ORIGINAL: Marko B
ORIGINAL: kevin1
A state known for CWD is proposing gathering their elk herd(cash cow) around feeding sites for some nose to nose contact? Yeah, that's a great idea...
Are you telling me that Elk don't already congregate naturally in the winter?
ROFL...
Arguments that people make against feeding are just so boldfaced rediculous it's funny.
Marko, the maths not to hard to on this one.Deer and elk do herd up in the winter naturally, naturally beingthe key word.They break up into groups and the size of the groups often dictated by the amount of food available.
Throw an unnatural food source into the mix and you got abnormally large numbers of animals congregating in a much smaller area.We have a guy out here with 80 acres of CRP behind his house nobdy deer hunts.While we were seeing 5to 20deer bunched up feeding in natural locations this guys got 40 or 50 in his yard every night of the week at the pile of corn he puts out.
20 deer feeding in a 80 acre corn field compared to 50 deer feeding in a 20 ft circle, do the math, its self explanatory.Whos more likely to have direct contact?
Another thing that was interesting is they dont stay in the same group, I put trail cameras over the guyscorn pile for 2 weeks, many of the deer, escpecially the bucks would only show up once, maybe twice, the rest of the time theyd be offthe property feeding with the other herds of deer in the area.So if the bait sites contaminated with CWD these deer are then carrying it off to the other scattered bunches in the area, it doesnt stop with the ones regularly using thefeed pile.
I spent 4 months watching the deer in this area this year and trying to keep track of various bucks, even when theyre herded up theyre very social animals and do travel.