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I don't believe nearly enough light is ever shed on what our game and fish commission is up to but, being that they are supposed to represent all of us who enjoy the Mississippi outdoors, what they do is worth paying attention to.
This is my first time posting on this site and my motivation is to help bring to the attention of my fellow hunters the decisions that are made that impact the wild public resources we all enjoy.
When the game and fish commission met last month, they made what I believe is a critical mistake and changed the procedure for determining if a county should be placed under the CWD management plan. Up until last month, if a CWD positive deer was found within 10 miles of a given county, that county was placed under the CWD management plan protocols which include a supplemental feed ban. I'm not here to offer any opinions about supplemental feeding with the exception of pointing out that supplemental feeding can congregate deer in ways that most often wouldn't naturally occur. This in turn can increase the rate of spread of CWD in a deer herd or introduce CWD to an otherwise healthy deer herd. That is the biologically sound reasoning for including a supplemental feed ban within the CWD management protocol.
The commission decided that instead of using the 10 mile rule for counties that border the MS river, they will now use the Coast Guard demarcation line that maps the center of the river as the boundary that determines if a county is placed under the CWD management plan. If a CWD positive deer is found on the west side of the river, that does not place the nearest MS county under the CWD management plan. If a CWD positive deer is found on the east side of the river, then the original rules apply for placing counties under the plan.
The only way that this decision could make sense is if the MS river is a barrier to deer movement, which we know it is not. Deer are wonderful swimmers and cross the MS river all the time. I'll point out what might be the most famous buck in MS right now, buck 140 as MS State University refers to it. Buck 140 has been tracked via GPS collar for the last two years until his collar fell off last month. During those two years that buck swam across the MS river four times. He spent his summers in Louisiana and his winters in Mississippi with 18 miles separating his summer and winter homes. Last week Trevor Martin shot the buck not far from where it was originally captured and congrats to Trevor on a great buck.
To imagine that buck 140 is the only deer crossing the MS river is ridiculous. Consequently, to imagine that the MS river is a barrier to deer movement is ridiculous. So why would the commission make this rule change that resulted in Claiborne County being removed from the CWD management plan? To put it bluntly...money talks and the supplemental feed industry is a big one. I don't mean to suggest that supplemental feed is bad or the industry is bad, but when we have a potential threat like CWD to a finite public resource like deer and we have the opportunity to make decisions to cautiously protect that resource, are we really going to be okay with throwing caution to the wind for a dollar? Not to mention that if CWD were to take a greater hold in our state than it has so far, our supplemental feed industry is screwed anyway.
So I have no idea what good it will do to talk about these topics on platforms like this but I hope that someone finds it valuable. I'd also not like to look back in a few years and wish I hadn't kept my mouth shut. If anyone has an opinion on the topic, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Nobody loves these deer and these wild places more than us hunters and we need to act like it by holding our representatives accountable when they try to make decisions like this without any of our input.
This is my first time posting on this site and my motivation is to help bring to the attention of my fellow hunters the decisions that are made that impact the wild public resources we all enjoy.
When the game and fish commission met last month, they made what I believe is a critical mistake and changed the procedure for determining if a county should be placed under the CWD management plan. Up until last month, if a CWD positive deer was found within 10 miles of a given county, that county was placed under the CWD management plan protocols which include a supplemental feed ban. I'm not here to offer any opinions about supplemental feeding with the exception of pointing out that supplemental feeding can congregate deer in ways that most often wouldn't naturally occur. This in turn can increase the rate of spread of CWD in a deer herd or introduce CWD to an otherwise healthy deer herd. That is the biologically sound reasoning for including a supplemental feed ban within the CWD management protocol.
The commission decided that instead of using the 10 mile rule for counties that border the MS river, they will now use the Coast Guard demarcation line that maps the center of the river as the boundary that determines if a county is placed under the CWD management plan. If a CWD positive deer is found on the west side of the river, that does not place the nearest MS county under the CWD management plan. If a CWD positive deer is found on the east side of the river, then the original rules apply for placing counties under the plan.
The only way that this decision could make sense is if the MS river is a barrier to deer movement, which we know it is not. Deer are wonderful swimmers and cross the MS river all the time. I'll point out what might be the most famous buck in MS right now, buck 140 as MS State University refers to it. Buck 140 has been tracked via GPS collar for the last two years until his collar fell off last month. During those two years that buck swam across the MS river four times. He spent his summers in Louisiana and his winters in Mississippi with 18 miles separating his summer and winter homes. Last week Trevor Martin shot the buck not far from where it was originally captured and congrats to Trevor on a great buck.
To imagine that buck 140 is the only deer crossing the MS river is ridiculous. Consequently, to imagine that the MS river is a barrier to deer movement is ridiculous. So why would the commission make this rule change that resulted in Claiborne County being removed from the CWD management plan? To put it bluntly...money talks and the supplemental feed industry is a big one. I don't mean to suggest that supplemental feed is bad or the industry is bad, but when we have a potential threat like CWD to a finite public resource like deer and we have the opportunity to make decisions to cautiously protect that resource, are we really going to be okay with throwing caution to the wind for a dollar? Not to mention that if CWD were to take a greater hold in our state than it has so far, our supplemental feed industry is screwed anyway.
So I have no idea what good it will do to talk about these topics on platforms like this but I hope that someone finds it valuable. I'd also not like to look back in a few years and wish I hadn't kept my mouth shut. If anyone has an opinion on the topic, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Nobody loves these deer and these wild places more than us hunters and we need to act like it by holding our representatives accountable when they try to make decisions like this without any of our input.
