I watched that video the day it was first released.
To your post, there's a lot to unpack here. First of all, I'm not sure why there is such a willingness to take whatever Keith Warren or Dr. Deer say as fact. They are some of the most heavily biased folks in this discussion, as both have financial ties to the deer farming industry and/or feeding/baiting products.
Specifically, Dr. Deer has openly advocated against public hunters and public hunting oppotunity; he thinks everything should be privatized the way of the rest of the world. So, if you're an average joe hunter, Dr. Deer does not have your best interest in mind.
https://www.deeranddeerhunting.com/...-will-high-fence-hunting-bias-skew-final-plan
On top of that, Dr. Deer is not even a veterinarian or a big game biologist. His background is Herpetology (lizards and amphibians), and he has never performed or been involved in a SINGLE study or research effort on ANY disease of deer or cervids.
Not one.
In 2007 he predicted that CWD prevalence would never exceed 2% in Wisconsin....how did that prediction turn out?
https://www.patrickdurkinoutdoors.com/post/deer-czar-fails-to-assess-impacts-of-his-2012-report
Second, the "solution" as you say is not to "slaughter 100 percent". That a completely false representation of the culling strategies currently taking place. The culling that is happening these days is a tiny fraction of the deer populations. Look at where the culling is going on, places like Illinois, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Missouri, places with deer populations well into the MILLIONS of deer. Most of the culling taking place nowadays is very targeted and very localized, hitting small family groups of deer that are thought to have contact with a known positive test. This is far cry from wiping "100%" of the deer.
And notice how most of the Mule deer states, and states in the west with lower deer densities, they're doing virtually zero culling. This idea that this is all a way to wipe out all the deer and deer hunting is an absolute joke.
Now to refute some of the significant items in that video.
Dr. Deer claims that CWD does not affect fecundity or recruitment. This is false. The University of Georgia, Arkansas Game and Fish, and others have all participated in research that shows white-tailed deer being born with CWD and subsequently dying from the disease at a young age. Once these papers have been published, I will gladly share them here. In fact, I talk with Dr. Ruder about this in Part 1 of our recent podcast with him on Hemorrhagic disease. In Arkansas's population study using GPS collars, they have positives in fawns as young as 6 months. The likelihood that a deer that is born with CWD, or is positive at 6 months old, will replace itself on the landscape is not good.
Listen to the first part of this podcast where I talk directly with Dr. Ruder about this very topic.
https://www.backcountryhunters.org/north_dakota_bha_podcast_episode_6
Again, Keith Warren and Dr. Deer want to "stock resistant" deer. There is no such thing as resistant deer. Dr. Seabury himself has said in a public meeting, multiple times, that his breeding program won't work on wild deer because you have no control over breeding in the wild. Additionally, Dr. Seabury refuses to submit deer from his breeding program to inoculation studies because he knows they'll become positive and die from the disease, lessening the market value of his product that last I checked he charges $75 per animal. Anyone know how many animals are in his breeding program? It ain't just a few.....
He says Wisconsin culled "172,000 deer in one day". Show me where this took place, because there is nothing that substantiates this. I believe Dr. Deer is intentionally misconstruing the events to try and make the DNR look bad. I'm almost certain what he is actually talking about is an effort in the early 2000s where the Wisconsin DNR went in and culled 15,000 deer in their "disease eradication zone" and then saw that indeed it didn't work in eradicating the disease. This supports the current science that says once prevalence eclipses about 1.8%, there is likely a 0 percent probability that you will eradicate the disease.
But the state of New York did eradicate it through culling, because they caught it early. So, it can work, and it can slow growth in prevalence rates. But culling is certainly not a one size fits all tool, and results have certainly been mixed. I share some of the heart burn over deer culling but, objectively I can also see it's logical application to the situation.
https://dec.ny.gov/nature/animals-f...ealth/animal-diseases/chronic-wasting-disease
Dr. Deer says CWD is only a frequency dependent disease. Again, not black and white. CWD is considered "intermediate", though it leans towards frequency dependent. But think of Frequency dependent and density dependent modes of transmission as a spectrum and CWD is in the middle.
https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1890/ES12-00141.1
https://russell-cwd.webhosting.cals.wisc.edu/foi/transmission-modes/
Keith says "follow the money". Dr Deer says "a continued appropriation of 72 million dollars portioned out to the states"....again.... this is false. The CWD management and research act has NEVER been fully appropriated.
Does Dr. Deer know any of this? Is he lying? How could he be so misinformed on a topic he claims to be the authority on.
.
