Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Deer annihilation

It's my understanding the snipers are doing their thing about 10 miles away, on game lands.
With plans to do it all over this area.
Our local numbers have been seriously reduced in the last 20 years.
Now, PGC has decided the way to save the deer from CWD is to kill them.
Paid "sharpshooters" are whacking them over bait piles.

The hypocrisy is enormous. For several years putting any feed out for deer
has been illegal, on the theory that it spreads CWD. Now, they do it.
Hunting over bait, shooting after hours, not tagging, killing too many deer.
They were hunting poachers like dogs a month ago. Now, they are trying to eliminate
the deer. Why not just let hunters do it?


They are asking permission to kill on private property.
Rumor has it a farmer gave permission. Then rescinded,
after his barn was threatened. The whole dam world
is corrupt, and nuts.

That doesn’t sound right!

no deer no more need for guns simple

Ridiculous. It’s an exercise in futility. It’s like trying to exterminate coyotes. You can try but you won’t get anywhere. Unfortunately CWD won’t go away as long as deer feed on agricultural crops. If they were able to back to browsing it might help. Better bet would be to have farmers burn their fields after the crops are harvested. This MIGHT deter the deer from feeding in mass numbers in the fields and MIGHT kill the prions of CWD that are left in the field. No one knows what to do and they’re merely punting at this point.

Apparently much more unknown than known about cwd.

The PGC does not know what to do about CWD. They pass laws with little thought,I.e. I used to raise deer when CWD came to Pa. we were told to gut skin and cut up the captive deer right here on the farm to keep the prions somewhat contained...what they never mandated was how to dispose of deer that die naturally or the skin, bone, guts,etc of those I did kill from the captive herd for meat. As if those prions would just stay here on the farm...what if I wanted to put them in the trash? Perfectly legal.

In wmu 5c there is no fall turkey hunting even though I have about 60 birds on my farm. Those idiots from the PGC asked if they could trap Turkey's here to transplant. I told them you closed fall hunting cause you said there was too few birds now you want to trap and transfer from my place....go fugg yourself.

There is no way you can convince me that it isn't being spread to some degree by birds.

Ain't that the truth!

The original goal of the greenies was to reduce game numbers to such low levels that hunting would have to be eliminated. The plan was to use wolves and bears to do it. That was their actual stated plan. In the northern Rockies, it backfired on them because they never dreamed that wolves would become game animals themselves. We almost had a grizzly hunt this year but a lefty federal judge stopped it at the last minute.
I guess that since the predators didn't work, they've gone to just killing the deer themselves.

This stuff always pisses me off. CWD has been around forever. It infected the tame herds and suddenly, it is given a name and it is a crisis. If a deer looks sick, walk away. It you kill a deer, don't eat the spine and brain. Game Departments get all wrapped up in ridiculous crap and do stupid stuff to try to solve it. Wisconsin tried the same thing, if I recall and it just pissed everybody off. Unreal.

The number of hunters in Wisconsin is way down,no one goes anymore.Many were scared off by the CWD,the DNR tried to kill off all the deer in the early 2000's,got to a point now where I hunt that you hardly hear a shot or rarely see a deer.The DNR ruined a great thing here.It went from a sporting tradition to a profitable business for the DNR, then they destroyed it and don't know what to do now.I think the numbers I seen last fall,the number of hunters is down close to 1/3 from the late 90's.such a shame.The facts known,I've known far more chronically wasted hunters than I ever saw deer

Back in the mid to late eighties and to 95 or so I shot crop damage with my dad and uncles on a potato farm in Michigan. We had number around 60-70 deer per square mile. We shot well over 150 deer a year and there were other farms doing the same. We hardly made a dent in the population it seemed. The DNR reintroduced wolves in 94-95. That combined with a couple harsh winters reduced the overall deer population in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan by about 75% give or take. They wanted a wolf season here and it was stopped by a libtard judge as well. Locals took care of that issue themselves I think as wolf numbers are down drastically.

Pa. Is a no baiting state for deer the game boys tell us it must remain that way because of herd health (CWD). I guess the deer in Texas or Ohio never heard of CWD...I hunt both those states both have better deer herds than Pa. and bait sales go up every year......hmmmmmmm

They could always make opening day the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

Opening day of regular firearms season in Kansas is always the Wednesday after Thanksgiving then runs for twelve days or so until the second week on Dec.

^^^^^^^^^^^^
This.

I always wondered if the insurance companies had anything to do with Wisconsins insane slaughter. They saved a lot of money from it.

For the last 30 years around here they’ve been called deprivation permits. Whack 30-40 no problem. Nothing new and it had nothing to do with CWD.

Insurance companies have been a driving force in our doe harvests for years.
When I was young, and we had a lot of deer, our county would get 5-8k doe permits.
They raised that to 14k+ along with allowing one to buy leftover tags and kill another deer.
They really reduced the herd. In excess of half, I'd guess.

We went from county tags to district tags that include parts of multiple counties, but
the doe allocation stayed similar. In addition, this year they issued several thousand
CWD tags in two small areas that are largely in this county.

The report tags from that are not required to be in yet.
But, they are already shooting deer.


Well, one local paper (today) says they have postponed the shooting.
But there are reports to the contrary, and people have posted photos of
huge bait piles. There are even supposed pics of dead dear being loaded up.

Who to believe?

Oh yes they did,they pressured the DNR very hard,the DNR saw a profit in the beginning by the huge number of hunters and license sales.Then it back fired,so many wives said they didn't want the meat in their houses,almost no deer left,been 10 years or more now and the deer numbers are still way down,the little towns that use to thrive from the hunting numbers of $ spent a year by hunters.The economic effect has been horrible to these places.I do believe there is a thing as Chronic Wasting Disease but I don't believe its a new thing I think it is just a hype created by the DNR and insurance companies,and it has cost hunting overall in a bad way.Again,when you let government get involved it destroys everything

But I can't draw a 2nd round doe tag for an area I want to hunt....

-Jake

Q
Really wish this fairy tale would die

Dillonbuck--what county? I hunt Bedford County. It does suck, I'm not a fan of sharpshooters!

The first thing I thought of when PA decided to reduce it's deer herd was the car insurance companies were behind it.
Seems the PGC wanted the deer herd reduced around the urban areas where no one could hunt but got the herd shot out where everybody could hunt.
I used to hunt the ANF in Elk County across the Clarion River from a little village called Portland Mills. Lots of deer there until Quality Deer Management in the early 2000.s. After the thinning of the herd ( 2005 ), three deer were left in that area. One buck ( at 10 pt ) and two doe. Goes to say, I haven't been back to hunt there for a while.

To me, Quality Deer Management means having one buck and one doe in each county. But they're big healthy ones.

I believe you are referring to "depredation permits" which are generally issued to landowners and/or farmers to assist in the reduction of deer that are eating/destroying crops.

No the game dept. Is indeed paying sharpshooter to kill family groups of deer...an using hunter $ to pay them. That is how fugged up the Pa.Game Comission is

I wonder How many states this has been going on in. We have seen a steady decline in Deer Population since 2011, here in Virginia. I've had several e-mail discussions with the Idiots at the VDGIF, they have cited "cultural carrying capacity" I call BS.

I may wear a tinfoil hat at times, but I do believe "they" want us to be reliant on "them" for food, and reduce the firearm debate to "your hobby".

Has this stuff been happening in your state? where are you from? So far I have seen:

WI
PA
VA

You don't know if Virginia is using others to kill off large quantities of Deer? That is something that is hard to keep under the radar. At least for any long period of time. Like 2011.

You want more Deer then don't play their game, which is to limit Deer numbers with antlerless licenses. That is the way they do it. Either don't buy every Doe tag they are willing to sell you or buy them and don't use them. Do that and quickly the Deer will blossom. It is a simple numbers game. Had 6 Deer in the yard last night before the snow came. At least two full grown Does and lets say probably two more females. What do you have next year if you kill three of the females? What do you have if you don't? And then the next year? Multiple it across the State....Two many hunters today just have to kill something every year and the GC 's have it figured out. Give them the Doe tags and they will pull the trigger.

I know for a fact VA has used snipers in certain areas of Northern & Central VA. As for not using doe tags. The last time I pulled the trigger on a deer was an 8pt in 2014.
When I stop seeing a thriving population, I hunt Mature bucks only. I know I'm not the average hunter, that's what concerns me.

If you are replying to me I was just stating that its depredation and not deprivation in regards to the permit system that is used for herd reduction due to crop damage.

I don't doubt that PA game commission is doing it as its a general protocol of lots of states to kill as many cervids (deer/elk) in a certain radius (many miles) once a CWD infected animal has been confirmed. It happened two years ago just a few miles from me in NW Arkansas. If I recall correctly they killed as many deer as possible in a 5 mile radius of where the infected animal was found.

And I'm not advocating for or saying what they are doing is right nor beneficial in addressing the problem either.

If they wholesale kill Deer in the CWD identified area the hunters will complain. If they let it go and it somehow spreads to plague proportions across the State, and into adjoining States, what would be the hunting and non-hunting response? “Those bastaaards knew and did nothing!!!!”

The know it alls always think they have the right answer. We need more know it alls in the various Game Departments.

Here we have hunters complaining we don’t have enough Deer and also beeetching they can’t get two Doe tags. Area I hunt has a poaching issue. One farmer I know says he has called the GC on numerous occasions. He gets a recorded message when he calls: Press 1 for, press 2 for, etc. which takes him to another recorded leave a message. As of last fall he said they haven’t got back with him. Maybe he is BSing, maybe he isn’t.

Hunters told them for years that something bad was going on with Grouse. Their response was we don’t have the right habitat. Know they admit we have large areas of the right habitat, but perhaps it is West Nile that is causing the issue. So they inject Grouse eggs with West Nile and bingo the chicks die of it. Well, you inject embryos with contaminants and you are going to get defective births. Imagine that.

One thing for sure is the Pa GC is no longer all that fond of the sound of rifles. They much prefer the swish of the arrow.

CWD was found in Mississippi last year, over the summer the game and fish commissions studied over 700 deer checking for CWD. Most of them were killed by depredation hunting at night, they shoot every thing they see in a farmers field.
Ronnie

You want more Deer then don't play their game, which is to limit Deer numbers with antlerless licenses. That is the way they do it. Either don't buy every Doe tag they are willing to sell you or buy them and don't use them. Do that and quickly the Deer will blossom. It is a simple numbers game. Had 6 Deer in the yard last night before the snow came. At least two full grown Does and lets say probably two more females. What do you have next year if you kill three of the females? What do you have if you don't? And then the next year? Multiple it across the State....Two many hunters today just have to kill something every year and the GC 's have it figured out. Give them the Doe tags and they will pull the trigger. [/quote]

You are slipping I finally agree with something you say.

The PGC can not manage a good crap let alone the game. Too many college codes working on the staff whom never set foot know outside the classroom into the woods. They learn from some yuppie prof an take it as gospel

NJ, specifically northern NJ. The suburbs in central and east NNJ are loaded with deer. big, healthy, older deer. Some bow hunting but mostly just deer and backyards.

IN the actual woods of NNJ this year was a very low one for sighting deer or sign. Every hunter I spoke to mentioend its way down this year.

I'll just add, NJ blows.