On December 15, the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) announced the end of a controversial CWD control program: a sharpshooting initiative that involved baiting and spotlighting deer in areas where CWD has been detected. MDC Director Jason Sumners announced the news in an open letter.
“As CWD has spread in Missouri over the last decade, MDC’s objective has been and continues to be to keep CWD infection rates low to protect the long-term health of the deer herd. This extensive undertaking can only be accomplished by working collaboratively with hunters and landowners,” he wrote. “At this time, MDC will be pausing our post-season targeted removal efforts to work with hunters and landowners to adapt and identify a more sustainable path forward.”
According to the CDC, CWD, or chronic wasting disease, is a prion disease that is spreading in deer, elk, moose, and reindeer. The government agency calls it a “serious disease in animals” and notes that it is “always fatal in infected animals.”
Kip Adams, Chief Conservation Officer for the National Deer Association, told MeatEater that while MDC’s targeted deer removal program may not have been popular among some sportsmen, it was effective.
“Missouri has been a leader in keeping CWD prevalence on the landscape low because they’ve been so aggressive at removing additional CWD-positive deer from known hotspots,” he said. “The single best-known way to make that happen is strategic sharpshooting cull programs…It’s unfortunate that now they have lost that ability.”
Prior to the action, Adams participated in an MDC-organized public event to engage local hunters on the issue. He said that many of them had qualms with MDC using bait for its post-season targeted deer removals, while forbidding hunters from doing the same. He also understands the frustration of there being fewer deer to hunt.
“I get it. Nobody wants additional deer to be removed if it’s in their backyard,” he said. “However, the science is very clear…you can look at other states and provinces where once strategic removal programs were removed, CWD prevalence rates climbed precipitously. Unfortunately, the same thing is probably going to happen in Missouri.”
In his open letter, Sumners pointed to the success of a recently launched Hunter Harvest Initiative, which encourages hunters to kill more deer in CWD “core zones.” Adams said that efforts like this, which involve local hunters, are important, but they should complement, not replace, more precise culls.
Adams noted that folks downplaying CWD, particularly on social media, has created a narrative that the disease is not as harmful as experts make it out to be. However, recent studies show significant population-level impacts from the disease.
“The detractors often say there’s never been a population that’s been reduced by CWD. That’s just not true. We have more evidence of CWD causing population declines in whitetails than ever before,” he said, adding that he’s worried about other states following Missouri’s lead.
“Hunters in every state whose state wildlife agency uses [targeted culls] can see Missouri has gone away from it. The ones that don’t like it will say, ‘Hey, Missouri stopped doing it.’ The ones that aren’t sure if it’s a good thing or not will look at it and say, ‘Well, if MDC quit doing it, it must not have been effective,’” he said. “This is going to have ramifications far outside of The Show-Me State.”
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