hunting participation. As a standalone fact, that is accurate. According to Wisconsin Public Radio, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources sold 50,414 fewer hunting licenses from 1999-2017.
As a positive, a 50% deer-kill reduction might suggest that deer numbers were too high to produce such large kills, and that deer numbers are more aligned with the habitat's biological carrying capacity. That assumption is inaccurate. At the beginning of the 2019 hunting seasons, Wisconsin's deer herd was estimated at nearly 2 million animals, its largest ever.
That is noteworthy because Wisconsin was and is ground-zero for the chronic wasting disease scare. Wisconsin's knee-jerk reaction was to wipe out the deer herd in CWD management zones and start from zero. It didn't work and hunters revolted.
In 2011, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources hired James Kroll as its "Deer Czar." He brought in Gary Ault and David Guynn to form a board of "deer trustees." Ault was briefly the deer biologist for the Pennsylvania Department of Natural Resources. Guynn is on the board of directors for the Quality Deer Management Association.
One of their recommendations was for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to de-emphasize its obsession with CWD but to be aggressive in eliminating it in new places where it appears. Wisconsin's wildlife biologists do not talk about CWD publicly anymore and they won't comment on it for the record.
It should be noted that Kroll is greatly admired by some highly influential people in this state. Around 2011, he addressed the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission about the future of its deer management program as well.
Since 2000, chronic wasting disease has become its own sector of the wildlife management industry. Thanks to abundant grant money, it is a new, relatively unrestrained avenue for wildlife biologists to advance and attain prominence in a field that once promised anonymity. Their influence has grown as concerns rise about human health risks associated with CWD.
One thing that hasn't happened since 2000 is that doom prophecies for CWD have not come to pass.
We recommend considering "what is" and proceeding soberly, deliberatively and logically as CWD inexorably dots the Arkansas map.
Sports on 12/08/2019