Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 937: What Happens If We Let CWD Rip?

Transcript

Ep. 937: What Happens If We Let CWD Rip? · The MeatEater Podcast

0:08
Speaker 1: This is the meat-eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten,
0:14
Speaker 1: and in my case, underwear-less.
0:15
Speaker 2: We hunt the meat-eater podcast. You can't predict anything.
0:20
Speaker 1: Brought to you by First Light. When I'm hunting, I
0:23
Speaker 1: need gear that won't quit. First Light builds no-compromise gear
0:28
Speaker 1: that keeps me in the field longer. No shortcuts, just
0:31
Speaker 1: gear that works. Check it out at firstlight.com. That's F-I-R-S-T.com.
0:38
Speaker 1: L-I-T-E dot com.
0:43
Speaker 2: All right, man.
0:43
Speaker 1: Joined today by Jason Sumners, who's the director of Missouri's
0:47
Speaker 1: State Fish and Game Agency, which is called the Missouri
0:49
Speaker 1: Department of Conservation. He's a deer biologist by training, worked
0:53
Speaker 1: his way up from being a guy, a biologist out
0:56
Speaker 1: in the field to running the whole show there. Also
1:00
Speaker 1: sits on the board of National Deer Association. What we're
1:04
Speaker 1: going to talk about primarily, we're going to talk about
1:06
Speaker 1: Whitetail deer and deer management, mostly going to focus on
1:09
Speaker 1: what I think, what in my mind is the number
1:15
Speaker 1: one issue impacting deer and deer hunting and deer hunters today,
1:23
Speaker 1: which is chronic wasting disease. And when I say that
1:26
Speaker 1: it's the number one issue, is even for you listeners,
1:32
Speaker 1: and I know there are many, even for you listeners
1:34
Speaker 1: that feel that It's overblown.
1:36
Speaker 2: It's all hysteria.
1:38
Speaker 1: It's like it impacts all conversations about deer. It impacts
1:43
Speaker 1: decisions about deer management. It impacts how money is spent
1:46
Speaker 1: on deer management. For people out there that are worried
1:49
Speaker 1: about the future of deer herds, you know what I'm
1:52
Speaker 1: talking about. For people that are worried about the potential
1:55
Speaker 1: for human transmission, that a disease would jump from deer
2:02
Speaker 1: to humans, you know what I'm talking about. Even people
2:05
Speaker 1: that the whole subject of CWD drives them nuts, they
2:09
Speaker 1: spend time and energy explaining why the conversation drives them nuts.
2:13
Speaker 1: There is no other issue that comes close to chronic
2:19
Speaker 1: wasting disease when it comes to impacts, again, to deer,
2:24
Speaker 1: deer hunting, deer management. It is the issue of the moment,
2:28
Speaker 1: and at this point, the moment is decades long.
2:32
Speaker 2: Agree or disagree? No, no, I completely agree, Steve.
2:36
Speaker 3: It's one of those that I've, you know, we found
2:38
Speaker 3: chronic wasting disease in Missouri in, in 2010. And I,
2:44
Speaker 3: I often tell folks that there's pre CWD state fish
2:48
Speaker 3: wildlife agency and there's post CWD state fish wildlife agency
2:52
Speaker 3: just because of, yeah, the very things that you mentioned,
2:55
Speaker 3: it is a challenging topic and, and it's one that
2:58
Speaker 3: we just have to deal with.
3:00
Speaker 1: It's challenging and it, And it is, we'll touch on this.
3:07
Speaker 1: It is from my view, this is me talking, right?
3:11
Speaker 1: I don't want to conflate my viewpoint and your viewpoint,
3:13
Speaker 1: but it is also contentious. And it's contentious different than
3:21
Speaker 1: kind of the playful arguments that we have around here,
3:23
Speaker 1: where you could have, like, I'll debate bodies of mind
3:28
Speaker 1: about whether you should be shooting crossbows at deer during
3:32
Speaker 1: archery season or not.
3:33
Speaker 2: These are like the old debate.
3:36
Speaker 1: Is the guy that shoots forkies, is he a bad
3:40
Speaker 1: player because he's not letting deer grow up? Are the
3:43
Speaker 1: big buck blowhards ruining deer hunting for everybody else because
3:47
Speaker 1: they're chasing numbers and not quality of experience? All these
3:50
Speaker 1: little pet fights. There's all these little pet fights about deer.
3:54
Speaker 1: But this one is like, This one takes on an existential,
4:02
Speaker 1: it has an existential tone to it because we're talking about,
4:05
Speaker 1: in some ways, we're talking about what will the future
4:09
Speaker 1: of deer hunting look like beyond any kind of regulatory question.
4:14
Speaker 1: Like it's gotten to, will there be deer around, right?
4:19
Speaker 1: And these are some of the things I want to
4:21
Speaker 1: explore with you. And we've had, if you listen to
4:23
Speaker 1: this show, you might have noticed over the years that
4:28
Speaker 1: this show, there's some things we talk a bunch about.
4:30
Speaker 1: I was just talking with Jason before the show began.
4:34
Speaker 1: We talk a bunch about ice age hunters, which is
4:39
Speaker 1: not existential. That's just interesting.
4:42
Speaker 2: And we have talked over the years, a lot about
4:45
Speaker 2: CWD and a listener might be like, well, what more
4:49
Speaker 2: is there to say?
4:50
Speaker 1: But I feel that, that, I feel strongly enough about
4:57
Speaker 1: educating people on this subject.
4:59
Speaker 2: And by that, I don't mean telling you what to think.
5:02
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel strongly enough about exposing listeners to
5:06
Speaker 1: the different viewpoints and the research on CWD that if
5:12
Speaker 1: someone came and told me that we took a major
5:15
Speaker 1: ratings hit every time we talked about CWD, I would
5:19
Speaker 1: talk about CWD more. Because I'd be like, okay, if
5:23
Speaker 1: less people listen to the CWD episodes, I'm going to
5:25
Speaker 1: do more of them to make sure that more people
5:28
Speaker 1: get exposed to this information. And I am not trying
5:31
Speaker 1: to sit here on the CWD debate. I am not
5:35
Speaker 1: trying to sit here as a host and be like,
5:39
Speaker 1: here's what you ought to think.
5:40
Speaker 2: Here's what you ought to think.
5:41
Speaker 1: I try to bring in people that have a rational,
5:46
Speaker 1: educated perspective about what's happening and what we need to
5:50
Speaker 1: do about it. And And you are regarded among the
5:57
Speaker 1: wildlife biology community as a person that ought to be
6:01
Speaker 1: listened to and that you have an educated perspective.
6:05
Speaker 2: And so I want to hear what you think.
6:07
Speaker 1: I'm not here to tell you what I think about CWD.
6:12
Speaker 1: But to start that conversation, why don't we back up
6:14
Speaker 1: to where you were at When, was it, you said 2010?
6:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, 2010. Okay.
6:25
Speaker 1: What were you doing? Where were you at? What was
6:29
Speaker 1: your career looking like? And how did you first conceptualize
6:33
Speaker 1: this thing? You had to have some pre-awareness. But tell me, like,
6:38
Speaker 1: what you thought then about CWD.
6:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think you're absolutely right in terms of
6:45
Speaker 3: this interconnecting so many, like, challenging topics.
6:49
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
6:49
Speaker 3: And for us, it hit directly at one of those.
6:51
Speaker 3: So I grew up in Missouri, a country kid, loved
6:56
Speaker 3: nothing more than hunting and fishing. We had coonhounds growing up, right?
6:59
Speaker 3: So I grew up chasing coonhounds and all that kind
7:02
Speaker 3: of stuff and wanted a job in conservation. And I
7:06
Speaker 3: went south, got a master's degree at Mississippi State working
7:09
Speaker 3: on deer biology. And so I was in Mississippi in
7:11
Speaker 3: 2001 when CWD was found in Wisconsin.
7:14
Speaker 2: Oh, okay.
7:16
Speaker 3: So in graduate school, right at that turn of like, okay,
7:19
Speaker 3: this is kind of big. Something's going to happen. Don't
7:23
Speaker 3: know what, right?
7:24
Speaker 2: God, it hasn't been a quarter century. Isn't it hard
7:26
Speaker 2: to believe? Yeah. It's been a quarter century since people
7:30
Speaker 2: started talking about CWD in Wisconsin. Yeah. Yeah.
7:33
Speaker 3: It's hard to believe that's been that long, but yeah.
7:35
Speaker 3: So that's where I was, um, wanting nothing more than
7:38
Speaker 3: be a deer biologist, um, and work on deer and
7:41
Speaker 3: deer management. Um, and so at that time, CWD was
7:44
Speaker 3: sort of just kind of a, curiosity thing in many
7:47
Speaker 3: ways hey this is something here it certainly created some
7:50
Speaker 3: fears no doubt but one that i was just kind
7:53
Speaker 3: of peripheral to got a chance to go to texas
7:56
Speaker 3: was a texan m for a while working on private
7:58
Speaker 3: deer ranches doing research in south texas went in 2000
8:02
Speaker 3: late 2008 got the chance to come back to missouri
8:04
Speaker 3: you know where i grew up and be a deer
8:06
Speaker 3: biologist right like man this is awesome nothing more than
8:09
Speaker 3: wanting to be a deer biologist than the opportunity to
8:11
Speaker 3: do it in your home state you know.
8:13
Speaker 1: When i got do you mind real quick saying like
8:16
Speaker 1: Pre-CWD or just when you say a deer biologist, tell
8:21
Speaker 1: people what all that means.
8:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, so for the state, you're responsible for establishing or
8:26
Speaker 3: recommending all the rules and regulations that manage the deer
8:29
Speaker 3: population in the state, right? And so in Missouri, we
8:32
Speaker 3: have a very small statewide deer management team at the time,
8:36
Speaker 3: and we just had one statewide deer biologist. I came
8:38
Speaker 3: to Missouri to stand up a private lands deer program.
8:41
Speaker 3: How are we going to work with private landowners to
8:43
Speaker 3: implement good management practices on the ground, right? Try to
8:47
Speaker 3: meet their management objectives while also addressing concerns of agricultural
8:51
Speaker 3: producers and all those kinds of things that we can
8:54
Speaker 3: set these statewide season frameworks that kind of push a
8:57
Speaker 3: population one direction or the other in a big way.
9:02
Speaker 3: But to really dial it in on a small scale,
9:04
Speaker 3: you got to work with private landowners. So that's where,
9:07
Speaker 3: that's where my frame of mind was. And especially across
9:09
Speaker 3: a lot of these initial assignments. Yeah.
9:11
Speaker 2: Yeah. That's what we're going to do.
9:12
Speaker 3: But I got to Missouri and, and so CWD, you know,
9:15
Speaker 3: had just been found in, you know, West Virginia in
9:18
Speaker 3: like 2005. And so for the first time kind of
9:21
Speaker 3: outside of Wisconsin in the Eastern U S and so
9:23
Speaker 3: folks are starting to pay attention. I got to Missouri
9:26
Speaker 3: and I was like, so what's our CWD plan? Should we,
9:28
Speaker 3: should we get it? And effectively it just said that,
9:32
Speaker 3: We'd play nice with the Department of Agriculture should it
9:35
Speaker 3: be found in a captive facility. And they'll play nice
9:38
Speaker 3: with us should it be found in a free-ranging population.
9:40
Speaker 3: But it really didn't detail what we would do.
9:42
Speaker 1: I don't understand when you say that, play nice.
9:45
Speaker 2: What do you mean?
9:46
Speaker 3: In terms of dual regulatory responsibility that kind of exists
9:50
Speaker 3: between the Departments of Agriculture and the State Fish and Wildlife.
9:53
Speaker 2: Agency in a lot of states. Got it.
9:55
Speaker 3: So deer and elk and a lot of captive cervids
9:58
Speaker 3: kind of sometimes fall into this space. where the state
10:02
Speaker 3: agriculture department may have some responsibility and the state fish
10:04
Speaker 3: and wildlife agency may have a responsibility.
10:06
Speaker 2: I see. So what you're getting at. Depending on which
10:08
Speaker 2: side of fence they're on. Yeah.
10:10
Speaker 3: Right. And so how are we going to just make
10:12
Speaker 3: sure that that relationship was good and.
10:14
Speaker 2: That we worked together. I see.
10:15
Speaker 3: And got to the same space.
10:16
Speaker 2: I mean, if you knew if it first popped in
10:19
Speaker 2: a captive cervid facility. Right.
10:22
Speaker 1: There'd be communication with the wildlife people and vice versa.
10:24
Speaker 2: Yep. And that's about all it said. Okay.
10:26
Speaker 3: Um, cause they hadn't really, they'd been doing sampling. So
10:29
Speaker 3: in Missouri in 2002 to 2004 did really extensive CWD sampling,
10:35
Speaker 3: sampled 22,000 deer across the state. And the idea was
10:38
Speaker 3: that we would try to sample enough deer that if
10:41
Speaker 3: the disease was present, um, we would detect it at
10:45
Speaker 3: some reasonable level.
10:46
Speaker 2: Okay.
10:46
Speaker 3: Turns out in that three year period, um, There was
10:49
Speaker 3: like a 98% probability that had the CWD been present
10:54
Speaker 3: in a county, it had to have been present at
10:56
Speaker 3: like less than 1%.
10:57
Speaker 2: So that gave us a baseline, right?
10:59
Speaker 3: In the early 2000s, it says we've done a ton
11:02
Speaker 3: of sampling. If it's here, we should have detected it
11:07
Speaker 3: unless it's a relatively recent introduction.
11:10
Speaker 1: Okay, that's interesting, and I want to just stop on
11:16
Speaker 1: that for a minute because this is.
11:18
Speaker 2: A question I've always had.
11:21
Speaker 1: It you remember like covid testing yep remember someone saying
11:25
Speaker 1: like a great way to find covid is to do
11:30
Speaker 1: a lot of testing right like right like meaning sort
11:34
Speaker 1: of the perception was after a while it's just there
11:37
Speaker 1: yep right covid was there and if you test a bunch.
11:39
Speaker 2: You're like oh it's all over and it would.
11:42
Speaker 1: Just generally be like testing reveals that it's there And
11:46
Speaker 1: I've always wondered on that percentage you just said, as
11:48
Speaker 1: I always felt that as CWD started to hit and
11:52
Speaker 1: seemed to spread, was it that any time a state said, well,
11:58
Speaker 1: let's go check, and they really checked heavily, they'd.
12:03
Speaker 2: Always find it? Yeah. But you were saying you were
12:06
Speaker 2: checking heavily in what year again? In 2002 to 2004.
12:10
Speaker 2: So you were looking heavily those years and, in fact,
12:14
Speaker 2: not finding it. Exactly. It wasn't like once you looked,
12:17
Speaker 2: there it was. Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, it's massive.
12:20
Speaker 3: You know, the staff that worked for the department at
12:22
Speaker 3: that time, they were collecting heads and barrels.
12:24
Speaker 2: And hauling them everywhere. And not finding it.
12:27
Speaker 3: And we didn't find any.
12:28
Speaker 2: Okay. Right?
12:29
Speaker 3: And so this whole idea that, well, it's always been there,
12:32
Speaker 3: you're just doing more testing, so you're detecting more is
12:36
Speaker 3: just not true. And so from that time, and then
12:39
Speaker 3: in 2006, we shifted really hard, kind of the first
12:42
Speaker 3: state to really shift hard to using taxidermists to do sampling.
12:46
Speaker 3: Because it started to become clear that adult males showing
12:50
Speaker 3: it at a higher prevalence, which meant that if we
12:53
Speaker 3: were sampling adult males, we'd have better likelihood of detecting
12:56
Speaker 3: it really early in that sample. So from 2006 on,
13:01
Speaker 3: We started using taxidermists statewide, collecting several thousand samples a year.
13:05
Speaker 2: Got it. Meaning because it's sort of like selective. Right.
13:10
Speaker 2: You know, some dudes do. My dad did one time.
13:13
Speaker 2: But most dudes aren't bringing yearling does down to get stuff.
13:17
Speaker 2: So you're like, well, let's go look at mature bucks. Yeah.
13:20
Speaker 2: Three and a half, four and a half. They turn
13:22
Speaker 2: up at the taxidermist. Absolutely.
13:24
Speaker 3: And so it was a way that we could sort of.
13:27
Speaker 3: sort of weight towards that group that's most likely to
13:30
Speaker 3: have the disease and increase the likelihood of detecting it early. So,
13:35
Speaker 3: so much about CWD and CWD management is about the
13:37
Speaker 3: time of introduction to the time of detection as to
13:41
Speaker 3: how you can do it. So, several of the states that,
13:44
Speaker 3: you know, are pretty notorious for having found it and
13:47
Speaker 3: then found a lot, like Arkansas. Arkansas was doing testing,
13:52
Speaker 3: but they weren't doing it really well. intensive testing yes
13:56
Speaker 3: so the likelihood of it setting there at a higher
13:59
Speaker 3: prevalence and going undetected is higher yeah.
14:02
Speaker 1: That's what i was kind of getting at that's that's
14:04
Speaker 1: the sort of strategy i was getting at which means
14:07
Speaker 1: that a state's like damn let's go look all over
14:11
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden there it is and they
14:14
Speaker 1: go like well it must have got here yesterday And
14:16
Speaker 1: I might say, well, I don't know.
14:18
Speaker 2: Did it? Or has it been there for forever? No
14:21
Speaker 2: one looked. Right, right.
14:23
Speaker 1: I get the point you're saying where you feel like
14:26
Speaker 1: you're confident that you were finding it in its early
14:32
Speaker 1: stages in the population.
14:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's played out through time. That has repeated
14:37
Speaker 3: itself over and over again when we've detected CWD in
14:40
Speaker 3: a new location and we go in and do even
14:43
Speaker 3: more intensive sampling. Oftentimes, it is extremely rare, right?
14:48
Speaker 2: Very, very few. Okay.
14:50
Speaker 3: So what we're seeing is slow spread. So it gives
14:53
Speaker 3: confidence back to that early sampling period. Yeah, if it
14:57
Speaker 3: was there, it was at really low prevalence. So some
14:59
Speaker 3: of these southern states, they were doing testing, but they
15:03
Speaker 3: may have only been doing 1,500 a year.
15:06
Speaker 2: Yeah.
15:07
Speaker 3: Kind of statewide.
15:08
Speaker 2: And what's a big number for a state like Missouri?
15:10
Speaker 2: So we've been.
15:11
Speaker 3: 25 to 30,000 samples a year most recently. And it
15:15
Speaker 3: really is about trying to detect that first spark, that
15:19
Speaker 3: first introduction or the first, the slow spread.
15:23
Speaker 2: Right.
15:23
Speaker 3: So the management action can be more effective.
15:26
Speaker 1: When you were looking, if you, if you go back
15:29
Speaker 1: to those days when like, here you are, you're a
15:32
Speaker 1: deer biologist, clear mandate on herd health.
15:36
Speaker 2: Um, here it is.
15:39
Speaker 1: You're, you're, finding that it's popping up, it's spreading. Are
15:42
Speaker 1: you looking at it at that time? Are you seeing
15:45
Speaker 1: it as a human health concern or a herd health concern?
15:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, most of our focus is a herd health concern. Okay.
15:52
Speaker 3: I mean, we can talk about the human health side
15:54
Speaker 3: of it, but it's really for the herd health thing.
15:57
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean, like at that time. Absolutely. Because
16:00
Speaker 2: as much as I told you, I wasn't going to
16:01
Speaker 2: tell you what I think. Yeah.
16:03
Speaker 1: At that time, for me, and to some degrees remaining
16:09
Speaker 1: still today, At that time, for me, it was virtually
16:12
Speaker 1: all human health.
16:14
Speaker 2: Just purely personal. Purely personal. Yeah, yeah. But you were
16:17
Speaker 2: viewing it like a deer issue.
16:19
Speaker 3: And I heard from a lot of folks with that
16:22
Speaker 3: same kind of concern. I didn't recognize the number of
16:24
Speaker 3: folks that had been in the military or whatever and
16:26
Speaker 3: had been in Great Britain and England at the time
16:30
Speaker 3: of the BSE situation and finding themselves having to make
16:34
Speaker 3: some of those hard decisions and then calling and saying, hey,
16:37
Speaker 3: what do I do? And so, yeah, certainly recognize the
16:40
Speaker 3: concerns that folks had, but it was really from a
16:42
Speaker 3: herd health standpoint that we were concerned about it because
16:46
Speaker 3: it was just starting to see some of the data
16:48
Speaker 3: starting to creep out of the West, things that were
16:51
Speaker 3: happening in Colorado with population reductions and lower survival and
16:54
Speaker 3: that kind of stuff. But to kind of back up,
16:58
Speaker 3: so we had this background history of we think it's relatively,
17:02
Speaker 3: if it's here, there's not much of it. So when
17:06
Speaker 3: we found our first detection, before that, I was looking
17:09
Speaker 3: to other places to say, what are folks doing?
17:12
Speaker 2: So we had what was emerging, the difference.
17:14
Speaker 3: In management approach to what was happening in Wisconsin and
17:16
Speaker 3: what Illinois was doing. So Illinois had taken a very aggressive,
17:20
Speaker 3: very localized approach, whereas Wisconsin had taken a much more
17:24
Speaker 3: broad sweeping kind of management regulation based approach.
17:30
Speaker 2: Lay those two approaches out.
17:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Illinois, what they did when they'd find a
17:35
Speaker 3: CWD positive detection is they'd identify the section, the one
17:39
Speaker 3: square mile section in which the positive deer was around
17:43
Speaker 3: and then define a core area around it, another block.
17:46
Speaker 3: So it ended up being three miles by three miles
17:49
Speaker 3: around any positive. And then they would go in, they
17:52
Speaker 3: would issue additional permits, but following the hunting season, contracting
17:55
Speaker 3: with USDA Wildlife Services and their staff, they'd go in
17:58
Speaker 3: and try to do additional localized removals.
18:01
Speaker 2: Yeah.
18:01
Speaker 3: To try to remove the social groups where a positive female,
18:06
Speaker 3: for example, has been.
18:07
Speaker 2: So we know most.
18:09
Speaker 3: Likely other positive deer is ones that are related to
18:11
Speaker 3: a positive deer.
18:12
Speaker 2: Okay.
18:12
Speaker 3: So where they interact and engage with one another. Whereas
18:15
Speaker 3: Wisconsin's approach was to be a lot more broad brush.
18:20
Speaker 3: You know, the earn a buck program was in place
18:21
Speaker 3: trying to massively reduce deer populations.
18:24
Speaker 2: Yeah.
18:24
Speaker 3: A lot of additional opportunities outside of the season. Less
18:29
Speaker 3: kind of surgical.
18:30
Speaker 2: I would say. Got it.
18:31
Speaker 3: And so you could start to see the trends and indicators,
18:34
Speaker 3: especially after Ernebuck went away, that population trajectory was changing
18:38
Speaker 3: between the approach Wisconsin was taking versus Illinois.
18:42
Speaker 2: Who was right?
18:44
Speaker 3: Well, Illinois has been able to maintain relatively low prevalence
18:47
Speaker 3: rates through this past 25 years post-introduction. Through the very localized,
18:55
Speaker 3: very intensive approach in working with landowners.
18:58
Speaker 2: But man, did that one piss people off, though. Yeah,
19:01
Speaker 2: it has. Yeah, it has.
19:02
Speaker 3: And so that was the approach we took. So we
19:05
Speaker 3: wrote the plan to say, okay, what can we learn
19:07
Speaker 3: from Illinois? Very localized management, trying not to tremendously negatively
19:13
Speaker 3: impact hunters outside of where CWD is, right? So this
19:16
Speaker 3: is a little bit of this balancing that has to occur.
19:19
Speaker 3: How do you address the disease without negatively impacting everybody?
19:23
Speaker 3: And so that was our approach in 2012 when we
19:26
Speaker 3: had our first detection of free-ranging herds. very localized work
19:30
Speaker 3: with landowners try to give them additional authorizations during the
19:33
Speaker 3: season and then with their permission we would come in
19:36
Speaker 3: after the season and do additional removals with the objective
19:40
Speaker 3: of how.
19:42
Speaker 2: Big is the box how big is a box in
19:44
Speaker 2: missouri that you're talking about at this time.
19:46
Speaker 3: Well they they vary in size because some of them
19:48
Speaker 3: are pretty big because we've had slow spread.
19:51
Speaker 2: Okay, give me a medium-sized box.
19:52
Speaker 3: A medium-sized box would be 40 square miles.
19:56
Speaker 2: 40 square miles. You know? And at that time, and
19:59
Speaker 2: tell me the year roughly that this happened. Yeah, 2012, 2014,
20:03
Speaker 2: that time frame.
20:04
Speaker 1: At that time when you had a box, let's say
20:06
Speaker 1: you got a 40-square-mile box, okay?
20:08
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Um, how many, like a township six by six, right? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
20:15
Speaker 1: So picture like a roughly a township size township for, for,
20:18
Speaker 1: for those of you in the Eastern us, a township,
20:20
Speaker 1: basically six by six square miles. Um, you, you would,
20:25
Speaker 1: the objective would be to reduce the population by what?
20:29
Speaker 3: We really didn't set a target at that time. Just
20:32
Speaker 3: reduce it, just reduce it. And a lot of the
20:35
Speaker 3: focus was, Hey, do you have a positive on your property?
20:38
Speaker 3: How can we try to reduce some of the deer
20:40
Speaker 3: that likely would have came into contact with that individual?
20:42
Speaker 2: Okay. Right.
20:43
Speaker 3: And so kind of both during the season, we gave
20:47
Speaker 3: landowners the opportunity to get what we at that time
20:50
Speaker 3: called CWD management seals, which would allow them to even
20:52
Speaker 3: shoot additional bucks.
20:54
Speaker 2: Okay.
20:54
Speaker 3: During the regular hunting season. And then after the season,
20:57
Speaker 3: we say, hey, do you want to shoot some additional deer?
20:59
Speaker 2: Okay.
21:01
Speaker 3: If you do, great. We'll give you that authorization. If
21:03
Speaker 3: you don't, would you let MDC staff do that? And
21:08
Speaker 3: if you don't want to be involved, that's fine too, right?
21:10
Speaker 3: Like completely voluntary from their standpoint. So then we would
21:14
Speaker 3: go through about a two month period. The thing we
21:16
Speaker 3: also did was we offer those deer back.
21:18
Speaker 2: To the landowner.
21:19
Speaker 3: So we take them, get them tested. If they test
21:22
Speaker 3: not detected, offer them the opportunity to have that deer back.
21:26
Speaker 3: If they didn't want it back, then we donated all
21:28
Speaker 3: those to share the harvest. So one of the things
21:30
Speaker 3: that also goes around is that, well, those deer got wasted.
21:33
Speaker 3: They got shot. Nothing got done with them. And that's
21:36
Speaker 3: just not true either.
21:40
Speaker 1: So I know you didn't have an objective, but can
21:43
Speaker 1: you think of an example, again, of a township-sized chunk
21:46
Speaker 1: of ground, roughly 40 square miles? Can you think of
21:51
Speaker 1: an example during that time when you wanted to do
21:53
Speaker 1: a reduction? Just looking back, what did you ever achieve
21:57
Speaker 1: for percent reduction? Yeah, so probably 30% to 40%.
22:01
Speaker 2: Reduce it to 30% to 40%.
22:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, because I think When we talk about population management,
22:05
Speaker 3: we've always targeted in the eastern U.S., if you remove
22:09
Speaker 3: about 25% of your adult females on an annual basis,
22:13
Speaker 3: you're kind of keeping the population steady.
22:15
Speaker 2: Okay.
22:16
Speaker 3: And so when you look at historic harvest trends, we
22:18
Speaker 3: could look at the historic harvest trend of a county
22:20
Speaker 3: and say, what does that look like? We were shooting
22:24
Speaker 3: for another 10% reduction.
22:26
Speaker 2: Potentially, right?
22:28
Speaker 3: Just trying to get over that hump of, Just normal
22:32
Speaker 3: harvest probably wasn't going to be enough. Some additional localized
22:36
Speaker 3: focus would be or should help. And that pattern's played
22:40
Speaker 3: out through time where we've had good landowner cooperation, where
22:44
Speaker 3: we had that box was smaller and we got more
22:48
Speaker 3: intensive harvest. Those prevalence rates in those core areas is
22:52
Speaker 3: still flat or steady even now a decade later.
22:55
Speaker 2: Is that right? Absolutely. Let's play the why game.
23:00
Speaker 1: At that time, You'd go to a landowner and you'd say,
23:04
Speaker 1: we want to, we're looking to reduce deer herds.
23:07
Speaker 2: And he says, why? And you're like, well, cause we're
23:10
Speaker 2: trying to slow the spread of CWD. Why? What was that? Why? Yeah.
23:15
Speaker 3: That why was because of the long-term impacts of CWD
23:18
Speaker 3: on the population.
23:19
Speaker 2: Okay.
23:19
Speaker 3: Cause everywhere else we'd seen it, we knew kind of
23:22
Speaker 3: three things were happening. It kills deer, it spreads and
23:27
Speaker 3: it increases in prevalence. We know that to sort of
23:30
Speaker 3: be uniform uniformly true everywhere we've found it with the
23:35
Speaker 3: exception of, you know, New York where they probably got
23:39
Speaker 3: super lucky and shot the three deer that.
23:42
Speaker 2: Were actually positive.
23:43
Speaker 3: Right. And we've had some core areas where we've detected
23:46
Speaker 3: a positive shot one or two more positive deer and
23:49
Speaker 3: haven't had any more. Really?
23:51
Speaker 2: It's really rare, right? Like really rare.
23:54
Speaker 3: And we continue to monitor and those kinds of things, but,
23:57
Speaker 3: but it does happen. but you don't count on it.
24:01
Speaker 1: I want to stick with the timeline, but I want
24:05
Speaker 1: to take a minute and jump out of the timeline
24:07
Speaker 1: because we're talking about the whys, okay? And the why
24:12
Speaker 1: you gave is probably still relevant today, long-term impacts. But
24:17
Speaker 1: let me hit with what would be a paradox, okay?
24:21
Speaker 1: I think this is a paradox. It'd be, we have
24:25
Speaker 1: a fear that CWD will cause a decline in.
24:33
Speaker 2: The deer herd.
24:35
Speaker 1: Therefore, to stop it, we will do the very thing
24:39
Speaker 1: that we fear will happen from CWD, which is decline
24:43
Speaker 1: the deer herd.
24:45
Speaker 2: Help me through that. No, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Help me
24:52
Speaker 2: through that puzzle.
24:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, and to me, it's about sort of Attempting to
24:58
Speaker 3: control the fate of the herd.
25:00
Speaker 2: Okay. Right?
25:01
Speaker 3: And continue to have prevalence relatively low that it is
25:06
Speaker 3: not impacting the population. And that we, by reducing the population,
25:11
Speaker 3: can keep prevalence rates low and we continue to maintain
25:14
Speaker 3: a healthy deer herd.
25:15
Speaker 2: That folks can use and enjoy and appreciate. Okay.
25:18
Speaker 3: And not have a high proportion of sick animals on
25:21
Speaker 3: the landscape.
25:21
Speaker 2: Got it. You know, the idea that, you know, we've had.
25:24
Speaker 3: Two deer in a small rural community along the Mississippi River, Missouri,
25:28
Speaker 3: just crawl up in folks' yard and die, right? Like, yeah, CWD,
25:34
Speaker 3: we don't want CWD to control the herd in that way.
25:36
Speaker 2: Yeah.
25:37
Speaker 3: We want hunters to be in a position where they
25:39
Speaker 3: continue to appreciate having these deer on the landscape. And
25:42
Speaker 3: then whatever other concerns folks have, whether it is human
25:46
Speaker 3: health or otherwise, but that it's just an important part
25:49
Speaker 3: of the landscape.
25:50
Speaker 1: So is it fair to say, like, I'm just going
25:53
Speaker 1: to use rough numbers. Is it fair to come and
25:55
Speaker 1: say to somebody or a community of hunters, a county
25:58
Speaker 1: or whatever, where deer hunting is popular, be like, right
26:04
Speaker 1: now we have a ton of deer, okay?
26:07
Speaker 2: We have 100 deer per unit of space.
26:11
Speaker 1: And you would say to a group of hunters in
26:14
Speaker 1: a region, you would say, if we just let CWD
26:20
Speaker 1: rip and we don't do anything and we just let
26:23
Speaker 1: it run, you could feasibly wind up in a situation where,
26:27
Speaker 1: we don't really know, but let's say there's a situation
26:29
Speaker 1: where there's 20 deer per unit of space instead of 100.
26:32
Speaker 2: There's 30 deer per unit of space instead of 100.
26:35
Speaker 2: And those 20 or 30 deer, 50% of them are
26:39
Speaker 2: going to have this disease.
26:42
Speaker 1: Blank percent of them are going to be dying from
26:44
Speaker 1: this disease. And that's what it's going to look like.
26:47
Speaker 1: Or we hunt them down to 20 or 30. And
26:54
Speaker 1: those are disease free. And those demonstrate the age class
27:00
Speaker 1: we want to see. And those have mature bucks in them.
27:04
Speaker 1: And that is the thing. But yes, either way we're
27:07
Speaker 1: talking about, you're going to see less deer from your
27:10
Speaker 1: tree stand.
27:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that's absolutely right.
27:12
Speaker 1: Because people look, I'm telling you, man, like, you know this.
27:16
Speaker 1: People look and they'll be like, how can someone try
27:19
Speaker 1: to tell me that me seeing fewer deer from my
27:22
Speaker 1: tree stand is good?
27:24
Speaker 2: Yeah.
27:25
Speaker 1: Like, I don't know. Person comes in excited. They're like,
27:32
Speaker 1: how was your hunt?
27:33
Speaker 2: Awesome. Didn't see nothing. Right. Like, no one's chasing that evening. Yeah. Yeah.
27:39
Speaker 3: And so I think that collided with the rise of
27:43
Speaker 3: trail cameras. The rise of the intensity of deer management
27:46
Speaker 3: that happens today. Folks understanding what age means to potential
27:51
Speaker 3: of antler development.
27:52
Speaker 2: Sort of this.
27:55
Speaker 3: Possessive nature of the way that we feel about deer
27:57
Speaker 3: now because we get them on camera. I got a
27:59
Speaker 3: deer on camera. That's a bit of it's my deer.
28:02
Speaker 3: Kind of the intensity of management. And we also had folks,
28:05
Speaker 3: because of that, investing a ton of money in recreational land.
28:10
Speaker 3: I mean, some of the most valuable land in Missouri
28:12
Speaker 3: is for recreational opportunities to hunt deer turkeys, right? And
28:15
Speaker 3: that's very true across much of the Midwest. You can't
28:18
Speaker 3: grow crops on it, but it can grow good deer turkeys.
28:21
Speaker 3: It's extremely valuable. So you've got folks who've invested or
28:25
Speaker 3: made lifetime sacrifices to buy land to be able to
28:29
Speaker 3: shoot giant bucks. And then this idea that, well, I'm
28:32
Speaker 3: going to have fewer deer.
28:34
Speaker 2: Now what are we going to do?
28:36
Speaker 3: It's a tremendous ask, and it's one that we had
28:38
Speaker 3: some Yeah, really challenging conversation with folks about. The other
28:43
Speaker 3: thing that with CWD, if CWD is controlling the population,
28:46
Speaker 3: it'll be a much younger herd too, right? Because it's
28:49
Speaker 3: going to crop off that older age class. And we
28:52
Speaker 3: know even when we had smaller deer populations, we were
28:55
Speaker 3: shooting them pretty hard. We still had bucks in older
28:58
Speaker 3: age classes. We didn't have as many numerically, but we
29:02
Speaker 3: still had them.
29:03
Speaker 2: They were present. Yep. Yeah.
29:05
Speaker 1: So let's go back to that. Let's go back to
29:07
Speaker 1: that chronology a little bit. You were, you were taking this,
29:11
Speaker 1: what we'll call the Illinois model.
29:12
Speaker 3: Yeah.
29:13
Speaker 1: If we're setting it up like, like two different perspectives,
29:17
Speaker 1: Wisconsin generally trying to use programs. So generally lower deer statewide,
29:23
Speaker 1: Illinois being like, no, man, we're going to find a hotspot.
29:25
Speaker 2: We're going to shoot them out.
29:27
Speaker 1: And you were doing that Illinois model and finding that
29:31
Speaker 1: you could sort of keep prevalence low.
29:35
Speaker 2: Or lower.
29:37
Speaker 1: Walk through how these prevalences move, meaning you find a spot.
29:44
Speaker 2: With 1% or 2%.
29:46
Speaker 1: How does it grow when it's unchecked? And what does
29:50
Speaker 1: it look like when you're taking steps to check it?
29:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, so what you see is those deer have to
29:58
Speaker 3: come into contact with one another to spread it. So
30:00
Speaker 3: it's that social interaction and engagement that occurs. Fewer deer
30:03
Speaker 3: on landscape, fewer deer spreading it to one another, especially
30:06
Speaker 3: in the east where they don't move a ton. It's
30:08
Speaker 3: not like the migration corridors we see in the west
30:11
Speaker 3: where they might be moving long distances, especially when you
30:14
Speaker 3: get into the eastern Ozarks.
30:16
Speaker 2: Home ranges are pretty small. Really?
30:18
Speaker 3: In the agricultural parts of the state, the movement between
30:21
Speaker 3: habitat patches might be longer.
30:23
Speaker 2: So you'll see.
30:24
Speaker 3: You'll see a very different dispersion of the disease in
30:27
Speaker 3: those kinds of landscapes as well, just based on deer movement.
30:31
Speaker 3: West Virginia is a great example. Hampshire County, they found
30:34
Speaker 3: CWD in 2004 or 2005. It hasn't spread all over
30:39
Speaker 3: West Virginia. It's still pretty localized and contained. Largely because
30:45
Speaker 3: deer in those landscapes just don't move a lot.
30:47
Speaker 2: Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. So you'll see some of that.
30:50
Speaker 2: So that's the way it spreads out. You said they
30:52
Speaker 2: move more in ag areas than they do in mountain areas. Yeah. Yeah.
30:57
Speaker 3: Any heavily forested landscape, they move far less.
31:00
Speaker 2: Really? That's pretty well known. At the risk of this
31:04
Speaker 2: being a huge tangent, why? Why is that? Available resources
31:08
Speaker 2: and cover. Okay. Right?
31:09
Speaker 3: You know, you think about an ag country, while there's
31:12
Speaker 3: food everywhere, there's bedding cover and escape cover may not
31:16
Speaker 3: be in those spots.
31:17
Speaker 1: Oh, so they're traveling longer distances for those primo food sources.
31:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, and cover, right?
31:23
Speaker 3: That being the big limiting thing. In a forested landscape,
31:26
Speaker 3: they're using terrain and topography. They're using small... you know,
31:30
Speaker 3: woody covered. They're more of a homebody.
31:32
Speaker 2: I never knew that.
31:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely. So you see that. But what
31:38
Speaker 3: we see is through the first several years of a detection,
31:43
Speaker 3: a really early detection, is really slow increase in prevalence.
31:46
Speaker 3: I mean, less than like a half a percent per year,
31:50
Speaker 3: kind of really slow. But then once it hits about 5%
31:54
Speaker 3: in any reasonable sized area, you start, it's like an
31:57
Speaker 3: inflection point.
31:59
Speaker 2: Okay.
31:59
Speaker 3: And prevalence starts to really speed up because I think
32:02
Speaker 3: you've got enough deer then that are infected that that
32:05
Speaker 3: contact rate almost becomes exponential.
32:07
Speaker 2: Got it. And this has played out in a lot
32:09
Speaker 2: of places.
32:10
Speaker 3: Mike Miller, you know, I mean, I think some of
32:12
Speaker 3: the work Mike's done in Colorado and a lot of
32:14
Speaker 3: the early research, they talk about 5%, somewhere between 5%
32:19
Speaker 3: and 7% really being this tipping point.
32:21
Speaker 2: Got it. So can we detect it before that?
32:24
Speaker 3: Before that's the point where we can actually have management
32:26
Speaker 3: interventions that are probably meaningful and impactful before that, before that.
32:31
Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah.
32:32
Speaker 3: And so we, we, we published a couple of papers in, in,
32:35
Speaker 3: you know, 2020, 2021, really looking at what is that
32:39
Speaker 3: window of opportunity? And it really gets back to your detection,
32:42
Speaker 3: your ability to detect and the intensity of sampling that
32:45
Speaker 3: you've done to be on the front end of it.
32:48
Speaker 3: Once it gets past that point, the geographic spread has
32:51
Speaker 3: started to become wide enough. that your area of impact
32:55
Speaker 3: and influence becomes so large. It's an entire county. It's
32:59
Speaker 3: a couple of counties, right? And the ability to do
33:02
Speaker 3: this localized management like Illinois had been doing and like
33:05
Speaker 3: we had been doing really gets diminished. So we've had
33:08
Speaker 3: to take a different approach in a lot of places.
33:10
Speaker 3: Like where CWD drifted up into southern Missouri from Arkansas,
33:14
Speaker 3: it's much more widespread. It's not like it was just
33:17
Speaker 3: a single introduction where we could go track that. It's
33:21
Speaker 3: spread out over across, you know, half the southern border.
33:25
Speaker 3: So are there cases where you.
33:31
Speaker 2: Just walk? Yeah, we have. Yeah. Yeah.
33:34
Speaker 3: When you look at southwest Missouri, south of Taylor Rock
33:37
Speaker 3: and Bull Shoals Lake, where it is kind of the
33:40
Speaker 3: northern edge of the Arkansas outbreak, because of access, because
33:47
Speaker 3: of small landowner acreage, because of tough terrain and hard
33:50
Speaker 3: to get in and do additional deer management. We just
33:52
Speaker 3: don't even get made deer killed in that area anyway.
33:55
Speaker 2: Yeah.
33:56
Speaker 3: We've chosen to let it run its course outside of
33:59
Speaker 3: just carcass movement regulations, some testing to monitor prevalence and
34:03
Speaker 3: that kind of stuff.
34:04
Speaker 1: Well, how with, I understand coming to that decision because
34:08
Speaker 1: you have limited resources.
34:09
Speaker 2: Yeah.
34:10
Speaker 1: I guess you didn't even mention that in your list
34:12
Speaker 1: of reasons, but that's gotta be on there somewhere. Like
34:15
Speaker 1: you've limited money and limited people. But how does that
34:21
Speaker 1: edge not just march?
34:23
Speaker 3: We got a couple of big reservoirs. Oh, so physical barriers.
34:27
Speaker 3: That sort of create a bit of a physical barrier.
34:29
Speaker 3: They're not an incomplete and they're not a complete barrier.
34:31
Speaker 3: We know deer swim the rivers and the lakes, but
34:35
Speaker 3: it at least is going to slow it down.
34:37
Speaker 2: Okay.
34:37
Speaker 3: So it gives us the opportunity to say, okay, well,
34:39
Speaker 3: on the north side of the lake, if one does
34:41
Speaker 3: come across, it's probably a relatively new spark, right?
34:46
Speaker 2: It's jumped the line.
34:48
Speaker 3: Then we could be a little more aggressive in addressing those.
34:54
Speaker 2: Tell me a little bit about how, tell me a
34:56
Speaker 2: little bit about what you're hearing through this, what you're
35:05
Speaker 2: hearing from deer hunters in Missouri. If you had to
35:10
Speaker 2: make that there's, if you had to say that there's
35:13
Speaker 2: two groups or four groups or whatever the number, like,
35:16
Speaker 2: what are the groups that are coming to the meetings, right,
35:22
Speaker 2: that are articulating a viewpoint? Like, what are their viewpoints?
35:25
Speaker 1: And you can, you know, you don't even, you can
35:28
Speaker 1: disparage the ones you want to disparage or you can
35:30
Speaker 1: just give it in their words.
35:32
Speaker 2: Like, who's coming to talk to you?
35:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think folks do it intentionally, right? Like,
35:36
Speaker 3: so I'm not going to disparage anybody. I value their
35:39
Speaker 3: perspectives and their opinions and based on what they know.
35:42
Speaker 3: So we've got, So interestingly, so we perked along with
35:46
Speaker 3: a few additional detections kind of from 2012 to 2018
35:51
Speaker 3: and then started to detect it in a couple of
35:53
Speaker 3: other spots. And I felt like we had pretty good communication.
35:59
Speaker 3: We had pretty good understanding of what was going on
36:01
Speaker 3: with local landowners. And then really post-COVID, attitudes and perceptions
36:06
Speaker 3: changed pretty dramatically. A lot of mistrust, a lot of
36:11
Speaker 3: questioning of intentions. that we just didn't face before that
36:15
Speaker 3: is a really different time period. But we've got folks
36:19
Speaker 3: who I don't believe it, right? Like show me the facts.
36:24
Speaker 3: You got to spend time trying to share information with them.
36:27
Speaker 3: You got folks that inherently just trust and will believe,
36:32
Speaker 3: you know, the agency voice as experts. And a lot
36:35
Speaker 3: of folks who are just complacent.
36:38
Speaker 2: Or not aware.
36:39
Speaker 3: Okay. I, it, it, It was really hard for our
36:42
Speaker 3: team and myself, too, as we'd find new detections. It
36:45
Speaker 3: felt like Groundhog Day. Man, I'm talking about CWD management
36:48
Speaker 3: in Missouri since 2010. I couldn't tell you how many
36:51
Speaker 3: thousands of people I've talked about it, how many articles
36:54
Speaker 3: in the conservationists, how many news programs, like all the
36:58
Speaker 3: things talking about CWD. You find it in a new place,
37:02
Speaker 3: and it's like they had no idea.
37:04
Speaker 2: Oh, is that right? Right.
37:06
Speaker 1: So like people not following it, not the way national
37:10
Speaker 1: conversation or state conversation, they're following it.
37:13
Speaker 2: Like, like my dear, my dear. And then when it's
37:17
Speaker 2: my dear, they're like, no, they're what they wake up
37:19
Speaker 2: to it. Yeah, absolutely.
37:21
Speaker 3: And it just, and I've used this, the Bill Murray
37:24
Speaker 3: slide of groundhog day numerous times in presentations because it
37:28
Speaker 3: feels that way.
37:28
Speaker 2: It's like, yeah. Cause you, Oh my gosh. Like, you know, sir,
37:33
Speaker 2: with all due respect, like, I don't understand where you've been. Right.
37:38
Speaker 3: Right. And so that's really hard. And from a communication
37:41
Speaker 3: standpoint to say, here's where information is advancing. And then
37:46
Speaker 3: you've got a bunch of folks, a large number of
37:48
Speaker 3: folks who aren't as tied in and paying attention. And
37:52
Speaker 3: so then and then you've got those that are paying attention,
37:55
Speaker 3: but they get fixated on certain issues or certain parts
38:00
Speaker 3: of it, which I think is where this sort of
38:02
Speaker 3: broader concern starts to creep back in. Things like, well,
38:07
Speaker 3: it's clearly just the captive guys moving deer around the landscape.
38:10
Speaker 2: It's all their fault. Sure. Right.
38:12
Speaker 3: Or no, it's not our fault. No, it's, it's all
38:14
Speaker 3: the deer hunters fault.
38:15
Speaker 2: Right.
38:16
Speaker 3: Like it's where it's the guys pouring urine on the ground.
38:19
Speaker 3: It's their fault or right. Like that, those things that
38:23
Speaker 3: start to say, well, that's part of it. In this case,
38:27
Speaker 3: it might've been in this case, it wasn't, but it
38:30
Speaker 3: creates these lines for. for us to be tribalistic in
38:35
Speaker 3: some ways.
38:35
Speaker 2: Hugely. Right? But you feel the tribalism emerged with COVID.
38:46
Speaker 2: Or was it a new one? A new one. A
38:48
Speaker 2: new tribalism. And that was a skepticism.
38:52
Speaker 1: That was a skepticism of being skeptical of officialdom.
38:57
Speaker 2: And science. Yeah, because....
39:00
Speaker 1: Elements of that, like, cause elements of that community on
39:04
Speaker 1: the human health end of the landscape.
39:09
Speaker 2: Really made some big mistakes. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And then
39:13
Speaker 2: it became, I'm done with all y'all. Yeah. All of
39:16
Speaker 2: you all. Right. And so then. Like any egghead scientist
39:19
Speaker 2: guy is out. Right. And so then.
39:24
Speaker 3: The real conspiracies start to creep in. Well, what's their motivations?
39:29
Speaker 3: What's their intentions? Why are they doing this? There must
39:33
Speaker 3: be something more we don't understand.
39:35
Speaker 2: Yeah. Right?
39:36
Speaker 1: But an early, to stick to this timeline a little bit,
39:40
Speaker 1: I appreciate what you're saying about a heightened skepticism. But
39:49
Speaker 1: I don't have these dates down, but I know that
39:52
Speaker 1: there was a lot of that prior and it would be,
39:57
Speaker 1: and maybe you can visit with me or try to
40:00
Speaker 1: remember with me pre COVID back more in the timeline.
40:03
Speaker 1: We're talking about like 2014, 2015.
40:06
Speaker 2: It's on the ground. You're dealing with it. Are you
40:09
Speaker 2: doing baiting restrictions? Yeah.
40:13
Speaker 1: Because I feel that one of the earliest in my recollection,
40:19
Speaker 1: one of the earliest sort of tribalism things that came up,
40:27
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking particularly of Michigan where I grew up,
40:30
Speaker 1: baiting restrictions, okay, where there was a narrative spun there
40:39
Speaker 1: that the same, the view would be the same kind
40:43
Speaker 1: of people.
40:46
Speaker 2: Who are worried about herd health.
40:49
Speaker 1: And who are worried about human health are the same
40:53
Speaker 1: kind of people that have kind of always looked down
40:56
Speaker 1: on deer baiting. They've always felt that it was deer
41:00
Speaker 1: baiting was beneath them or deer baiting. Wasn't sportsmanlike and
41:05
Speaker 1: hunting high fences. Wasn't sportsmanlike like this community. And now
41:10
Speaker 1: they're able to go, aha.
41:12
Speaker 2: Gotcha. Gotcha. It is bad.
41:15
Speaker 1: It's bad because it spreads CWD and I'm going to
41:17
Speaker 1: use it now. to do a thing I've always wanted
41:21
Speaker 1: to do. I've always wanted to get rid of deer baiting.
41:24
Speaker 1: I've always thought it was bad. I always thought you
41:26
Speaker 1: guys were rednecks. I always wanted to get rid of
41:28
Speaker 1: shooting high fence deer because I've always thought you guys
41:30
Speaker 1: are rednecks.
41:31
Speaker 2: And now here I got my thing. Right? Yeah, absolutely.
41:35
Speaker 2: And that was on the ground pre-COVID in Michigan. Yeah. Right?
41:42
Speaker 1: And in all clarity, I grew up sitting over piles
41:47
Speaker 1: of carrots and apples. But I didn't have that. I
41:51
Speaker 1: didn't get that feeling because I was out of there
41:53
Speaker 1: by then. I had moved away. But I just observed
41:55
Speaker 1: it happen in Michigan. So there was like a tribalism.
42:01
Speaker 1: But I guess the question to you is did you
42:05
Speaker 1: guys do that? Did you guys do restrictions that in
42:11
Speaker 1: those years that created these little camps?
42:14
Speaker 2: Yeah.
42:14
Speaker 3: So for us, the first one that emerged was the
42:18
Speaker 3: captive servant industry.
42:19
Speaker 2: Okay.
42:20
Speaker 3: And then our first CWD positive was found in a
42:22
Speaker 3: captive facility.
42:23
Speaker 2: Got it.
42:24
Speaker 3: And then our first free ranging positive was found right
42:26
Speaker 3: outside of it.
42:27
Speaker 2: I want to get to this. Right.
42:28
Speaker 3: And so I want to get that whole, um, yeah,
42:33
Speaker 3: here's the chance. Here's the space where it got projected
42:37
Speaker 3: on us.
42:38
Speaker 2: Cause you never liked me. You never liked me anyways.
42:40
Speaker 2: I've never been one of those.
42:42
Speaker 3: I'm not, you know, it's like, They existed on the
42:44
Speaker 3: landscape for a long time, but we need to do
42:46
Speaker 3: it right. We need to try to keep herd health safe.
42:50
Speaker 3: In Missouri, though, the baiting thing wasn't as big of
42:54
Speaker 3: an issue because it was prohibited back in the.
43:01
Speaker 2: 1980s.
43:01
Speaker 3: Baiting was actually legal in Missouri. Nobody did it.
43:05
Speaker 2: We didn't have baits.
43:06
Speaker 3: Robust deer populations and quite honestly through the 60s and
43:10
Speaker 3: 70s and early 80s man i grew up hunting deer
43:12
Speaker 3: like rabbits right like a lot of drive hunting because
43:15
Speaker 3: there just wasn't very much deer so missouri was a
43:17
Speaker 3: no bait state so we didn't have bait but we
43:20
Speaker 3: weren't we're in a no bait we're in a no
43:21
Speaker 3: bait state right now so it's it's not part of
43:24
Speaker 3: the conversation right right so that because it's always been
43:27
Speaker 3: nobody yeah so that wasn't a space where we had
43:29
Speaker 3: sort of controversy we had i see We did prohibit.
43:32
Speaker 2: The placement of food, salt, and minerals. Okay. In a
43:36
Speaker 2: core area, right?
43:37
Speaker 3: And with the rise of placement of minerals on the
43:40
Speaker 3: landscape and stuff like that, certainly that was challenging. But
43:45
Speaker 3: not one that was like dyed in the wool, we've
43:47
Speaker 3: been fighting over it for decades kind of thing.
43:49
Speaker 2: Yeah.
43:50
Speaker 3: Like some places have certainly had.
43:53
Speaker 2: Yeah. So pick that. I want to return to The spread. Yeah.
44:05
Speaker 1: But pick up this kind of evolution through time of
44:09
Speaker 1: mid-teens and sort of walk through from there to where
44:13
Speaker 1: we are now.
44:13
Speaker 2: Yeah.
44:14
Speaker 3: So one of the things, so mid-teens, we started to
44:16
Speaker 3: slowly detect it in a couple of additional places. Some
44:20
Speaker 3: of the lessons we learned in Macon and Linn County,
44:22
Speaker 3: we sort of took with us to when we'd get
44:25
Speaker 3: a new detection.
44:26
Speaker 2: Okay.
44:26
Speaker 3: Well, where we found ourselves a couple years ago is
44:29
Speaker 3: the disease kept spreading. We kept finding additional detections. Again,
44:34
Speaker 3: all of them very low prevalence. So from a management standpoint,
44:39
Speaker 3: it's like, well, we've only got a couple. We've sampled
44:42
Speaker 3: hundreds or in some cases thousands of deer in this area.
44:45
Speaker 3: We've only got a couple. Well, we need to be
44:47
Speaker 3: working there because we've got the opportunity to do that.
44:51
Speaker 3: You start to spread that out over, you know, 50
44:54
Speaker 3: or 60 or 70 different core areas across the state.
44:57
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
44:58
Speaker 3: And while we have a relatively large team to help
45:02
Speaker 3: work on that, it gets really diluted. And so we
45:06
Speaker 3: were starting to ask the hard questions of where do
45:10
Speaker 3: we continue to work?
45:11
Speaker 2: Who do we work with?
45:13
Speaker 3: How do we continue to incentivize landowners and hunters to
45:16
Speaker 3: do that?
45:17
Speaker 2: Yeah.
45:17
Speaker 3: So at that same time, so that's where we find
45:19
Speaker 3: ourselves in the early, you know, 2020s is starting to
45:22
Speaker 3: have these kinds of conversations. The distrust, declining participation. Are
45:29
Speaker 3: you seeing that for real?
45:30
Speaker 2: Yeah.
45:31
Speaker 3: So with these additional detections and the spreading and diffusion
45:36
Speaker 3: of it, our ability to continue to manage the disease
45:38
Speaker 3: was being really challenged.
45:39
Speaker 2: Okay.
45:40
Speaker 3: So you add to that the growing narratives through social
45:44
Speaker 3: media and other places about ulterior motives, ulterior intentions, tensions
45:50
Speaker 3: started to get pretty high, right? Like real serious questions
45:54
Speaker 3: and mistrust of why.
45:55
Speaker 2: We were doing what we were doing.
45:57
Speaker 1: Hit me with a when you say that hit me
46:01
Speaker 1: with an idea, an ulterior motive idea. I don't really,
46:05
Speaker 1: I don't get who, no, I do.
46:08
Speaker 2: I do. I do get it. I hear that.
46:10
Speaker 1: It's like, um, you all make your living doing deer
46:16
Speaker 1: management and this means more funding.
46:22
Speaker 2: Right. What are the other ones?
46:27
Speaker 1: You're incentivized to create an issue because somehow even though
46:31
Speaker 1: you're out of set state salary, there's somehow money to
46:35
Speaker 1: be made.
46:36
Speaker 2: What is it?
46:37
Speaker 3: The federal funding is supporting the work and the more
46:41
Speaker 3: deer the test positive, the more federal funding we get.
46:44
Speaker 3: The more money the agency can generate, that's the only
46:46
Speaker 3: reason we're doing the work. That's not true in Missouri
46:49
Speaker 3: because for a long time in the 20 teens, there
46:53
Speaker 3: was no federal money at all. It had completely gone
46:57
Speaker 3: away and we'd continue to do the work. We were
46:59
Speaker 3: doing the work with commission funds and resources to do
47:04
Speaker 3: that work. There's the, you know, well, it's good for
47:07
Speaker 3: the insurance companies. The insurance companies are happy because this
47:09
Speaker 3: means there are fewer deer on the landscape, right? Like
47:12
Speaker 3: it's these things that start to creep in. And another
47:15
Speaker 3: one that I think is completely legitimate is folks who say, well,
47:18
Speaker 3: I get it, but it's not going to work in
47:21
Speaker 3: the end.
47:22
Speaker 2: Yeah.
47:22
Speaker 3: We're still going to get to the same end point.
47:24
Speaker 2: Sure. Right.
47:25
Speaker 3: I think we'll get to that end point on very
47:27
Speaker 3: different timescales and different time horizons based on whether we're
47:30
Speaker 3: doing something or we're not.
47:31
Speaker 2: Yeah.
47:32
Speaker 3: And then again, back to, I don't want to impact
47:35
Speaker 3: my hunting today.
47:37
Speaker 2: Yeah. In that really hard conversation. Yeah. I'm alive now.
47:40
Speaker 2: I'm a lot. I'm hunting now. I don't know what's
47:43
Speaker 2: going to happen. Maybe the world will be done in
47:44
Speaker 2: 20 years. Like, I don't know. I want to go
47:46
Speaker 2: on my tree stand now and see a bunch of deer. Yeah. Enough.
47:48
Speaker 1: I'm not interested in playing long-term like deer management games
47:51
Speaker 1: that are uncertain.
47:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
47:54
Speaker 3: Unknowns into an unknown time period.
47:56
Speaker 2: Yeah.
47:57
Speaker 3: And folks say, well, you got to have an exit strategy.
47:59
Speaker 3: I'm like, there's no exit strategy. There's just changing and
48:04
Speaker 3: adapting our management approach. That's not an exit strategy. It's
48:08
Speaker 3: just recognizing where we are. And so last fall, we
48:13
Speaker 3: made the tough decision to say, it's gotten spread far enough.
48:18
Speaker 3: We've got enough positives on the landscape. We've had enough
48:23
Speaker 3: loss of support from landowners in core areas that were
48:27
Speaker 3: likely no longer being as effective as we were. So
48:30
Speaker 3: we're going to stop what had become the most controversial
48:33
Speaker 3: part of our program.
48:34
Speaker 2: That's the post-season target removal.
48:37
Speaker 3: And say, how do we then work inside the hunting
48:39
Speaker 3: season to support hunters and landowners harvesting more deer? And
48:44
Speaker 3: so that's where we are today. It's like re-engaging, trying
48:47
Speaker 3: to have new conversations with folks to say, this is
48:50
Speaker 3: a reality we've, we've just got to address like all
48:53
Speaker 3: other sources of things that kill deer. How do we
48:57
Speaker 3: recognize this in the kind of the broader deer management landscape?
49:01
Speaker 1: Your move in some circles, um, In some circles, your
49:07
Speaker 1: move was that, was treated as Missouri has decided to, again,
49:17
Speaker 1: they've decided just to let it rip.
49:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's not true.
49:22
Speaker 3: I think it's a realization that the disease has been
49:26
Speaker 3: introduced into our state enough times and we had enough
49:29
Speaker 3: areas that our ability to have enough pressure and impact
49:34
Speaker 3: on the population at the local scale, the way we
49:36
Speaker 3: were doing it, was getting extremely diluted. And it was
49:41
Speaker 3: causing A lot of additional mistrust, a lot of additional concerns.
49:46
Speaker 3: So if you're not going to be effective and all
49:48
Speaker 3: you're doing is pissing people off, doesn't seem like that's
49:51
Speaker 3: the path you ought to continue to charge down. And
49:54
Speaker 3: so this last winter, we went back out, myself and
49:58
Speaker 3: others went back out and had a lot of conversations
50:00
Speaker 3: with folks that help us understand where you are.
50:03
Speaker 2: What are you willing to do?
50:04
Speaker 3: What do you want to work together to try to accomplish?
50:08
Speaker 3: This isn't just something the Missouri Department of Conservation is
50:10
Speaker 3: trying to force on you. we're going to determine the
50:13
Speaker 3: fate of the deer herd together. Because ultimately, hunters' willingness
50:18
Speaker 3: and ability to harvest deer is what dictates and regulates
50:21
Speaker 3: the deer population across the eastern U.S.
50:25
Speaker 1: What percentage, if you just take Missouri, what percentage of
50:28
Speaker 1: the state is, in your view, what percentage of the
50:35
Speaker 1: state is in a position where doing these Targeted removals,
50:42
Speaker 1: we're doing enhanced management strategies, won't be effective because the
50:46
Speaker 1: disease is so prevalent.
50:50
Speaker 3: Small area along the southern border and then a small
50:52
Speaker 3: area in St.
50:53
Speaker 2: Genevieve County, south of St. Louis. Okay. So, sub 25%? Oh, yeah. Yeah.
50:59
Speaker 3: Less than 5% of the landscape.
51:01
Speaker 2: Less than 5%? Yeah.
51:02
Speaker 3: That's the other thing is that we still got a
51:04
Speaker 3: lot of really healthy deer populations across the state.
51:07
Speaker 2: Right? We've got it in a number of spots.
51:09
Speaker 3: And when you start to put management zones on a
51:11
Speaker 3: map or you start imposing restrictions on feeding and things
51:17
Speaker 3: like that, carcass movement, it starts to make it look
51:19
Speaker 3: like the whole state's covered up. But part of it's
51:24
Speaker 3: because we're slowly getting sparks everywhere. But in terms of
51:29
Speaker 3: kind of maybe above that tipping point, only a couple areas.
51:34
Speaker 1: One of the things that seems magical about CWD, Is
51:42
Speaker 1: the pop-up, the isolated positive pop-ups, the kind of out
51:49
Speaker 1: of nowhere spots, right? We talked about COVID earlier. You
51:55
Speaker 1: had air travel. So air travel made it that once
52:03
Speaker 1: COVID got cooking, you anticipated the weird pop-up spots and
52:07
Speaker 1: it became global.
52:08
Speaker 2: And you're like, well, why is it global? It's because
52:09
Speaker 2: humans move around. It's just a.
52:14
Speaker 1: Fundamentally different situation than you'd expect with deer, where deer.
52:18
Speaker 2: Aren't flying around. Okay? What is your understanding of when
52:28
Speaker 2: it jumps? Yeah, this is one of those places.
52:31
Speaker 1: And then you test and you find that there's a
52:33
Speaker 1: moat of negativity around a new positive.
52:36
Speaker 2: I traditionally....
52:42
Speaker 1: I traditionally would look at that and be like, that
52:45
Speaker 1: has to be captive servants. And I would also look
52:48
Speaker 1: and be like, I don't believe, I don't believe that
52:51
Speaker 1: it's some guy with a bottle of deer piss. I
52:54
Speaker 1: don't believe it's a guy who like, you know, boned
52:59
Speaker 1: out a deer and threw a shoulder blade out in his,
53:02
Speaker 1: in his ditch.
53:04
Speaker 2: And all of a sudden now.
53:05
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of CWD positive deer. I'm like, I
53:07
Speaker 1: don't think, like, I can't even tell you why. Just
53:10
Speaker 1: my biases, where my head would work, I would say
53:14
Speaker 1: to myself, it's not a deer pee, it's not a
53:17
Speaker 1: bottle of deer pee.
53:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm right there with you, Steve. But I'm not,
53:22
Speaker 2: I don't think I'm right.
53:23
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, like, where, how a person's head works
53:28
Speaker 1: and how their assumptions go, like, that's where I would
53:31
Speaker 1: fall in years past. as I would be like, there's no,
53:35
Speaker 1: it wasn't this, you know, that, that whole thing for
53:37
Speaker 1: a while that once you cut a deer up on
53:40
Speaker 1: a cutting board, the cutting board, unless you melt it
53:43
Speaker 1: with an oxyacetylene torch, it'll always be. I'm like, yeah,
53:47
Speaker 1: that's not spreading CWD.
53:49
Speaker 3: Right.
53:49
Speaker 2: I don't know why, but I just know that it's not. Right.
53:52
Speaker 3: And, and that's where, you know, my thoughts on it
53:54
Speaker 3: have evolved some too, right. Through time as to what,
53:57
Speaker 3: what really is driving this?
53:59
Speaker 2: And one of the reasons, yeah, the ones where it
54:01
Speaker 2: jumps the border. Yeah.
54:02
Speaker 3: And, and part of that is because folks, folks outside
54:05
Speaker 3: of Missouri have, have, have been asked us like, well,
54:08
Speaker 3: what's going on in Missouri? Right. Because we do have
54:12
Speaker 3: like a number of these, what very much would appear
54:15
Speaker 3: to be probably independent introductions of the disease.
54:19
Speaker 2: Yeah. But I agree with you.
54:21
Speaker 3: There's this thing that we haven't quite figured out and it's,
54:24
Speaker 3: and it's what is an infectious dose? So how much
54:28
Speaker 3: of the prions does an animal actually have to get
54:31
Speaker 3: that results in them getting infected at a point where
54:35
Speaker 3: they become a CWD afflicted animal?
54:37
Speaker 2: Yes.
54:38
Speaker 3: And so the things that you're describing are all on
54:40
Speaker 3: that spectrum of.
54:44
Speaker 2: A carcass.
54:45
Speaker 3: I've had folks worried about hiking in Rocky Mountain National
54:49
Speaker 3: Park and then coming home. I'm like, if you're dragging
54:51
Speaker 3: it in the dirt on your boots... it would be everywhere, right?
54:57
Speaker 2: That's why it just seems like such nonsense.
54:59
Speaker 3: If you drove through a pasture and then drove across
55:01
Speaker 3: somebody else's pasture, that is not the way this is spreading.
55:06
Speaker 2: I had an awkward, sorry to interrupt, but I had
55:10
Speaker 2: an awkward conversation. I don't want to name the name.
55:14
Speaker 1: I had an awkward conversation with someone one time, and
55:17
Speaker 1: I was saying, you guys got to stop.
55:21
Speaker 2: With the cutting board. like the cutting board stuff, you
55:26
Speaker 2: got to stop. I felt the same way. You were
55:30
Speaker 2: creating a level of fear and hysteria, but you have
55:35
Speaker 2: no ability to back this up. Yeah, I felt the
55:39
Speaker 2: same way. You got to stop telling people that.
55:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, I felt the same way about some of the
55:44
Speaker 3: urine conversations. And again, not to say that we haven't
55:49
Speaker 3: gotten to a much better place with that, If you're
55:52
Speaker 3: a far away place like Alaska, like the likelihood of
55:56
Speaker 3: the disease getting there through the live importation of an
55:59
Speaker 3: animal is nearly zero. Like nobody's likely to carry a
56:03
Speaker 3: carcass all the way to Alaska.
56:05
Speaker 2: And introduce it there.
56:06
Speaker 3: And the, like, this is one more hole in the
56:10
Speaker 3: bucket that you could, would, could close then.
56:13
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Right.
56:14
Speaker 3: Like completely understand it. But if you're in the Eastern
56:16
Speaker 3: U S and, the biggest fight that you're doing now
56:20
Speaker 3: is over whether we ought to do urine based bands.
56:24
Speaker 3: There's other higher risk activities.
56:27
Speaker 2: That are occurring on the landscape. It feels like a distraction.
56:30
Speaker 2: How do you, yeah.
56:31
Speaker 3: How do you have the conversation about what really matters
56:33
Speaker 3: and what's really impactful?
56:35
Speaker 2: Got it.
56:35
Speaker 3: Um, and in some cases, you know, it's not disparaging
56:38
Speaker 3: to my colleagues in, in other States, they pulled the levers.
56:42
Speaker 3: They felt like they had authority and public will to,
56:47
Speaker 3: to pull.
56:48
Speaker 2: Hmm. Whereas some of these other ones are really hard. Yeah. Okay.
56:52
Speaker 1: So, so get, get back into what you're saying about
56:55
Speaker 1: what is going on when one jumps the line.
57:00
Speaker 2: Yeah.
57:00
Speaker 3: So I think early on it very much was, and,
57:04
Speaker 3: and could likely have been pointed to captive servants, moving
57:08
Speaker 3: the disease across the landscape.
57:09
Speaker 2: Okay. I mean, we knew that, right?
57:11
Speaker 3: Like it was in elk well before we understood what
57:15
Speaker 3: was happening. It doesn't show up in Toronto in the
57:18
Speaker 3: zoo randomly. It got moved in there by an elk.
57:22
Speaker 3: It got moved to South Korea in an elk, right?
57:25
Speaker 3: So we know those things were absolutely happening.
57:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, it wasn't a cutting board. It wasn't a cutting board, right?
57:32
Speaker 3: It's the whole biological package moving around. And so I
57:37
Speaker 3: think that's absolutely true. But then what I don't think
57:41
Speaker 3: we appreciated soon enough is, was that hunters likely were
57:45
Speaker 3: unintentionally moving it around too.
57:47
Speaker 2: Okay. And in the form of carcasses. You think so?
57:50
Speaker 3: I do think so. I don't know how else we
57:52
Speaker 3: would explain that it has moved to other places the
57:57
Speaker 3: way that it has. Is that right?
58:00
Speaker 2: Yeah.
58:00
Speaker 1: You feel fairly confident. I know you can't say for
58:03
Speaker 1: certain because we don't have that understanding yet. You feel
58:07
Speaker 1: fairly confident that there has been movement of non-live, that
58:15
Speaker 1: you've had infections come from something other than contact with
58:22
Speaker 1: a living, breathing deer?
58:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so. I think it's completely reasonable.
58:28
Speaker 2: Okay.
58:28
Speaker 3: But it's not just the, hey, I went to Colorado
58:31
Speaker 3: and hunted west and dumped one carcass on my property.
58:34
Speaker 2: Okay.
58:35
Speaker 3: I likely think it's folks who were very consistently doing.
58:41
Speaker 2: Or doing it as a taxidermist. Doing what?
58:43
Speaker 3: That we're consistent. Hey, we go to Colorado every year
58:46
Speaker 3: and shoot mule deer and we bring them home every year.
58:48
Speaker 2: Right?
58:48
Speaker 3: Like in a way that you concentrate enough material or
58:52
Speaker 3: you concentrate enough of that material in a particular spot.
58:55
Speaker 3: I think that's the only way that you can reasonably
58:58
Speaker 3: explain how it's jumped.
59:00
Speaker 2: Really? Yeah.
59:01
Speaker 3: Either that or it was so prevalent in captive cervids
59:05
Speaker 3: way beyond what we believe it was.
59:08
Speaker 2: Yeah.
59:09
Speaker 3: And that, that there were more captive cervids on the
59:12
Speaker 3: landscape than we appreciate. And they didn't have to be
59:14
Speaker 3: there very long for them to create an infection, which
59:16
Speaker 3: I just don't think is necessarily true, but it's the,
59:19
Speaker 3: definitely the first one that folks jump to. They want
59:22
Speaker 3: to say, oh, well, there used to be an old
59:23
Speaker 3: deer pen down this road. Well, now they were there
59:26
Speaker 3: for like five years. We don't know what happened. Um,
59:31
Speaker 3: It gets really touchy as to whether that's the real
59:34
Speaker 3: source of it moving around. But I think it's not
59:38
Speaker 3: so easy that carrying dirt on your boots or pouring
59:43
Speaker 3: pee on the ground is the most likely way that
59:45
Speaker 3: it happens. But I don't think it is so hard
59:48
Speaker 3: that it has to be a live animal.
59:50
Speaker 2: Really? Yeah. Right?
59:51
Speaker 3: So it's somewhere in between there that I don't think
59:55
Speaker 3: we understand it.
59:56
Speaker 2: Because you don't understand how much dose it takes. Right, exactly.
59:58
Speaker 2: Is anybody looking at how much dose it takes?
1:00:01
Speaker 3: There have been a number of trials trying to look
1:00:03
Speaker 3: at it, and it's only until more recently that we've
1:00:07
Speaker 3: been able to quantify how much prions are even in something.
1:00:14
Speaker 3: So only with the modern techniques. All of our diagnostic
1:00:17
Speaker 3: stuff was just detected or not detected.
1:00:20
Speaker 2: Yep.
1:00:20
Speaker 3: Not quantify how many prions are in saliva or urine.
1:00:26
Speaker 2: Okay. Or, you know, bone or the muscle tissue. Yeah.
1:00:31
Speaker 3: And all that depends, likely depends on the stage of
1:00:34
Speaker 3: progression of any individual animal.
1:00:36
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:00:36
Speaker 3: As to how far along the disease progression is. So
1:00:39
Speaker 3: it's just a super complicated one that I don't know
1:00:42
Speaker 3: that we'll get to.
1:00:43
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's like, it's totally different.
1:00:45
Speaker 1: I don't in any way want to conflate it, but
1:00:47
Speaker 1: I remember looking at, completely different. It's not a prion disease,
1:00:53
Speaker 1: completely different. I remember looking at like, like trichinella.
1:00:56
Speaker 2: Larva, right?
1:00:59
Speaker 1: There's a number per unit of weight and you can
1:01:03
Speaker 1: measure like how infected a tissue is with trichinella larva,
1:01:07
Speaker 1: which gives, which brings about trichinosis be like, there are
1:01:10
Speaker 1: blank larva per blank ounces. And there's things that are
1:01:15
Speaker 1: very infected and there's things that are not very infected, right? Is,
1:01:21
Speaker 1: Is it– with a deer, is there a thing like that,
1:01:25
Speaker 1: that there's a deer that really has it and a
1:01:27
Speaker 1: deer that kind of has it and a deer that
1:01:29
Speaker 1: doesn't really have it?
1:01:30
Speaker 3: You talk to pathologists, and they– yes. And that's that
1:01:34
Speaker 3: stage of progression of the disease.
1:01:37
Speaker 2: But there's no way to measure, like, the thing. Not
1:01:41
Speaker 2: that I'm, that's a whole nother realm. This person is
1:01:44
Speaker 2: riddled with cancer. Right. They have cancer in their lymph nodes.
1:01:49
Speaker 2: And this person kind of barely has cancer. Well, we
1:01:51
Speaker 2: do see this though. Okay. We do see this.
1:01:53
Speaker 3: And you see it, one of the reasons why we
1:01:57
Speaker 3: shifted the tissues that we test.
1:01:59
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:01:59
Speaker 3: In the early 2000s, you had to test the OBEX.
1:02:01
Speaker 3: It was believed that that was a gold standard. Had
1:02:03
Speaker 3: to test the OBEX.
1:02:04
Speaker 2: What is that? Base of the brain. Okay.
1:02:06
Speaker 3: That's where the prions were accumulating.
1:02:08
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:02:08
Speaker 3: That's where they were seeing it in mule deer and elk. Well,
1:02:11
Speaker 3: through looking at other tissues, what they recognize is that
1:02:14
Speaker 3: it actually accumulates in the lymph nodes, especially the medial
1:02:18
Speaker 3: retropharyngeal lymph nodes, like the ones that sit right up here.
1:02:21
Speaker 2: Yep.
1:02:22
Speaker 3: Which, again, suggests some sort of an ingestion of the
1:02:25
Speaker 3: prions as part of that pathway. So what you'll see
1:02:28
Speaker 3: is when they do necropsies of animals that are in
1:02:31
Speaker 3: really early stages versus very late stages, you'll see progression
1:02:35
Speaker 3: of that disease through different tissues.
1:02:37
Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah.
1:02:38
Speaker 3: And the presence of them in different tissues as a
1:02:40
Speaker 3: result of that. But that's like internal spread.
1:02:43
Speaker 2: Right. Right. Like that's, that's it running its course. Right.
1:02:48
Speaker 1: And once, I guess it's kind of a little bit
1:02:52
Speaker 1: ties into, it'd be like once a deer gets some.
1:02:59
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:03:00
Speaker 1: Once it's detectable in a deer somewhere, it's a matter
1:03:04
Speaker 1: of course that as far as we know, It's a
1:03:07
Speaker 1: matter of course that that.
1:03:09
Speaker 2: Disease will spread. Yeah. Throughout his body. Yes.
1:03:12
Speaker 1: Meaning he never gets, you know when you think you're
1:03:14
Speaker 1: getting a cold and you swear you're getting a cold,
1:03:17
Speaker 1: but then all of a sudden the next day you're like, oh,
1:03:19
Speaker 1: it didn't take.
1:03:21
Speaker 2: Right. Or whatever, you know what I mean? Right. Like
1:03:24
Speaker 2: I beat it. I don't know. I didn't get it.
1:03:26
Speaker 2: I never got sick. This isn't a thing with CWD.
1:03:29
Speaker 2: As far as we know.
1:03:30
Speaker 3: As far as we know, that is absolutely the case.
1:03:33
Speaker 2: Its immune system can't beat it.
1:03:35
Speaker 3: There is no immune response to prions. The body recognizes
1:03:41
Speaker 3: them as a protein. That's all it recognizes it as.
1:03:45
Speaker 3: It doesn't recognize it as some foreign body that needs
1:03:47
Speaker 3: to be attacked. So you don't get any sort of
1:03:50
Speaker 3: an immune response. So discussions around vaccines and treatments and
1:03:55
Speaker 3: all that kind of stuff, It's like a lot of
1:03:57
Speaker 3: other neurological diseases in people and animals otherwise. There's no
1:04:01
Speaker 3: reversing the course of it. And so with advanced testing
1:04:06
Speaker 3: techniques where we're able to detect them kind of in
1:04:08
Speaker 3: those earlier stages, which is what's allowed there to be
1:04:12
Speaker 3: an understanding of the in utero transmission. So a fetus
1:04:17
Speaker 3: can actually get. from a heavily infected female, right?
1:04:21
Speaker 2: Can or cannot? They can.
1:04:23
Speaker 3: Like they're just now starting to be able to demonstrate that.
1:04:27
Speaker 2: So that fawn hits the ground with CWD. Right.
1:04:30
Speaker 3: And if they're born to an infected female, even if
1:04:33
Speaker 3: they don't hit the ground infected, through all the social
1:04:35
Speaker 3: grooming and all those kinds of things, the likelihood that
1:04:38
Speaker 3: they will then be infected is extremely high.
1:04:42
Speaker 2: Got it. Got it. That a little bit answers that
1:04:45
Speaker 2: question of mine about.
1:04:48
Speaker 1: Again, so much of my understanding about disease comes from
1:04:53
Speaker 1: thinking of things that are pathogens. Or not pathogens, but
1:04:57
Speaker 1: viruses and bacterial infections. That it doesn't make you well-equipped
1:05:02
Speaker 1: to understand a prion disease.
1:05:03
Speaker 3: It's so different, right? Yeah, because we think, oh, well,
1:05:06
Speaker 3: they'll just develop resistance to it. We'll figure out some
1:05:09
Speaker 3: other way to deal with it. We talk about hemorrhagic
1:05:11
Speaker 3: disease in that same way. That's the deer disease everybody
1:05:14
Speaker 3: knows about.
1:05:15
Speaker 2: Well, it's a virus.
1:05:17
Speaker 3: Deer develop antibodies to it. They provide protection. They're able
1:05:20
Speaker 3: to push those antibodies. A female that gets infected is
1:05:23
Speaker 3: able to push those antibodies through her colostrum to her fawns,
1:05:26
Speaker 3: which gives them protection, right? That is not known to
1:05:30
Speaker 3: happen with CWD because the body doesn't recognize it in
1:05:34
Speaker 3: that same way. And yeah, I think it in and
1:05:36
Speaker 3: of itself is a huge communication challenge because we think
1:05:39
Speaker 3: of it in our typical disease or pathogen-based approaches.
1:05:44
Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought up Blue Tongue and EHD. Because
1:05:50
Speaker 1: I feel like the people I talk to and the
1:05:55
Speaker 1: people I kind of follow who would tip on the
1:06:00
Speaker 1: CWD that on the spectrum of people's perception of CWD,
1:06:06
Speaker 1: of hunters and deer enthusiasts, that would be if from lookers,
1:06:13
Speaker 1: if you imagine this spectrum and from lookers the looker's
1:06:17
Speaker 1: right perspective being the sky is falling.
1:06:20
Speaker 2: The end of the world is nigh.
1:06:23
Speaker 1: On the extreme of looker's left, which I will call,
1:06:30
Speaker 1: and I don't mean to diminish the perspective, but I
1:06:34
Speaker 1: would call it like the CWD denier end. But what
1:06:38
Speaker 1: it means to be a CWD denier has evolved over
1:06:41
Speaker 1: the quarter century that we're talking about.
1:06:44
Speaker 2: It's evolved. It went from, it's not actually a thing.
1:06:48
Speaker 2: It's make-believe. To, it is a thing. Probably always been there.
1:06:55
Speaker 2: It's a thing. And there's emerged in this end of it,
1:07:02
Speaker 2: not as bad as the HD. Yeah.
1:07:06
Speaker 1: Like, why are we talking about CD? Why are we
1:07:08
Speaker 1: not talking about HD? And there's kind of become this
1:07:11
Speaker 1: rhetorical strategy they use. of all of a sudden being
1:07:17
Speaker 1: hyper-focused on EHD die-offs, how bad EHD is, as a
1:07:23
Speaker 1: way to sort of demonstrate these people, the eggheads, are
1:07:28
Speaker 1: missing the story. There's an EHD story. EHD comes and
1:07:34
Speaker 1: kills all the damn deer, but it's fine because they
1:07:38
Speaker 1: come back. Why are you guys so focused on this
1:07:41
Speaker 1: CWD thing? This is what's killing deer. Yeah, because they
1:07:44
Speaker 1: come back. Yeah, that's the big difference. We've been dealing
1:07:48
Speaker 1: with EHD outbreaks. The best you can track back is
1:07:51
Speaker 1: kind of the early 1900s. There were reports of late
1:07:54
Speaker 1: fall unexplained deer mortalities that we believe probably was some
1:07:59
Speaker 1: of the first indications of it. But yeah, and in Missouri,
1:08:04
Speaker 1: from anywhere a seven to ten year cycle of an
1:08:09
Speaker 1: EHD outbreak, that we've been dealing with through time. And
1:08:13
Speaker 1: those populations recover. Three to five years, very localized in impact.
1:08:17
Speaker 1: Like I was describing, passing on of antibodies.
1:08:21
Speaker 3: They get the disease, doesn't kill all of them despite
1:08:25
Speaker 3: the belief that some have. It can be extremely lethal,
1:08:28
Speaker 3: especially where they're really naive to it and haven't been
1:08:31
Speaker 3: previously exposed. But the pattern of EHD is changing too.
1:08:35
Speaker 2: Is it?
1:08:35
Speaker 3: In terms of where we see it and how we
1:08:37
Speaker 3: see it. In the South, EHD is present or one
1:08:42
Speaker 3: of the hemorrhagic diseases are present in the midge flies
1:08:45
Speaker 3: kind of there all the time. And so a lot
1:08:49
Speaker 3: of those southern latitudes, the times that you see more
1:08:53
Speaker 3: significant outbreaks is when kind of presence of the antibody
1:08:57
Speaker 3: starts to dip. And then you'll get a little bump
1:09:00
Speaker 3: in mortality, but you'll have sick deer all the time.
1:09:02
Speaker 3: Like nearly every year. In a lot of the southern states,
1:09:05
Speaker 3: they'll have deer die of EHD.
1:09:07
Speaker 1: And that's an area, that would be an area where
1:09:10
Speaker 1: there's been EHD for.
1:09:11
Speaker 2: A long time.
1:09:11
Speaker 3: Long time. Been there for a long time. And what
1:09:14
Speaker 3: I think we're seeing is we're seeing that line drift north.
1:09:17
Speaker 3: Because Missouri, we used to have just massive outbreaks. 1987, 1997,
1:09:24
Speaker 3: 2012 was unbelievable. I bet we lost a quarter of
1:09:30
Speaker 3: a million deer statewide.
1:09:32
Speaker 2: Is that right?
1:09:33
Speaker 3: It was awful. And across much of the Midwest. But
1:09:37
Speaker 3: most of the time, it's in a corner of a county.
1:09:42
Speaker 3: Or it's two parts of a county. And yeah, a
1:09:45
Speaker 3: lot of sick deer everywhere. And a number of them die.
1:09:47
Speaker 3: Ohio made the news last year, right? Small area of
1:09:50
Speaker 3: southeastern Ohio. I say small area, but an area in
1:09:53
Speaker 3: southeastern Ohio. Really significant mortality.
1:09:57
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:09:57
Speaker 3: But in almost every scenario, you shoot a few less
1:10:00
Speaker 3: does for a couple of years, deer population respond and recover.
1:10:04
Speaker 3: And what often folks see is that they actually see
1:10:07
Speaker 3: a little bit better buck production in those next couple
1:10:09
Speaker 3: of years.
1:10:09
Speaker 2: Oh, is that right?
1:10:10
Speaker 3: Because there's less social stress. There's less nutritional stress on them.
1:10:13
Speaker 2: Yeah. And they respond.
1:10:15
Speaker 3: But what we're seeing is now as weather patterns and
1:10:18
Speaker 3: climate's changing a little bit, we see the massive impacts
1:10:23
Speaker 3: of EHD occurring even farther north.
1:10:25
Speaker 2: In places it hadn't dealt with before.
1:10:26
Speaker 3: In places it had not dealt with it before. And
1:10:30
Speaker 3: so it is more dramatic. It is a little scarier.
1:10:34
Speaker 3: But it gets back to that conversation we started on
1:10:36
Speaker 3: is to you individually, it has a heck of an impact.
1:10:40
Speaker 3: If you've been getting a bachelor group of bucks on
1:10:43
Speaker 3: camera and they're all dead. you know, like that, then yeah,
1:10:48
Speaker 3: it has a real direct impact, but that happens.
1:10:50
Speaker 2: You go to a dirt tank and there, there, they
1:10:51
Speaker 2: all floating in the dirt tank.
1:10:53
Speaker 3: But that happens once a decade at most. Um, we
1:10:57
Speaker 3: had a research project a number of years ago in
1:10:59
Speaker 3: which had a bunch of deer collared, this before I
1:11:01
Speaker 3: worked at the department, had a bunch of deer collared
1:11:04
Speaker 3: and they think they lost somewhere between seven and 10%
1:11:06
Speaker 3: of those collared deer to a fall EHD outbreak. Never
1:11:10
Speaker 3: got a single report from the public of a sick
1:11:14
Speaker 3: or dead deer. So it's something that's kind of always happening.
1:11:17
Speaker 2: I see.
1:11:18
Speaker 3: It kind of happens in the background. A deer disappears
1:11:20
Speaker 3: and you don't know why. But we definitely get pulses.
1:11:23
Speaker 3: And so I'm not discounting the fact that EHD can
1:11:27
Speaker 3: have a huge impact on populations. It's that we can
1:11:30
Speaker 3: then regulate that through backing off of antlerless harvest for
1:11:33
Speaker 3: a few years. We can do something about that. CWD
1:11:37
Speaker 3: is just going to slowly take more and more of
1:11:39
Speaker 3: the deer population.
1:11:40
Speaker 2: Got it.
1:11:40
Speaker 1: So you view these two things as just like fundamentally
1:11:44
Speaker 1: different conversations.
1:11:44
Speaker 3: Fundamentally operating very differently from a population dynamic standpoint. I mean,
1:11:49
Speaker 3: I think about it in the same way that if
1:11:51
Speaker 3: a new predator gets introduced onto the landscape, right, that
1:11:54
Speaker 3: imposes a new mortality factor. As those populations increase, what's
1:11:59
Speaker 3: the impact of that on the deer population, the ability
1:12:02
Speaker 3: of that deer population to grow? CWD is the same way.
1:12:05
Speaker 2: It's now there.
1:12:07
Speaker 3: It absolutely kills deer. It's going to kill older age
1:12:10
Speaker 3: class deer disproportionately, which is going to make your age
1:12:13
Speaker 3: structure a lot younger. And it's going to make it less,
1:12:17
Speaker 3: less resilient. And the ability of it to thrive will
1:12:21
Speaker 3: just be sort of topped off.
1:12:26
Speaker 1: Crystal ball for me, if you're comfortable, what, Let's go
1:12:32
Speaker 1: down to that. What percentage of the state did you
1:12:35
Speaker 1: say it's just like?
1:12:37
Speaker 2: I would say 5%.
1:12:37
Speaker 1: Okay, 5% of Missouri is there's diminished public will to
1:12:44
Speaker 1: address it or a lack of public will to get
1:12:46
Speaker 1: aggressive about it. Percentages are high enough that the tools
1:12:50
Speaker 1: that you have at your disposal have become not really helpful, right? Um,
1:12:58
Speaker 1: and you could picture the same thing with, with other issues.
1:13:01
Speaker 1: Like I remember, uh, just that we keep going back
1:13:04
Speaker 1: to these COVID things. I remember one of the greatest
1:13:06
Speaker 1: emails I ever got from our public school system here
1:13:10
Speaker 1: in Bozeman was, um, when they finally like we're throwing
1:13:13
Speaker 1: in the towel on it, we got an email cause
1:13:16
Speaker 1: for a while they're trying to track, you know, little
1:13:18
Speaker 1: Johnny had it. And so little Johnny doesn't, you know,
1:13:21
Speaker 1: can't go to school. And eventually they, we got an email.
1:13:25
Speaker 2: That said, if your kid goes to school, consider them
1:13:29
Speaker 2: a direct exposure right we're done we're done they all
1:13:34
Speaker 2: got it it's like we're done we've done what we
1:13:36
Speaker 2: can yeah we.
1:13:37
Speaker 1: Tried all that stuff sending johnny home he can't come
1:13:39
Speaker 1: and at this point it's just if your kid goes
1:13:42
Speaker 1: to school they're direct exposure we're not telling anybody anymore
1:13:45
Speaker 1: like we're done because whatever they had at their disposal
1:13:48
Speaker 1: they had like reached the end of public will and
1:13:52
Speaker 1: they reached the end of there was no tricks to
1:13:54
Speaker 1: try anymore it was just there it's they got to
1:13:58
Speaker 1: where it's like, it's like them having colds.
1:14:00
Speaker 2: It's like, it's just whatever we're done. We're done. We
1:14:02
Speaker 2: walked away.
1:14:04
Speaker 1: Um, very different than this disease, but like, it was
1:14:09
Speaker 1: like a public will thing. And you hit that in 5%
1:14:11
Speaker 1: of the state. You're done for kind of.
1:14:14
Speaker 2: Yeah. I suppose you could always go revisit it with
1:14:17
Speaker 2: some kind of new understanding. Right.
1:14:19
Speaker 1: But like, take that 5% in crystal ball. What, what,
1:14:27
Speaker 1: What does that area look like in 10 years? What
1:14:31
Speaker 1: does that area look like in 20 years minus some
1:14:34
Speaker 1: scientific breakthrough that I can't even picture what the breakthrough
1:14:37
Speaker 1: would be?
1:14:37
Speaker 2: I don't know what it would be. Yeah.
1:14:39
Speaker 3: So I think we're seeing, especially in Eastern whitetail deer populations,
1:14:42
Speaker 3: that trajectory push a little quicker than we may have thought.
1:14:47
Speaker 3: I may have thought it was going to take decades
1:14:49
Speaker 3: to play out.
1:14:50
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:14:50
Speaker 3: I think if you, because we have this, we have
1:14:53
Speaker 3: this opportunity now to kind of jump in the time machine.
1:14:56
Speaker 3: and say, oh, well, states are now finding it at,
1:15:00
Speaker 3: you know, 20, 25, 40% prevalence.
1:15:03
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:15:03
Speaker 3: And here's what they're seeing in these localized places, whether that's,
1:15:06
Speaker 3: you know, southwest Tennessee, northeast Mississippi, where they're going, wow,
1:15:12
Speaker 3: there just aren't as many deer here.
1:15:15
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:15:15
Speaker 3: And what's happening, right? Like, mortality is ramping up. Not
1:15:19
Speaker 3: as many deer, and it's not because we're sharpshooting them.
1:15:21
Speaker 3: And it's not because we're sharpshooting them, because in a
1:15:23
Speaker 3: lot of those places, it's It was farther progressed than
1:15:27
Speaker 3: they ever understood it to be.
1:15:29
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:15:30
Speaker 3: In terms of kind of low surveillance and kind of
1:15:33
Speaker 3: low diligence.
1:15:34
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:15:35
Speaker 3: So I think what plays out is that you lose
1:15:37
Speaker 3: the older age structure of bucks because most of them
1:15:40
Speaker 3: become infected and die at a relatively early age.
1:15:45
Speaker 2: And you have a younger age.
1:15:46
Speaker 1: Are you saying you think what plays out or is
1:15:48
Speaker 1: it like, does that seem like.
1:15:50
Speaker 3: That seems like that's what's playing out.
1:15:53
Speaker 2: Like. Yes. Okay. Not, it's not theoretical.
1:15:56
Speaker 3: No, it's not theoretical because you can look at the
1:15:58
Speaker 3: harvest data from like Eastern Wyoming and Eastern Colorado.
1:16:01
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:16:01
Speaker 3: And age structure is absolutely shifted. They're shooting far fewer
1:16:06
Speaker 3: older age class bucks. Okay. So there's just fewer deer
1:16:09
Speaker 3: on the landscape. The herd is younger because of that.
1:16:14
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:16:14
Speaker 3: The primary mortality is killing deer at older age class.
1:16:18
Speaker 3: CWD is the primary factor drive mortality. So it's killing
1:16:21
Speaker 3: deer at older ages.
1:16:22
Speaker 2: Like CWD has passed up cars. It's passed up hunters.
1:16:26
Speaker 2: Pretty close to it. Yeah. Yeah.
1:16:29
Speaker 3: West Virginia's current research project, that's what they're demonstrating. CWD
1:16:32
Speaker 3: is like next to hunters. It's the next highest source.
1:16:36
Speaker 2: Okay. So it's number two to hunters.
1:16:38
Speaker 3: It's number two to hunters, but it might be there
1:16:41
Speaker 3: pretty quick.
1:16:43
Speaker 2: I see.
1:16:43
Speaker 3: In terms of once that population continues to draw itself
1:16:47
Speaker 3: down farther.
1:16:48
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:16:49
Speaker 3: So my concern is that, yeah, that opportunity for recreational
1:16:52
Speaker 3: harvest gets diminished. Every deer that gets killed by a
1:16:55
Speaker 3: CWD is a deer a hunter can't kill and eat
1:16:58
Speaker 3: and enjoy and appreciate, right? So the number of deer
1:17:01
Speaker 3: on the landscape would just be fewer.
1:17:03
Speaker 2: Do you feel that CWD, because earlier you mentioned like
1:17:10
Speaker 2: a buck, a mature buck is the most likely deer
1:17:13
Speaker 2: within a population to get CWD. Probably because he travels more.
1:17:16
Speaker 2: I don't know. He's around more.
1:17:19
Speaker 1: Does CWD kill big bucks at a higher rate than
1:17:22
Speaker 1: hunters kill big bucks?
1:17:24
Speaker 2: Do you know what I'm saying?
1:17:25
Speaker 1: Like if we're looking at a population, like whatever, there's
1:17:27
Speaker 1: a population of, there's a population where hunters are killing 13, 14, 20%
1:17:32
Speaker 1: of the deer and blank percent of those are big bucks.
1:17:37
Speaker 1: And then within that same population, CWD kills 13, 14, 20%
1:17:43
Speaker 1: of the deer. Is it whacking off more bucks than hunters? Like,
1:17:47
Speaker 1: is it better at selecting bucks than hunters are? Well,
1:17:52
Speaker 1: there's some interesting data. If you look at The long-term
1:17:57
Speaker 1: research Wisconsin has done.
1:17:58
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:18:00
Speaker 3: It's fascinating. And what they've been able to do is
1:18:03
Speaker 3: through time track deer that not detect positive and then
1:18:08
Speaker 3: deer that have been positive, right? Separate them out into
1:18:11
Speaker 3: those two groups. During the fall hunting season, you see
1:18:15
Speaker 3: a disproportionately high number of CWD-infected deer get shot. Oh.
1:18:20
Speaker 3: Like the mortality on CWD-infected deer through hunter-harvest is substantially
1:18:26
Speaker 3: higher than the mortality of an uninfected deer.
1:18:29
Speaker 2: Like they're easier to dupe? Yeah, right?
1:18:31
Speaker 3: And so I think in ways can send this perception, well,
1:18:34
Speaker 3: we're still shooting a lot of nice antlered bucks, right? Well,
1:18:38
Speaker 3: you're shooting the slower three-and-a-half and four-and-a-half-year-old bucks. But at
1:18:43
Speaker 3: some point, CWD will just crop them off. And the
1:18:47
Speaker 3: proportion of them that are infected that are going to
1:18:49
Speaker 3: survive to then.
1:18:50
Speaker 2: Fall is going to be really low. I mean, a deer,
1:18:53
Speaker 2: the progression of the disease... This is prophecy.
1:18:57
Speaker 3: I think it's just a numbers game.
1:18:58
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:18:59
Speaker 3: Right? It's like, how much infection do you have and
1:19:01
Speaker 3: how many deer are infected? Is a deer itself infected?
1:19:05
Speaker 2: Because.
1:19:07
Speaker 3: The data certainly suggests that 18 to 24 months post-infection
1:19:11
Speaker 3: that we can detect, a deer's dead. It finally goes
1:19:14
Speaker 3: through the process and succumbs to the disease. So if
1:19:17
Speaker 3: you've got a two-and-a-half-year-old buck that is CWD positive, the
1:19:21
Speaker 3: odds of him making it to four-and-a-half are extremely low.
1:19:26
Speaker 3: That just isn't going to happen. And so that's going
1:19:31
Speaker 3: to crop it off. Hunters are going to kill some
1:19:33
Speaker 3: of those in the meantime.
1:19:34
Speaker 2: Yeah. Right.
1:19:35
Speaker 3: And those are the CWD positives when we remove through
1:19:38
Speaker 3: hunter harvest.
1:19:40
Speaker 1: Have you, are you aware of anyone or is this
1:19:43
Speaker 1: possible to fill a research facility with a bunch of
1:19:54
Speaker 1: infected animals and take totally good care of them and
1:20:01
Speaker 1: just see what happens? Like, can this be done? Because
1:20:06
Speaker 1: what a way to either to demonstrate to the public
1:20:09
Speaker 1: or just like to support these ideas or disprove these
1:20:13
Speaker 1: ideas is you have a population in a fenced area
1:20:17
Speaker 1: with triple fence, whatever the hell you got to do.
1:20:19
Speaker 1: It might be just unethical to do this.
1:20:21
Speaker 2: I don't know.
1:20:23
Speaker 1: And within there, you're going to say like, no, we're
1:20:24
Speaker 1: going to put, we're going to have a hundred deer
1:20:26
Speaker 1: in here. And it's just balls out infested. They all
1:20:32
Speaker 1: got it. And we're going to take care of them.
1:20:35
Speaker 1: We're going to do all the things, and we're just
1:20:37
Speaker 1: going to watch. What happens to the age class within
1:20:41
Speaker 1: this population?
1:20:42
Speaker 2: Is that unethical?
1:20:44
Speaker 3: It's been done.
1:20:45
Speaker 2: And what happens in those situations? They die. And they
1:20:49
Speaker 2: don't make adults. They don't make, yeah, they don't make adults.
1:20:53
Speaker 2: It's just as a young population.
1:20:55
Speaker 3: It would be, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's been done.
1:20:58
Speaker 3: I mean, Colorado's been doing this kind of work for
1:21:01
Speaker 3: a long time. In terms of what does it mean
1:21:04
Speaker 3: to cause disease transmission? What's the progression of the disease?
1:21:07
Speaker 3: That's how we know 24, you know, 18 to 24
1:21:09
Speaker 3: months till clinical symptoms start to show up.
1:21:12
Speaker 2: That's how they die. This work's been done. Okay. So
1:21:15
Speaker 2: that's been done in a closely observed population, not wild animals. Yeah. Yeah.
1:21:19
Speaker 3: And a closely observed populations. And so this is part
1:21:21
Speaker 3: of that, like, well, there's no research. We don't know
1:21:23
Speaker 3: what's going on. No, we, we know a lot.
1:21:25
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:21:26
Speaker 3: A lot has been done. And this isn't just speculation
1:21:29
Speaker 3: as to what will happen. How the disease will progress
1:21:33
Speaker 3: and what some of these other questions are.
1:21:35
Speaker 1: But some of that reproduction just trickles on because you
1:21:39
Speaker 1: have some animals making it to two, three years old.
1:21:42
Speaker 2: Yeah. And they're dropping fawns.
1:21:43
Speaker 3: I think that's what does happen.
1:21:45
Speaker 2: Reproduction trickles on. Right. It will trickle on.
1:21:48
Speaker 3: And so long as young females will be responsible for
1:21:51
Speaker 3: a disproportionate amount of the reproduction.
1:21:53
Speaker 2: Got it.
1:21:54
Speaker 3: So your ability for that population to really grow and thrive.
1:21:58
Speaker 3: It's going to be based on the condition and ability
1:22:00
Speaker 3: of younger individuals. Whereas a four and a half, five
1:22:04
Speaker 3: and a half, six and a half year old adult female,
1:22:06
Speaker 3: really good mom, right? Like really highly likely to be
1:22:10
Speaker 3: able to produce two fawns, get them, you know, through
1:22:14
Speaker 3: the tough parts of early recruitment into the population. Younger females,
1:22:20
Speaker 3: not as good, right? Like they're more likely to only
1:22:23
Speaker 3: have a single fawn. more likely to have not both
1:22:26
Speaker 3: fawns survive to kind of recruitment into the fall population.
1:22:30
Speaker 2: And so it's just a.
1:22:31
Speaker 3: Real dampening of the population through time. And so that's
1:22:35
Speaker 3: the concern. As it gets younger, they're not able to
1:22:39
Speaker 3: withstand it.
1:22:40
Speaker 1: What's the highest prevalence you've seen in a wild population?
1:22:45
Speaker 3: So there are reports of adult males' prevalence in Alberta
1:22:51
Speaker 3: and Saskatchewan in the neighborhood of 75%.
1:22:54
Speaker 2: Really? Right. And you think.
1:22:56
Speaker 3: About that's likely got to be a population that's pretty
1:22:59
Speaker 3: heavily infected, which means that at some point the environment
1:23:04
Speaker 3: has become so infected that they just can't help but
1:23:06
Speaker 3: get it. They're interacting, engaging with one another. And then
1:23:10
Speaker 3: by the time they get to two and a half plus,
1:23:14
Speaker 3: they've been exposed. There's just no way around it.
1:23:17
Speaker 2: Got it.
1:23:18
Speaker 3: I don't know that that's how it plays out everywhere.
1:23:20
Speaker 3: And again, that's a little bit of the numbers game.
1:23:23
Speaker 3: I think some of their data is from adult males,
1:23:25
Speaker 3: but some of the stuff we're seeing from southeastern Wisconsin
1:23:28
Speaker 3: or southwest Wisconsin, 50% of the two-plus-year-old males and females
1:23:35
Speaker 3: have it.
1:23:35
Speaker 1: That's where my buddies that hunt in those hot areas
1:23:39
Speaker 1: down there, that's where my buddies are at. They're at
1:23:43
Speaker 1: some years. It's when you tally up all the bucks
1:23:47
Speaker 1: that everybody got in your social circle, when you tally
1:23:50
Speaker 1: them all up, and you're doing testing, it's going to
1:23:52
Speaker 1: be that more, the numbers vary, but it's going to
1:23:55
Speaker 1: be the assumption is half more than half of the
1:23:58
Speaker 1: bucks that the people in your community got were positive bucks.
1:24:03
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And that's the story.
1:24:05
Speaker 1: But within those bucks and here's the deal though, where
1:24:08
Speaker 1: they're at still within those boxes, some damn nice bucks.
1:24:11
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
1:24:12
Speaker 3: Because of whitetail in really good condition and great habitats
1:24:18
Speaker 3: like exist in Southwest Wisconsin. like exist across much of
1:24:22
Speaker 3: the Northern two thirds of Missouri, three and a half,
1:24:26
Speaker 3: four and a half with a little more food on landscape.
1:24:30
Speaker 3: Cause there's fewer deer. They do have some of that
1:24:33
Speaker 3: opportunity to express their potential.
1:24:36
Speaker 2: Yeah. Right.
1:24:36
Speaker 3: So you, you can still have bucks into older age.
1:24:39
Speaker 2: I mean, nice. Not old, but big. Yeah. But not
1:24:46
Speaker 2: as many either. Understood. Right. Yeah.
1:24:49
Speaker 1: What is your guys' take on this conversation that's going
1:24:55
Speaker 1: on now? I should call it a conversation that's going on.
1:24:58
Speaker 1: Research and other things suggesting that within the captive deer world,
1:25:09
Speaker 1: they're finding that some of these deer maybe aren't immune,
1:25:15
Speaker 1: but there's some segment of the population that it doesn't
1:25:20
Speaker 1: hit them as hard as quickly. And that through simple
1:25:28
Speaker 1: survival of the fittest, through classic Darwinian evolution, eventually will
1:25:36
Speaker 1: emerge this population of deer that it doesn't hit them
1:25:41
Speaker 1: as hard, it doesn't hit them as quick. Maybe they
1:25:44
Speaker 1: get it, but they do live to be six or
1:25:46
Speaker 1: seven years old by the time it takes them down.
1:25:49
Speaker 2: And that you could speed this.
1:25:53
Speaker 1: Up by pumping these deer into wild populations to be like, hey,
1:26:01
Speaker 1: it'll happen. It'll likely happen in time that there's going
1:26:06
Speaker 1: to be some deer that for whatever reason don't die
1:26:08
Speaker 1: in two years. They die in four. So part one
1:26:14
Speaker 1: of my question is, what do you think of that?
1:26:17
Speaker 1: Does that seem to be true or not? And then
1:26:20
Speaker 1: what do you think of the idea that you would
1:26:24
Speaker 1: speed this along or help this along by injecting these
1:26:28
Speaker 1: identified deer into wild populations?
1:26:31
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:26:31
Speaker 3: So we've known for some time that the 96 SS
1:26:37
Speaker 3: deer are, have a little higher survival, little less susceptible.
1:26:45
Speaker 2: To the disease.
1:26:45
Speaker 3: That's not, That's been known for a decade or two.
1:26:49
Speaker 2: What was the term you used? I never heard of it.
1:26:50
Speaker 2: It's 96SS. 96SS.
1:26:51
Speaker 3: So it's a prion protein coding gene.
1:26:56
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:26:57
Speaker 3: And again, I don't know that we know all of it,
1:26:59
Speaker 3: and you'd have to talk to a prion biologist and
1:27:02
Speaker 3: a geneticist to completely describe all of it.
1:27:05
Speaker 2: But they.
1:27:07
Speaker 3: Have a G or an S at the 96 codon.
1:27:11
Speaker 3: Those that are SS do appear to show delayed effects
1:27:16
Speaker 3: of the disease. And we've known that for some time.
1:27:18
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:27:19
Speaker 3: And the GG show the shortest duration of the disease.
1:27:24
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:27:24
Speaker 3: So if a 96 GG deer, let's say it has
1:27:28
Speaker 3: 18-month incubation, right? An SS might have 36-month incubation.
1:27:35
Speaker 2: Okay. Right.
1:27:36
Speaker 3: There is some timescale difference there. What exactly it is,
1:27:39
Speaker 3: I don't know.
1:27:40
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:27:40
Speaker 3: And there's some stuff published. They published in 2017 about this.
1:27:44
Speaker 3: And then the GS, through Darwinian selection, right, like the GS,
1:27:49
Speaker 3: somewhere in between.
1:27:50
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:27:50
Speaker 3: So having one of those S alleles gives it some greater,
1:27:56
Speaker 3: slower progression of the disease.
1:27:57
Speaker 2: Okay. Interestingly, though, a.
1:28:01
Speaker 3: Lot of the early survey work suggested that the presence
1:28:04
Speaker 3: of the S allele is relatively low in the wild populations.
1:28:08
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:28:09
Speaker 3: So it's rare for some reason, and we don't understand why.
1:28:14
Speaker 3: And some work done, like Colombian whitetails, it's not even present.
1:28:19
Speaker 3: Key deer, I don't believe it's even present. So there's
1:28:22
Speaker 3: some of these small, isolated populations where it's not even
1:28:25
Speaker 3: known to occur.
1:28:25
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:28:26
Speaker 3: So something through selection has kept that relatively low.
1:28:30
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:28:30
Speaker 3: If they're somehow a superior deer, something's kept them relatively low.
1:28:34
Speaker 3: But we just don't fully, completely understand what all the
1:28:36
Speaker 3: other attached survival impacts are.
1:28:39
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:28:40
Speaker 3: And this is work that's, I think, starting to come
1:28:44
Speaker 3: to light. And certainly Chris Seabury and his work on
1:28:47
Speaker 3: the genetic breeding value things that's been funded by USDA
1:28:51
Speaker 3: to try to understand what this looks like. So it
1:28:55
Speaker 3: has merit, right? And that we know that in scrapie, right?
1:29:00
Speaker 3: The way that we eradicated scrapie and sheep, or largely
1:29:03
Speaker 3: eradicated scrapie and sheep, was through very intensive breeding programs.
1:29:06
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:29:07
Speaker 3: In which they identify this delay or this resistance to
1:29:10
Speaker 3: the disease. It still pops back up.
1:29:13
Speaker 2: Yeah. It still comes back.
1:29:15
Speaker 3: But that's through very, very extensive animal husbandry kind of activities.
1:29:19
Speaker 2: Got it.
1:29:20
Speaker 3: Tracking lineages and being very intense in that breeding. So
1:29:24
Speaker 3: the ability for that to happen in a free-range population
1:29:27
Speaker 3: is fantastic. It's limited in the scope and scale. I
1:29:33
Speaker 3: would also say that I don't know that we can
1:29:37
Speaker 3: speed it up, and I don't know what speeding it
1:29:39
Speaker 3: up does. So they live longer, they spread more prions
1:29:44
Speaker 3: onto the landscape, which would probably advance the disease maybe quicker.
1:29:49
Speaker 1: So that's some of the questions that we have. Well,
1:29:51
Speaker 1: I think that what you're looking at is you're looking
1:29:56
Speaker 1: at that you've arrived at That a manager, such as yourself,
1:30:03
Speaker 1: arrives at an idea where they look back at the
1:30:05
Speaker 1: landscape and they look at the history and they arrive
1:30:09
Speaker 1: at a thing that this is always, it's a one-way trip.
1:30:14
Speaker 1: We can slow it, right? We've had a couple of victories.
1:30:18
Speaker 1: You mentioned New York went from being one state that
1:30:22
Speaker 1: at one point in time went from a positive to
1:30:24
Speaker 1: a negative state. There's been some victories. We can slow it,
1:30:28
Speaker 1: but You get to a point where you're like, there's really,
1:30:33
Speaker 1: when we're talking about decades, nothing anybody's going to do.
1:30:39
Speaker 2: It would be the last hope. Yeah, yeah.
1:30:42
Speaker 3: And I think it's a matter of how can through
1:30:47
Speaker 3: management and the way that we're shooting deer change the
1:30:50
Speaker 3: trajectory of the disease or change.
1:30:53
Speaker 2: Do we just got to let it play out? Yeah.
1:30:55
Speaker 3: And I think the way that we manage deer, we
1:30:57
Speaker 3: can change that end point by decades.
1:31:01
Speaker 2: Really?
1:31:01
Speaker 3: In terms of thinking about the way that we hunt deer,
1:31:04
Speaker 3: the way that we shoot them, but it's counter to
1:31:07
Speaker 3: where we are in a deer hunting culture today.
1:31:11
Speaker 2: I want to make you clarify your point. Management. Okay.
1:31:17
Speaker 2: If we, if we sit here and agree that, If
1:31:22
Speaker 2: we sit here and agree that if.
1:31:24
Speaker 1: We do nothing, if all testing and all everything stops
1:31:29
Speaker 1: right now, no management, no nothing, we never talk about
1:31:32
Speaker 1: CWD again. And we would say in a century, we
1:31:39
Speaker 1: land at like in a century, this country will just
1:31:43
Speaker 1: be like deer in.
1:31:45
Speaker 2: America are 50, 60, 70% positive for CWD. Are you
1:31:53
Speaker 2: uncomfortable with that statement? We do nothing. Yeah, if we
1:31:57
Speaker 2: do nothing. In 100 years. Oh, yeah. Okay.
1:32:00
Speaker 1: In 100 years in America, deer writ large are 50, 60, 70%.
1:32:06
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:32:07
Speaker 1: Do you feel that if we say like, no, no, no,
1:32:10
Speaker 1: we're going to manage, we're going to continue management, we're
1:32:15
Speaker 1: going to try to do what we can do, do
1:32:17
Speaker 1: you feel that in a century we could have a
1:32:20
Speaker 1: different result in a century's time.
1:32:23
Speaker 2: Yeah. Or do you think just in 10 or 20
1:32:25
Speaker 2: years we could make it be different?
1:32:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think, I think in decades we can make
1:32:28
Speaker 3: it be different. I don't know in a century, right?
1:32:30
Speaker 3: Like a century's crazy.
1:32:31
Speaker 2: It's crazy. Okay. Forget a century. But I think, yeah,
1:32:34
Speaker 2: I think decades for sure. Okay.
1:32:36
Speaker 3: And I think what's, what's starting to come together, there was,
1:32:39
Speaker 3: you know, Wyoming recently, the co-op unit recently published a
1:32:42
Speaker 3: paper looking at different trends and hunt units in, in
1:32:45
Speaker 3: Eastern Wyoming. based on buck harvest rates. And the West
1:32:49
Speaker 3: has really leaned into adaptive harvest management strategies about the
1:32:52
Speaker 3: timing of the seasons and what our buck harvest rates
1:32:54
Speaker 3: look like. And they've sort of plateaued in a few
1:32:56
Speaker 3: places where they had higher buck harvest rates. Are they
1:33:00
Speaker 3: turning the population over a little quicker? Are they suppressing
1:33:02
Speaker 3: some of the transmission as a result of that? So
1:33:04
Speaker 3: those are some of the questions we're asking about inherently
1:33:08
Speaker 3: the way that we hunt deer and the way that
1:33:10
Speaker 3: we turn the population over is that, are there things
1:33:14
Speaker 3: we can do that will help minimize prevalence well you're.
1:33:17
Speaker 1: Talking about even and this is i didn't know this
1:33:21
Speaker 1: is i imagine that in any given population it's always
1:33:30
Speaker 1: up prevalency is always up but you you're you're saying
1:33:35
Speaker 1: that you could have a given population and not like
1:33:37
Speaker 1: the new york example where maybe there's three deer that
1:33:39
Speaker 1: had and they killed them all but you're saying within
1:33:42
Speaker 1: a population there can be a down.
1:33:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, or it can be stable.
1:33:46
Speaker 2: Yeah. Or slowly growing.
1:33:50
Speaker 3: Yes, by having enough harvest on the population where you
1:33:54
Speaker 3: remove deer faster than they can get infected from other deer.
1:33:59
Speaker 3: And you have a higher likelihood of removing those positive
1:34:01
Speaker 3: individuals from the landscape. Yeah, no, it's played out through time.
1:34:04
Speaker 3: That's a lot of what Illinois' data suggests too. But
1:34:08
Speaker 3: once it does spread and if you don't stay on
1:34:10
Speaker 3: top of it long enough, then prevalence takes off. But
1:34:14
Speaker 3: I think there is inherently something about, and this has
1:34:17
Speaker 3: been demonstrated through some modeling stuff, right, trying to think
1:34:19
Speaker 3: about how do we predict some of this stuff out,
1:34:22
Speaker 3: that certainly the age structure of the population, the sex
1:34:25
Speaker 3: ratio of the population, all dictate how quickly that might happen.
1:34:30
Speaker 3: So there's probably some underlying things that we just need
1:34:32
Speaker 3: to understand about how do we manage eastern whitetail deer
1:34:34
Speaker 3: populations in a way that tries to minimize the progression
1:34:39
Speaker 3: of the disease.
1:34:39
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I guess, I mean, I.
1:34:42
Speaker 1: Now I'm realizing that you kind of clarified this point earlier,
1:34:45
Speaker 1: but I didn't pick up on it. Is that, and
1:34:49
Speaker 1: maybe I'm putting words in your mouth, but I don't
1:34:51
Speaker 1: think so. I think you were saying that, and I
1:34:54
Speaker 1: didn't get the ramifications of it, but that 5%, is
1:35:00
Speaker 1: that the number where it seems to just that it's
1:35:02
Speaker 1: going to grow?
1:35:03
Speaker 2: It does. Yeah.
1:35:04
Speaker 3: That's the point at which you have enough infected individuals
1:35:09
Speaker 3: on the landscape. that they're just going to continue to
1:35:12
Speaker 3: spread it at a rate faster than you can remove them.
1:35:15
Speaker 1: So a 3% can become a 2, but a 10
1:35:23
Speaker 1: probably doesn't become a.
1:35:24
Speaker 3: 9 or a 3, right?
1:35:27
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:35:28
Speaker 3: And because it gets back to, okay, if we're at 3%
1:35:32
Speaker 3: in a relatively small area, it's because there's a, small
1:35:37
Speaker 3: chunk of land somewhere where there's a small little pocket
1:35:40
Speaker 3: of does that has the disease. And if you can
1:35:42
Speaker 3: remove a high proportion of those does in that spot,
1:35:46
Speaker 3: you've got the opportunity to set it back. And that's
1:35:49
Speaker 3: where that time of detection becomes really important. Small scale,
1:35:53
Speaker 3: low level of prevalence. By the time it's gotten widespread,
1:35:57
Speaker 3: The idea, the other thing is that folks think we're
1:35:59
Speaker 3: trying to eradicate deer. We're absolutely not trying to eradicate deer.
1:36:02
Speaker 3: That is not the intent or.
1:36:03
Speaker 2: Purpose, right?
1:36:04
Speaker 1: I know people say that, but I don't know any
1:36:06
Speaker 1: really serious people that don't have some big ax to grind.
1:36:09
Speaker 2: I don't know any serious people who think that. Yeah, yeah.
1:36:12
Speaker 2: But it's in the psyche, right?
1:36:14
Speaker 3: Like when you're going in, no, it's like trying to
1:36:16
Speaker 3: figure out how we remove a high enough proportion of
1:36:19
Speaker 3: those that were likely infected.
1:36:20
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:36:21
Speaker 3: But back to the question on kind of the next
1:36:24
Speaker 3: steps of the genetics work. And is it possible to
1:36:29
Speaker 3: then reintroduce, um, individuals with the 96 SS gene and
1:36:35
Speaker 3: a high breeding value into a population? The only way
1:36:39
Speaker 3: that's going to be successful would be as if we
1:36:42
Speaker 3: get to a spot where we have pulled populations way down.
1:36:46
Speaker 2: Got it. Right.
1:36:47
Speaker 3: The idea that, you know, with, with hundreds of thousands
1:36:51
Speaker 3: of deer in a, in a state, a million, right?
1:36:54
Speaker 3: Like we probably got a million and a half deer
1:36:55
Speaker 3: in Missouri. What it would take to shift the genetic
1:37:00
Speaker 3: makeup of that population by introducing deer into the population
1:37:04
Speaker 3: would be astronomical. So from a practical standpoint, I appreciate
1:37:10
Speaker 3: where the captive deer folks are. And I encourage them
1:37:14
Speaker 3: to continue to try to like study it, understand it,
1:37:18
Speaker 3: figure out if there are ways that we can make
1:37:20
Speaker 3: the populations more resilient. I think it's good work and
1:37:24
Speaker 3: somebody needs to be doing it to continue to build
1:37:26
Speaker 3: our understanding. The practical application of it and the idea
1:37:29
Speaker 3: that somehow we could get enough deer to put back
1:37:33
Speaker 3: out on the landscape that we would change the back
1:37:36
Speaker 3: to the century sort of thing, that we would change
1:37:38
Speaker 3: the trajectory of the disease by reintroducing some of these deer.
1:37:42
Speaker 2: I just, the numbers don't add up. Yeah.
1:37:45
Speaker 1: So you know how some humans have like a connected
1:37:47
Speaker 1: earlobe and some have like my kind, whatever you call that.
1:37:52
Speaker 1: It'd be like if you said, hey, we're going to
1:37:54
Speaker 1: take two people with connected earlobes and move them into
1:37:58
Speaker 1: town here.
1:37:59
Speaker 2: Right. And we'll see. Right. We'll see what happens. In
1:38:03
Speaker 2: a few years, are there way more people? Yeah. You'd
1:38:05
Speaker 2: be like, dude, come on.
1:38:07
Speaker 3: Well, nature's doing it, though, right? There's definitely data suggests
1:38:11
Speaker 3: that in some of these free-ranging populations, as prevalence is
1:38:14
Speaker 3: creeping up, they're seeing a higher percentage of 96SS in
1:38:18
Speaker 3: the population. So it's like, okay, something's going on. that's happening.
1:38:24
Speaker 3: And so folks have concerns like, well, then shooting deer
1:38:28
Speaker 3: in those spots, are you risking shooting those that are
1:38:32
Speaker 3: good ones?
1:38:33
Speaker 2: Yeah. The good ones.
1:38:34
Speaker 3: I point back to the, to the Wisconsin data. I
1:38:37
Speaker 3: point back to the Wisconsin data, which suggests no. In fact,
1:38:41
Speaker 3: if you got CWD, you're probably more susceptible to harvest.
1:38:45
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:38:45
Speaker 3: And so maybe thinking about the two of them together.
1:38:49
Speaker 3: is probably where we'll end up at some point in time.
1:38:52
Speaker 3: It's not a one or the other. I think there's
1:38:55
Speaker 3: a reason why really intensive localized harvest can still be
1:38:59
Speaker 3: very advantageous in shifting the potential of the population.
1:39:07
Speaker 2: I'm sure you guys have thought of this, but this
1:39:08
Speaker 2: is backing up a ways. If CWD deer are easier
1:39:14
Speaker 2: to dupe, they're easier to get. is perhaps hunter samples,
1:39:25
Speaker 2: hunter-submitted samples skewing the data. Meaning 50% of the bucks
1:39:32
Speaker 2: getting harvested in X county are CWD positive, as that
1:39:36
Speaker 2: may be not an indicator that 50% of the bucks
1:39:38
Speaker 2: on the landscape are positive. They're getting the sick ones,
1:39:42
Speaker 2: because the sick ones are dumber and easier to get.
1:39:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a whole conversation that drives statisticians completely crazy.
1:39:48
Speaker 2: Oh, it does? Oh, yeah.
1:39:49
Speaker 3: It drives them crazy, and it drives me crazy sometimes
1:39:52
Speaker 3: when we talk about apparent prevalence versus observed prevalence and
1:39:58
Speaker 3: what the real prevalence is.
1:39:59
Speaker 2: Okay. Right? And it's this thing, right?
1:40:01
Speaker 3: It's like the sampling mechanism in which you get at,
1:40:05
Speaker 3: are there inherent biases? Which is what we started this
1:40:07
Speaker 3: conversation and talking about. We inherently biased our CWD sampling
1:40:12
Speaker 3: towards adult males to try to better detect it. And
1:40:16
Speaker 3: what we try to report is that of the samples
1:40:19
Speaker 3: we've collected, this is the percentage that are positive. Not
1:40:23
Speaker 3: that this is what, if you randomly sampled on the landscape,
1:40:27
Speaker 3: randomly sampled all age classes, represented them as their proportion
1:40:32
Speaker 3: of the population, would you get a different number?
1:40:34
Speaker 2: Absolutely. You think so? Yeah. But it doesn't matter, right?
1:40:38
Speaker 3: Like, whether it's 23%, plus or minus 2%, Or it's 30%
1:40:46
Speaker 3: plus or minus 2%.
1:40:47
Speaker 2: I got you. Doesn't matter. Yeah. You know? It ain't zero.
1:40:51
Speaker 2: It ain't zero. It ain't zero. And what's the trajectory?
1:40:54
Speaker 2: And so that's a lot of the way.
1:40:55
Speaker 3: It's even the way we manage deer populations, right? Like
1:40:58
Speaker 3: we can argue over, well, are there 35 deer per
1:41:01
Speaker 3: square mile? Or are there 40 deer per square mile?
1:41:05
Speaker 3: Or are there 50 deer per square mile? What I
1:41:07
Speaker 3: care about is... What's the trajectory? Yeah. And what are
1:41:11
Speaker 3: the attitudes around that population? That gives you a better
1:41:14
Speaker 3: handle on, as a manager, what levers can and should
1:41:18
Speaker 3: you pull to change the direction.
1:41:21
Speaker 2: This is very ancillary, but it's interesting. I've had it
1:41:24
Speaker 2: explained to me that when you look at doll sheep
1:41:27
Speaker 2: harvest in Alaska, year-to-year rates, you know what you're mostly
1:41:33
Speaker 2: looking at? You're mostly looking at the weather. Yeah. It's
1:41:39
Speaker 2: 10-day seasons, right?
1:41:43
Speaker 1: And more than an indicator of how many sheep are
1:41:45
Speaker 1: on the landscape, it's primarily an indicator of like, was
1:41:50
Speaker 1: it a high ceiling?
1:41:52
Speaker 2: People could fly. People could glass. People could hunt.
1:41:55
Speaker 1: Because in a 10-day season, if six days are fogged
1:41:58
Speaker 1: in and it's raining the whole time, it's like there's
1:42:01
Speaker 1: no doll sheep left if you look at harvest data.
1:42:03
Speaker 2: Yeah. Right? It's just like a way of understanding it.
1:42:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, we see that our November portion of the firearms
1:42:09
Speaker 3: deer season can start as early as November 10th and
1:42:13
Speaker 3: as late as November 16th. You see a very different
1:42:17
Speaker 3: composition of the harvest based on six days and that
1:42:22
Speaker 3: narrow window of difference of the peak of buck movement activities.
1:42:26
Speaker 3: We start on the 16th, we shoot more does. We
1:42:29
Speaker 3: start on the 10th, we shoot more bucks. It's completely
1:42:31
Speaker 3: a product of that.
1:42:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you'd look and be like, Okay, I see
1:42:36
Speaker 1: that you're seeing that you think there's deer trends, but
1:42:38
Speaker 1: there's also just like you're looking at a calendar.
1:42:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
1:42:41
Speaker 3: In some ways, folks will get all up kind of
1:42:43
Speaker 3: up in arms. They're like, oh, why was the harvest down? Well,
1:42:46
Speaker 3: weather was bad on opening weekend or something like that
1:42:49
Speaker 3: can absolutely drive that. It's become less and less of
1:42:53
Speaker 3: an issue as seasons have expanded, as opportunities have increased. Oh.
1:42:58
Speaker 3: But you still see it. Because those little blips get
1:43:01
Speaker 3: leveled out, but it's long seasons. Yeah, and early antlers
1:43:04
Speaker 3: kind of, you know, mask some of those kinds of things.
1:43:07
Speaker 3: Or longer, you know, more participation in the late muzzleloader
1:43:11
Speaker 3: season can kind of mask some of those things.
1:43:14
Speaker 2: What do you feel? We've talked a lot about hot spots.
1:43:17
Speaker 2: We've talked a lot about areas that haven't. Let's go
1:43:21
Speaker 2: to where you got a pristine area. Okay, you got
1:43:25
Speaker 2: a island area. a pristine Island.
1:43:28
Speaker 1: And it seems like there's nothing going on there and
1:43:31
Speaker 1: it's got a good moat around it.
1:43:35
Speaker 2: What do you want to do there? Are you like, no,
1:43:38
Speaker 2: we're just going to kick back and hunt deer like normal. Yeah.
1:43:41
Speaker 3: And we're not going to bring anything with us.
1:43:43
Speaker 2: Right. Do everything we can to make sure we don't
1:43:45
Speaker 2: introduce the disease. We got into this. Don't go to
1:43:47
Speaker 2: that area.
1:43:48
Speaker 1: You don't go to that County and be like, let's
1:43:50
Speaker 1: get out ahead of it and knock these suckers back.
1:43:53
Speaker 2: Now.
1:43:54
Speaker 3: It's an interesting conversation. And it's one that we found
1:43:57
Speaker 3: ourselves in very early on.
1:43:59
Speaker 2: I'm sure you find it all the time.
1:44:00
Speaker 3: So we had, we had, we implemented an antler point restriction.
1:44:04
Speaker 3: So four points on one side. We started that work
1:44:06
Speaker 3: in early 2000 and trying to encourage folks to shoot
1:44:10
Speaker 3: more antlerless deer, let bucks grow to older age classes.
1:44:13
Speaker 2: Even in, even in CWD? Before CWD. Okay.
1:44:18
Speaker 3: So that, that really changed hunter behavior, hunter harvest. age structure,
1:44:23
Speaker 3: starting to get older age class bucks. You introduced CWD
1:44:26
Speaker 3: into the equation in 2012. We removed that in six counties.
1:44:30
Speaker 3: They went back to shooting deer like the antler porn
1:44:32
Speaker 3: restriction never existed. Certainly there's been some slow trends since
1:44:37
Speaker 3: that time. But we started asking the question of, is
1:44:41
Speaker 3: it a good proactive preemptive step to take the antler
1:44:45
Speaker 3: porn restriction away from other areas where we had not
1:44:48
Speaker 3: yet detected to remove it? Because we knew we were
1:44:51
Speaker 3: protecting bucks into older age classes.
1:44:53
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:44:54
Speaker 3: Which, again, from a disease management standpoint, is not what
1:44:58
Speaker 3: you want to do.
1:44:59
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:44:59
Speaker 3: And so we chose not to, and I many times,
1:45:03
Speaker 3: same thing on the feeding and placement of mineral restrictions, right? Like,
1:45:07
Speaker 3: are we setting ourselves up where you're creating a deer
1:45:09
Speaker 3: population that's more susceptible to it once it gets there?
1:45:12
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:45:13
Speaker 3: And I don't know that there's a right answer to
1:45:15
Speaker 3: that question.
1:45:16
Speaker 2: Well, Holman, you've leaned, I'm sorry, I got confused.
1:45:18
Speaker 1: In those cases, those CWD-free areas, you've leaned toward adjusting?
1:45:25
Speaker 2: We didn't. Okay. We did not.
1:45:27
Speaker 3: We left them in place until we had a CWD-positive
1:45:30
Speaker 3: detection in the county.
1:45:32
Speaker 2: But you don't. You don't know that that was.
1:45:34
Speaker 3: I don't know that that was the right thing to
1:45:36
Speaker 3: do or not.
1:45:37
Speaker 2: Yeah. Where do you sit right now on it? I
1:45:40
Speaker 2: don't know that we can answer that question. Yeah. Yeah.
1:45:43
Speaker 3: Because I don't think we know enough about how the
1:45:47
Speaker 3: structure of the herd might impact the way that the
1:45:50
Speaker 3: disease takes off in early stages.
1:45:52
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:45:54
Speaker 3: But yeah, I made the argument if there are good
1:45:55
Speaker 3: deer management techniques in the absence of disease, then we
1:45:59
Speaker 3: should continue to promote them. We shouldn't shy away from
1:46:03
Speaker 3: good deer management for fear of something that's not yet happened.
1:46:08
Speaker 2: No, I got what you're saying.
1:46:09
Speaker 3: And so we did not proactively remove Recently, we did
1:46:14
Speaker 3: do away with antler point restriction statewide. And part of
1:46:16
Speaker 3: that was because we were down to like 14 or
1:46:19
Speaker 3: 15 of our 80 counties that still had the antler
1:46:22
Speaker 3: point restriction in place. It's just another level of regulatory complexity.
1:46:26
Speaker 3: We're starting to have enough spread where we're catching four
1:46:30
Speaker 3: or five or six additional new counties every year kind
1:46:33
Speaker 3: of expanding into that. So from a simplicity standpoint, we're like, look,
1:46:36
Speaker 3: this doesn't make sense anymore. But very early on, yeah,
1:46:39
Speaker 3: there were folks that were like, no, we should increase
1:46:41
Speaker 3: the buck harvest bag limit. We should remove the antler
1:46:44
Speaker 3: point restriction. We should proactively do these things. And we
1:46:48
Speaker 3: chose not to. And I don't know that that was
1:46:51
Speaker 3: the right decision or not.
1:46:53
Speaker 2: How much have you felt.
1:46:55
Speaker 1: You've been able to influence hunter behavior? I hear again
1:47:00
Speaker 1: and again and again all around the country that people,
1:47:06
Speaker 1: they don't want to shoot does. They just don't want
1:47:10
Speaker 1: to shoot does.
1:47:11
Speaker 2: They don't.
1:47:12
Speaker 1: Like the days of people living off venison and stuff,
1:47:14
Speaker 1: it's not like it was in the old days. And
1:47:17
Speaker 1: it's just ingrained in people. Like they don't want to
1:47:19
Speaker 1: shoot does. You can't incentivize them to shoot does. How
1:47:22
Speaker 1: true have you found that to be?
1:47:24
Speaker 3: We don't rely on venison as our core source protein anymore.
1:47:28
Speaker 2: Right.
1:47:28
Speaker 3: Or it's so small. And the number that do are
1:47:31
Speaker 3: insignificant in the grand scheme. Not to say people that
1:47:34
Speaker 3: shoot deer don't eat them.
1:47:35
Speaker 2: They eat them. Right. Or they give them away.
1:47:37
Speaker 3: They turn them into snack sticks and they get really
1:47:39
Speaker 3: expensive to shoot one. So yeah, no, there's no question
1:47:42
Speaker 3: that that has shifted deer management. Missouri had long been
1:47:47
Speaker 3: one of those states where we did not have a
1:47:49
Speaker 3: problem having folks shoot antelope deer. We've been very successful
1:47:53
Speaker 3: through time with folks shooting a high number of antelope deer.
1:47:56
Speaker 2: And it goes back. Today still. It's, it's gotten, it's.
1:48:02
Speaker 3: A little more challenged today than it was. Um, but yeah,
1:48:07
Speaker 3: some of the perspectives of just got to shoot a buck, um,
1:48:10
Speaker 3: just weren't present in Missouri as a hurdle to get over.
1:48:14
Speaker 3: It's a more modern shift in perspectives.
1:48:17
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:48:17
Speaker 3: And part of that, uh, you know, I think goes
1:48:19
Speaker 3: back to the history of deer management in Missouri. I've
1:48:22
Speaker 3: got notes of folks in the fifties when we had
1:48:25
Speaker 3: still had very few deer and certainly didn't have them
1:48:27
Speaker 3: statewide that were already starting to talk about. We need,
1:48:30
Speaker 3: we need doe harvest to start to manage some of
1:48:32
Speaker 3: these populations.
1:48:33
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:48:33
Speaker 3: So it was a very early part of the conversation.
1:48:36
Speaker 3: introduced antlerless harvest very early in kind of the deer
1:48:39
Speaker 3: management progression in Missouri. And so I think it become
1:48:42
Speaker 3: adopted as a normal practice, something we needed to do.
1:48:47
Speaker 3: Folks were excited when they got to shoot one antlerless
1:48:49
Speaker 3: deer and then really excited when they got to shoot
1:48:51
Speaker 3: two antlerless deer. Now they're saturated with opportunity. There are
1:48:55
Speaker 3: so many deer. I think procrastination is one of our
1:48:59
Speaker 3: bigger challenges. They got all kinds of time to shoot.
1:49:03
Speaker 3: And they don't really want to shoot one anyway, unless
1:49:06
Speaker 3: it's got big antlers because they're not hungry. They're not
1:49:09
Speaker 3: hungry in the same way.
1:49:10
Speaker 1: It's the craziest thing. I've had an old-timer in the
1:49:13
Speaker 1: township where I grew up in Michigan. I remember an
1:49:16
Speaker 1: old-timer telling me about growing up, and they used to
1:49:19
Speaker 1: rig their own deer snares, the garage cable.
1:49:22
Speaker 2: Oh, my gosh. Living off deer. Yeah, absolutely. Living off does.
1:49:26
Speaker 1: And they were trying to, this is back in the
1:49:27
Speaker 1: day when you were like, you had a problem with
1:49:29
Speaker 1: people poaching does.
1:49:30
Speaker 2: Now it's so funny that you're sitting on the other extreme.
1:49:33
Speaker 2: You can't talk people into getting does. And back then
1:49:35
Speaker 2: you couldn't talk people out of stopping killing does. Yeah, yeah.
1:49:40
Speaker 3: It is a huge, so it's a bit of a paradox, right?
1:49:44
Speaker 3: We've got this disease issue that's more than happy to
1:49:47
Speaker 3: kill deer. And we got some really big deer management
1:49:50
Speaker 3: challenges in places where we don't have CWD, where we
1:49:53
Speaker 3: need hunters. to be able and willing to shoot more deer.
1:49:57
Speaker 3: And so states like Missouri and others are trying to
1:50:00
Speaker 3: find ways that they make it easier for hunters to
1:50:03
Speaker 3: donate deer, simplify that process. We've, we've just hired a
1:50:07
Speaker 3: detailed position to work for two years, trying to better
1:50:10
Speaker 3: understand what the relationship with meat processors looks like.
1:50:14
Speaker 2: What does a, what does a.
1:50:15
Speaker 3: Meaningful deer donation process actually look like? What's that experience
1:50:20
Speaker 3: for a hunter? How do you, How do you get
1:50:22
Speaker 3: there and how do you make it economically viable for
1:50:24
Speaker 3: processors to participate?
1:50:27
Speaker 2: It's a challenge. It's a huge challenge. It brings up
1:50:31
Speaker 2: a thing that I hate even talking about because I
1:50:34
Speaker 2: don't fully understand the impacts.
1:50:38
Speaker 1: And I think the impacts would be many, particularly in
1:50:41
Speaker 1: terms of access. But it brings up this conversation that's
1:50:45
Speaker 1: like anathema to American deer management would.
1:50:49
Speaker 2: Be what about If you could sell them. Yeah. Yeah.
1:50:54
Speaker 2: And there's, I just came back from Florida. We're down
1:50:56
Speaker 2: in Florida, gator hunting.
1:50:57
Speaker 1: And they, the, we go to the gator processor guy
1:51:00
Speaker 1: that does the leather and stuff. You know, he's got
1:51:02
Speaker 1: a big sign, not buying gators, but he said, that's the,
1:51:06
Speaker 1: this is the first year I've ever had the sign.
1:51:08
Speaker 1: Meaning prior to this year. And it's not illegal. It's just,
1:51:12
Speaker 1: he's not doing it prior to this year. You went
1:51:14
Speaker 1: gator hunting. One option is you take that sucker down
1:51:19
Speaker 1: and they measure it is 10 feet long. It's 60
1:51:22
Speaker 1: bucks a foot. And you walk out the door with
1:51:26
Speaker 1: cash in your hand. If you brought a system, if
1:51:32
Speaker 1: you introduced a system where you're like, no, dude, you
1:51:36
Speaker 1: got it and bring it to me, 200 bucks.
1:51:41
Speaker 2: People are shooting those.
1:51:43
Speaker 1: My kid and his buddies, like they're young enough where
1:51:45
Speaker 1: they don't have all this history. If you told my
1:51:47
Speaker 1: kid and his buddies, hey, I'll give you 200 bucks
1:51:49
Speaker 1: for every dough you bring me.
1:51:50
Speaker 2: Dude, They're bringing those.
1:51:53
Speaker 3: Yeah.
1:51:53
Speaker 2: And I think this is this wide range of their job. Yeah.
1:51:56
Speaker 3: This is wide ranging conversation that the true believers in
1:52:01
Speaker 3: the North American model would string us up for.
1:52:04
Speaker 2: I hate having that conversation, right? Intellectually honest. I can't
1:52:08
Speaker 2: not talk about it.
1:52:10
Speaker 1: The director of the guy in your position in Michigan,
1:52:12
Speaker 1: we read the letter on the show. The guy in
1:52:15
Speaker 1: your position in Michigan sent a letter. It was, it
1:52:18
Speaker 1: was printed in newspapers, sent a letter to, begging people
1:52:22
Speaker 1: to kill does yeah oh yeah yeah and you the
1:52:25
Speaker 1: one thing you look at like i'll tell you the
1:52:28
Speaker 1: one thing that'll get them to do it and it's
1:52:31
Speaker 1: the same thing that tanked american wildlife populations in the
1:52:35
Speaker 1: old days yeah it was you and you put a
1:52:39
Speaker 1: value you incentivize the meat harvest and i don't even
1:52:42
Speaker 1: know you'd have to bring in you'd have to bring
1:52:44
Speaker 1: in a whole different team of people to go and
1:52:47
Speaker 1: look at well what is the commercial demand if we're
1:52:51
Speaker 1: incentivized to do this because of CWD, how hungry is
1:52:56
Speaker 1: the market for CWD meat?
1:52:59
Speaker 2: Yeah. Do people in grocery stores want CWD meat?
1:53:05
Speaker 1: If we're going to do this in an area with 50% prevalency,
1:53:08
Speaker 1: does that mean that the 50% that come to us
1:53:10
Speaker 1: by the hunters that are hunting them for market, do
1:53:13
Speaker 1: they not get paid.
1:53:15
Speaker 2: For those?
1:53:16
Speaker 1: Do they like, do they get their money for those?
1:53:19
Speaker 1: But then they go into a dump. Do they get
1:53:21
Speaker 1: their money for those? And then they go to the
1:53:22
Speaker 1: grocery store is in the grocery store is the bag
1:53:25
Speaker 1: labeled CWD positive CWD negative.
1:53:27
Speaker 2: Like, I don't know. Yeah. I don't know.
1:53:29
Speaker 1: It's like, you'd have to, there's so much to figure out,
1:53:32
Speaker 1: but it's, it's, that's what you would do. And all
1:53:37
Speaker 1: of a sudden you would have your dough killing problem
1:53:40
Speaker 1: would be over.
1:53:41
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:53:42
Speaker 3: And that's why, as I indicated earlier, we've sort of
1:53:45
Speaker 3: tried to, double down on these conversations with local landowners
1:53:49
Speaker 3: and hunters and say, look, guys, hunters have been the
1:53:52
Speaker 3: original tool for managing deer populations in the regulated way
1:53:57
Speaker 3: that we've been doing it. It may not be sustainable
1:54:00
Speaker 3: into the future. And you have a part in that, right?
1:54:04
Speaker 3: Like we together share the fate of the outcome of
1:54:07
Speaker 3: deer and deer management. And how are we going to
1:54:09
Speaker 3: work together to do that? Because an alternative that will
1:54:13
Speaker 3: be very real for some folks and probably not in
1:54:15
Speaker 3: the terribly distant future. If you have fewer hunters and
1:54:20
Speaker 3: they are unwilling to shoot antlers deer, they create enough
1:54:24
Speaker 3: problems and enough incentive for others to change the system. Yeah.
1:54:29
Speaker 3: And we can either be part of informing the way
1:54:32
Speaker 3: that change happens or we can be subjected to it.
1:54:36
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:54:36
Speaker 3: And so I, that's where my mind is on that conversation.
1:54:39
Speaker 3: And what, what's it going to take for us as
1:54:41
Speaker 3: hunters to take some responsibility in this effort? And a
1:54:45
Speaker 3: state agency is trying to work with hunters to manage
1:54:49
Speaker 3: a deer population that is challenging.
1:54:52
Speaker 1: I have a deer friend and I, and I know
1:54:54
Speaker 1: I've known him a long time and I know him well.
1:54:58
Speaker 2: And he's like, he's uncorrupted. Okay.
1:55:01
Speaker 1: And where he's landed is he's landed just, he sort
1:55:05
Speaker 1: of landed at just a general sense of dismay and
1:55:09
Speaker 1: disappointment with the American deer hunter. And he's like, stop
1:55:15
Speaker 1: talking to me about all this conservation bullshit and your
1:55:20
Speaker 1: Pittman Roberts and money and your all this and that.
1:55:23
Speaker 1: Managers ask you again and again and again to kill
1:55:28
Speaker 1: some does. And you can't be bothered. You can't be
1:55:31
Speaker 1: troubled that much. Like, you can't be troubled as much
1:55:35
Speaker 1: as what it takes to gut a doe in the woods.
1:55:38
Speaker 3: I'm envious of the west a lot, right? Where, where
1:55:41
Speaker 3: you have way more demand and pressure for tags than,
1:55:47
Speaker 3: than there are animals to provide that opportunity.
1:55:50
Speaker 2: Right.
1:55:50
Speaker 3: In the east, you, you, you can't give out enough
1:55:54
Speaker 3: tags or create an incentive and you can't give them
1:55:56
Speaker 3: enough days to hunt, to create an incentive, to harvest
1:55:59
Speaker 3: what would be an appropriate number of deer.
1:56:02
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:56:02
Speaker 3: The other thing we face is small land ownership, private
1:56:05
Speaker 3: land owner, you know, decisions. that dictate what a local
1:56:09
Speaker 3: deer population looks like, right? There's a non-migratory species that
1:56:14
Speaker 3: exists based on what the pressure locally does to that population.
1:56:18
Speaker 3: So rules and regulations can't really help address this challenge.
1:56:23
Speaker 3: It really is about individuals taking some level of ownership
1:56:27
Speaker 3: of managing their deer herd together and with their neighbors,
1:56:31
Speaker 3: especially in states that have small land ownership. You got
1:56:35
Speaker 3: tens of thousands of acres in South Texas, right? Like
1:56:37
Speaker 3: you control the way everything happens. But in much of
1:56:41
Speaker 3: the East, you got small land parcels and you got
1:56:43
Speaker 3: to be working with your neighbors to figure out what
1:56:45
Speaker 3: deer population is going to look like. And folks just
1:56:47
Speaker 3: aren't terribly willing to work with one another. But we
1:56:53
Speaker 3: can't do it through regulatory. We just can't. Regulations aren't
1:56:56
Speaker 3: going to get us out of this problem. They haven't
1:56:58
Speaker 3: got us into it and won't get us out of it.
1:57:00
Speaker 2: I judge hunters by what they're eating at dinner. Yeah.
1:57:03
Speaker 2: If I go to a big hunter's house and I'm like, dude, what?
1:57:08
Speaker 2: You're eating stuff from the store? Why are we eating
1:57:09
Speaker 2: chicken breast? Dude, you could be shooting does for eight
1:57:12
Speaker 2: bucks a piece. Right. Right. Right. Right. They're begging you.
1:57:17
Speaker 2: It's eight dollars. Right. To get a doe tag. Yeah.
1:57:20
Speaker 2: We're not hungry, right? Like, we don't rely on that.
1:57:22
Speaker 2: For what you paid for that steak, dude, you could
1:57:24
Speaker 2: have bought a whole deer. Yep. Yep. Yep. Not hungry.
1:57:29
Speaker 2: Not hungry. So, is there anything that I should have
1:57:32
Speaker 2: asked you about that I didn't ask you?
1:57:34
Speaker 3: Gosh, we've covered the wide range of things.
1:57:42
Speaker 1: I thought of a thing I didn't ask you about.
1:57:44
Speaker 1: We don't need to spend time on it. Earlier I
1:57:48
Speaker 1: was saying my early perception of it was human health,
1:57:51
Speaker 1: which is shifting over time. How much does that linger
1:57:56
Speaker 1: around in your head?
1:57:58
Speaker 3: I think the mountain of data suggests that the risk
1:58:03
Speaker 3: to humans from consuming a CWD-infected deer is pretty low.
1:58:07
Speaker 2: Yeah. If there is one. Well, at this point, it's zero. Yeah. Yeah.
1:58:12
Speaker 2: We don't know. We don't know. I should say zero risk. Yeah. Yeah.
1:58:15
Speaker 3: There's no known evidence that it's been transmitted to people.
1:58:19
Speaker 3: And so I think in a lot of ways that
1:58:22
Speaker 3: we need to remain diligent and understanding. It's one of those,
1:58:26
Speaker 3: also the space where what's possible and what's probable happens.
1:58:30
Speaker 2: Yeah. Right.
1:58:30
Speaker 3: Is, is a really hard one to have that conversation.
1:58:33
Speaker 2: I used to be petrified by it. And now I'm not.
1:58:35
Speaker 1: And well, also now I know that I've like, I'm
1:58:38
Speaker 1: sure I have all along. Now I know for a
1:58:40
Speaker 1: fact that I've eaten positive meat. So I used to
1:58:44
Speaker 1: be petrified of it. Now I've just, now it just
1:58:46
Speaker 1: sort of lives in the back of my head.
1:58:48
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:58:48
Speaker 3: I mean, I think we have to communicate what the
1:58:51
Speaker 3: public health officials tell us they want communicated in terms
1:58:55
Speaker 3: of out of an abundance caution. We tell you not
1:58:57
Speaker 3: to eat any seed. regardless of what your state stands.
1:59:00
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
1:59:01
Speaker 1: I get why you have to do that, but I'm also,
1:59:05
Speaker 1: I don't think the agency used to be saying that
1:59:08
Speaker 1: without simultaneously saying, but no one's ever gotten it.
1:59:11
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:59:12
Speaker 3: And I think we try to do that too. And
1:59:14
Speaker 3: it's your decision, right? Like we don't tell you, you,
1:59:16
Speaker 3: you shouldn't, we, here's what is communicated. It's recommended not
1:59:20
Speaker 3: to you choose to that. That's your decision to make.
1:59:24
Speaker 3: I don't even know what the asterisk is. Is it,
1:59:27
Speaker 3: should it be, No one's ever contracted CWD. The asterisk being,
1:59:32
Speaker 3: but there's a recommendation you don't eat it. Or should
1:59:34
Speaker 3: it be, we recommend you don't eat it. And the
1:59:37
Speaker 3: asterisk is no one's ever gotten it.
1:59:40
Speaker 2: Right. What's the headline? Right. Yeah. I don't know.
1:59:43
Speaker 1: I used to think the headline was don't eat it.
1:59:46
Speaker 1: And the asterisk was no one's ever gotten it.
1:59:48
Speaker 2: In my head, it switched. The headline is no one's
1:59:51
Speaker 2: gotten it. Yeah. Yeah. And the asterisk is maybe don't
1:59:54
Speaker 2: eat it. I don't know. Yeah.
1:59:55
Speaker 3: And so then those that drift down the, you know,
1:59:58
Speaker 3: the extremely cautious approach, you know, are somewhat fearful that
2:00:03
Speaker 3: as more folks consume more of them, our behavior of
2:00:07
Speaker 3: consuming deer, you know, when you, when you shoot a deer,
2:00:10
Speaker 3: the likelihood of you consuming the vast majority of it
2:00:13
Speaker 3: is much higher than, than for example, when they were
2:00:16
Speaker 3: dealing with BSE in England, when you were eating one
2:00:19
Speaker 3: meal of an infected cow, right? And so that's some
2:00:22
Speaker 3: of the concerns those folks have. It's the potential for
2:00:25
Speaker 3: repeated exposure. And then through time.
2:00:28
Speaker 2: You mean the whole damn deer? Yeah, right.
2:00:30
Speaker 3: And through time, there's suggestions that the prions are changing, right?
2:00:35
Speaker 3: That the confirmation of the prion protein is looking a
2:00:38
Speaker 3: little different or there's slight variations, which may interrupt some
2:00:42
Speaker 3: of that species-specific barriers. But again, we don't have any
2:00:47
Speaker 3: evidence that that's happened yet.
2:00:48
Speaker 2: Got it.
2:00:49
Speaker 3: Yeah.
2:00:51
Speaker 2: Anything else I should have asked you about?
2:00:54
Speaker 3: Not that I can think of. There was probably something.
2:00:58
Speaker 2: Thanks for coming on, man.
2:01:00
Speaker 1: You've been listening to Jason Sumner, the director of the
2:01:03
Speaker 1: Missouri Department of Conservation. And on all that, last note,
2:01:09
Speaker 1: on all that subject of whitetails, well, deer in general,
2:01:13
Speaker 1: it's Whitetail Week at Meat Eater, September 28th to October 4th.
2:01:18
Speaker 1: We got a big giveaway today. We got the Ultimate
2:01:21
Speaker 1: Whitetail Giveaway, which is live at the Meat Eater Store.
2:01:23
Speaker 1: So check this out. We got the Headline Prize, where
2:01:27
Speaker 1: you can win a guided whitetail hunt with Mark Kenyon
2:01:30
Speaker 1: and our friend Jordan Budd as a guided whitetail hunt
2:01:32
Speaker 1: in Nebraska.
2:01:34
Speaker 2: I've been out there hunting the place is sweet.
2:01:35
Speaker 1: There's a Matthew's Bow, a Tethered Saddle, a Meat Brand
2:01:40
Speaker 1: Meat Grinder, a Grilla Smoker, Sig Binos. And dude, Sig
2:01:45
Speaker 1: Binos are the best binos. First Light Whisperdown, Crispy Boots,
2:01:49
Speaker 1: Onyx Membership. So keep an eye on MeatEater channels all
2:01:53
Speaker 1: week for everything whitetail. And head to the MeatEater store
2:01:56
Speaker 1: to sign up for the ultimate whitetail giveaway. If you
2:01:59
Speaker 1: get to hunt Jordan's place, you're going to be loving it.
2:02:02
Speaker 1: And once again, Jason Sumners, thanks for coming on, man.
2:02:04
Speaker 3: I appreciate the opportunity to talk about something I care
2:02:08
Speaker 3: about a lot, the whitetail deer. It's an important topic,
2:02:11
Speaker 3: and it's one we're just going to have to continue
2:02:12
Speaker 3: to talk about.
2:02:14
Speaker 2: If you hate hearing about it, you people that listen,
2:02:16
Speaker 2: tough titty. We're going to keep talking about this. Thanks everybody.