Originally Posted by
MudderChuck
You kind of have a point, it is in mans nature to meddle.
I really can't tell you about mother natures efficiency. To many animals have gone extinct for it to be counted on.
It seems like after a hundred years, the tendency to run away from headlights would be instinctive in Deer, it isn't. Off topic, but Hedgehogs now run away from cars, they didn't used to. Evolution can be sort of be a hit or miss thing.
The Deer herds diminish too much and it is going to have a domino effect, which nobody can predict. Nature has it's feast and famine cycles, there is IMO no magic balance like the Greenies envision. The long term consequences of mans meddling, good intentioned or poorly executed, is a total unknown.
The Ranchers killed off most of the Deer in the south west Savanna country and the Condor went nearly extinct. Etc. The greenies had off-road traffic forbidden in/near the Condor preserve to protect the Condor, the brush closed the roads, a fire came along, the fire department couldn't get to the preserve to try and fight the fire, the few remaining Condors burnt to death. The law of unintended consequences.
You are right in one aspect, mans meddling, more often than not, doesn't turn out like planned or envisioned.
Man and Hogs (to name a couple) seem to have some sort of genetic resistance, they call it a species barrier. Which kind of indicates it has been around for a long time or maybe it's just luck?
I wasn't really basing my point on mother natures track record as much as common sense on this specific case.
no action VS extended hunting season to decrease population
IF some deer have a genetic resistance it makes more sense to me to let nature select than unknowing man as far as decreasing the population unless there is substantial evidence that suggest otherwise.
It just makes more sense to me that way.
For example if you have 40 acres with 10 deer and 1 CWD positive deer it makes more sense to me to just let it run its course than to randomly select and kill 5 of the deer.
You may very well kill your resistant deer and virtually destroy them all.
The more deer you have the more resistant deer you have, the more resistant deer you have the better.