Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Serious Deer Talk Forum Truphy hunting causes CWD

Gotcha. Anyhow here's some evidence that bucks are more to blame for the spread. It's not whitetails nor is it from AL, but y'all can argue over it anyway.

"Our models predicted that harvesting 40% of adult males per year across 20 years would maintain prevalence below 5% on average, whereas if only 20% of males were harvested in each year, prevalence would increase to >30% by year 20."
https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/eap.3089

ETA: And another thing! I see GA and NC have a two buck limit and CWD? Is that right? I was hunting in SC recently and they told me they could kill five bucks per year and no restrictions. And no CWD?

Dang. Shoulda used better bait. Maybe some of the mountain dew corn next time.

So your saying qualman is doing it right?

I had a heard of cats that had become overpopulated. A disease came through and killed all but 2. The original mama cat and a male. I think it was cat aids or some kind of std. my point is nature finds a way.

You could also say that something is going to use large populations to its advantage. Either we do or another species or virus does.

Well Alabama will never have CWD then. Bama kills way more than 20% of our buck herd annually and has been doing it for the last 50 yrs. In fact, Alabama probably wipes out 30-40% of the 1-3 yr old male age classes each year. It's why our age structure and sex ratios both suck, pretty much uniformly across the entire state.

Myself and Clarence can only hope something like this happens.

The subject study prescribed taking 40% and seems to blame spread on having too many older bucks.

Well Alabama is definitely safe then, as the state certainly does not have too many bucks in the older age classes. I'd venture to say that a large number of properties in Alabama do not have any bucks in their age structure older than 4 yrs old and most have very very few 4 yr olds even passing through their property, let alone living on it a large percentage of the time.

If trophy hunting and older age structure are the drivers of CWD, then the Alabama DNR boys will be on speaking tours in ten years celebrating their success.

I'm about done buying into the CWD hype. After spending several years hunting areas of Colorado where it's been prevelant for over 40 years, I'm just not sold on the that it's the end all it's made out to be. The herds of deer and elk are strong and it's not really taken that serious by officials out there any more. Testing is for the most part optional in that area now.

I'm just about convinced this whole movement is more about the money involved with "fighting" it than the animals. I've become much more convinced that EHD is a bigger threat.

What is the current best estimate in Alabama for the percentage of buck herd killed annually by all causes? An estimate with some scientific and statistical street cred, not dude on the internet opinions?

Prolly shoulda wormed them...

Screw CWD. Im tired of hearing about it.

That estimate would require the state to have valid, statistically relevant, solid, proven data from verifiable sources. So in other words, the information that you are searching for, doesnt exist. I'm sure that someone at the state could provide you with their personal estimate based on a hodge podge approach to deer management. Conversation would go like this: "Well that's a good question. There were X number of bucks checked in on Game Check, and "we think, wink wink", that we probably have around 60% participation in GC (it could be 45 or it could be 75 but we dont really know or care). Since we dont really know for sure, we assume that the 40% that are not reporting, kill bucks at the exact same rate as the 60% that do report, then we take X and divide it by what we think the percentage of hunters using GC is and that's your number. No, we dont know how to estimate rut mortality, EHD and disease mortality, and have no clue about deer and human interaction fatalities outside of Game Check. That's your number. Good luck with it. Oh yeah, we dont know what the sex ratios are either so we really dont have any idea how many bucks were in the herd to start with, before they all started getting killed. And while I'm telling the truth on things, we really dont know how many deer are in the state to start with so knowing the sex ratio doesnt even help. Hope my valuable insight answered your question."

Couldn’t catch em.