Formerly The Outspoken Sportsman

February 7, 2009

Dr. Mason,

I wanted to pass along first an editorial dictating the level of severity winter that is facing the deer in the Upper Peninsula, and its severity is related to the conditions out west, which we discussed in an earlier letter a month or so ago, in which, in spite of the presence of CWD in Colorado, wildlife officials were instituting winter feeding to avoid severe winter death loss.

http://dailypress.net/page/content.detail/id/509585.html?nav=5006

Additionally, please take a moment to read some of the comments of the general public who took the time to post their thoughts on the actions of the DNR as it pertains to CWD and the future plans to extend and test millions of dollars worth of animals into the next few years, so as to be sure what the level of CWD could be in the deer herd in the exploding population in Kent County.  You may scoff at these peoples comments, however, objectively and honestly these opinions are an extremely accurate assessment of the opinions of the vast majority of hunters and non hunters alike.  The general public has grown weary of fear mongering beauraucratic  officials, just witness the millions of dollars and unnecessary public fears that were instilled over the bird flu epidemic that by now was going to wipe out large segments of our population.   A public official who is able to step outside of their circumstance and for a moment clearly see that the general public for once may have some very valid points to their criticisms, may be able to in the end make rational decisions that do not compromise the resource and actually improve the public’s perception of the role that the official is taking in addressing the issue.  In many people’s eyes, having Dr. Schmitt who has clearly had a very heavy anti baiting and feeding bias for a long, long time, attempt explain the reasons why his stance must continue appears in the publics eye to be nothing much more than a case of the “fox guarding the hen house”.

http://www.mlive.com/outdoors/index.ssf/2009/02/officials_say_chronic_wasting.html

 

In other areas of the thumb, farmer friends of mine indicate that 85 to 90 deer visit a neighboring silage pile on a nightly basis, and I am sure that this incident is repeated on a nightly basis all over the state of Michigan.  Conditions like these, which are actually exacerbated by your decision to not allow thousands of Michigan residents to feed small amounts of supplemental feed in the winter, flies against all of your arguments about minimizing nose to nose contact and deer social interactions, a point that was clearly elucidated by a Minnesota biologist who quantified the damage of deer on stored agricultural feed stores in Minnesota.  From where I stand, I see your decisions regarding supplemental feeding to be nothing more than, “well we can’t do anything about the deer that are feeding on farmers feed stores, so even though this is the major problem, we will regulate the individual to control the less than 2% of feed that deer consume in a year, and that will be good enough, and we will then proclaim we are taking firm steps to minimize deer feeding interactions.  As a practitioner that worked for a quarter century on livestock and observed these situations over and over again, you are not convincing me in the least.

 

And finally I am including a copy of my presentation that I gave to the Natural Resources Council some 8 or 9 years ago, prior to when either of you were involved with the Michigan DNR, as my thoughts then as you can see, could have led to a cooperative instead of an adversarial relationship with the hunters in DMU 452, an area in which you are now proposing to let the farmers reduce the deer numbers to stop the spread of Bovine Tuberculosis in the area.  As I pointed out, this disease is a very complex management issue and you have high levels present in many non ruminants and as a veterinarian who practiced at a time when the MDA decided that it was no longer necessary to test cattle for Tuberculosis, it is clear that this disease spread was exacerbated by the easy and unregulated movement of cattle that occurred prior to the discovery of TB in DMU 452.

 

You can and most likely will continue on the road you are on with the management of these diseases.  But in my opinion the bias of those in power positions within your organization and their lack of understanding about how their decisions affect the enjoyment of the resources of the state, and the economic damage that their decisions have made will degrade and not enhance the resource of white-tailed deer in the long run and will further degrade your reputation within the public as a whole

 

If I were in your shoes I would be working with people like Dr. Schauber at Southern Illinois that correctly showed that Dr. Mike Millers model for the epidemiology of CWD is flawed.  Schauber showed that Miller’s model must be incorrect as the differential disease statistics regarding the various factors involved in the contraction of CWD must be missing some important factors.  He apparently has done a lot of research on the spatial movements of deer and how deer come in close proximity to one another.

http://www.science.siu.edu/zoology/schauber/EMS%20Research%20Page.htm#Space-use%20and%20Epizootiology%20of%20White-tailed%20Deer

 

Otherwise, simply following the suggestions of Dr. Miller and Dr. Schmitt as Wisconsin did, will cost the state multiple millions of dollars, alienate the ever shrinking number of hunters within the state and have detrimental effects upon the resource as a whole.

 

Thanks,

 

Jeffrey F. Powers DVM

Powers' Do It Best Hardware

26259 Main Street

Beaver Island, Michigan 49782

jfpowers@tds.net

---