Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting MI Bans Baiting!

However, the property still became closed to hunting for a minimum of 30 days.

Michigan isn't that Draconian yet.

Maybe you (and game and fish) need to quit [bleep] with the wildlife; maybe spend a little more effort keeping it "wild".

The spread of CWD , blue tongue and other "confinement" type diseases no doubt occur in nature; that people feel the need to "care" for wild animals (that probably exist in artificially high numbers due to all the "love") isn't just exclusive to "fish and game" officials or game farmers.

If your "looking out" for wild animals like they're livestock or something you own, you're probably part of the problem....

MI DNR does over flights looking for illegal bait piles. They have for years. Pretty easy to see a dumptruck load of orange carrots, red apples, pumpkins, or yellow corn from 2000' up. My guess is that they'll step up those flights. Plus those who follow the law and come upon these huge piles on state land will send in the gps coords to the RAP line.

The other problem with baiting on public land is it gets damned territorial. Some guy who;s been bating an area for weeks thinks he owns the woods. When, in fact, state land is first come first served. Many stories of guys having not so friendly barrels leveled on them.

The good part about baiting is that it keeps some nailed down to one spot. The bad part is what you pointed out.

High fence game farms are the source for CWD. Infected animals bought/sold/shipped all over the country. Eliminate the Game farms. There are none in Wyoming. We got our CWD epidemic from neighboring Colorado.

How do you xplain CWD - before - high fence game farms ?


Jerry

BTDT.
I used to hunt the U.P. - my last experience killing a buck, and bizarro-world encounter with two "brudders" on the drag back the truck was something straight out of Deliverance.

Rare and isolated.

You will find that the deer here are plenty wild. Just barbed wire fences left over from when cows were raised. Like I pointed out earlier, the CWD animals are in the area where the G&F brought in Elk from Colorado. No telling where all the bones and such ended up from hunters before the G&F decided to let the public know about CWD. Now if you have a problem with feeding and baiting, just say so, but do not place blame for things that are not related. miles

HARDLY !



Jerry

Save money, no buying corn!

Guys here (NJ) bait by the truck load. I don't bait, I think it's unsportsmanlike. To each his own!

Not discrediting that one bit, but I'm involved in an area where we have 1,000's of acres to roam and each camp keeps tabs on sightings and success rates. We're seeing about a 15% success rate. Down about 7% since 2010. Way down since the 90's and WAY down for mature bucks being shot compared to that time.

IMO, we need major public land habitat improvement in the EUP.

I am not an expert , but here is my CWD related experience. I shot an obviously sick cow elk last year. She was standing in the middle of a small stream guzzling water like it was her civic duty. She did not react to my approach. I shot her and drug her out of the creek with a four wheeler( she was only a 100 yds behind my friends cabin). She weighed maybe 250 lbs at the most. Was a mature cow that was as skinny as any thing you could imagine. We opened her up for investigation and her intestines were clear like plastic wrap, collapsed and empty. She had not eaten in a long time. I do not believe a sickly animal like this would find its way to many bait stations. This was standing midstream, drooling into the creek that leads to a small pond. I believe that this would be a major spreader of the disease.
P.S. We took blood samples, the game warden we met coming off the mountain took lymph nodes and all tested positive for cwd. She went into an incinerator whole........ Which unfortunately is one of the few ways to kill the protein prions that cause the disease.....

Wyo 260

A pathetic, slow , agonizing, despicable way to die. HORRIBLE!!!!!


Jerry

I noticed a big area in Canada on jwall's map, and another in Colorado. Theory is that the Colorado one is where the disease jumped from sheep to elk. What about the area in Canada? Connected to Colorado in any way or another species jump? miles

Miles

I don’t have any background on the spread or sources of CWD per locales on the map. It’s obvious that CWD was already in Mo. before it was identified in Ark. I agree that most likely and probably CWD IS spread by transplanted animals and they
are contained for some period of time before release. Our CWD core area IS where the Elk were released AFTER being transplanted from Co.
They have proven the prions can be spread by scavengers. So buzzards , eagles, etc can spread CWD far & wide.

Jerry

And as Michigan biologists (as well as those in other states) have apparently found, it can be spread in areas where congregated feeding/baiting occurs, since milespatton doesn't think these things are related....

And I'm pretty sure the "wild animals" brought from CO were well fed then baited right into the trap that sent them to your state. This [bleep] isn't rocket science and I'll be damned if the motives aren't more about people playing Dr. Moreau than it is about enjoying wild animals, as much as they can be wild, given the need for people to feed, photo and see/shoot them on demand.

Hawk, I don’t remember whether I stated my position or not on that so...

YES, CWD is spread in containment areas thru contaminated food, water, soil, etc.
when you concentrate the animals you also concentrate the source of the disease.

Also I believe $$$$$ play a big role in the motives as well.

Jerry