So you want us to thank deer breeders?GigemKW said:duddleysdraw88 said:GigemKW said:
Dear dudley.
If so many native deer running wild around you have cwd then You should buy some breeder and put them on your place so you know you have killed something that tested negative for cwd.
I haven't tested any deer, knucklehead. tpwd REPORTED the extremely high number of confirmed cases in my area and that is why I don't hunt here anymore.
Why is this so hard for you to comprehend?
There are 5.3 million deer in Texas. Cwd cases are not skyrocketing around you. There is a grey area here. We can be concerned about cwd without going "nuclear" and " f tpwd" and "f breeders". It is black and white to you at this moment but I ask you to be open minded.
Have you ever heard this saying? "Ranching is the only business where the goal is to break even?"
Can you blame farmers and cattle ranchers for trying to do something they love and and make a profit in deer breeding?
Ranching and farming is basically volunteer work and we should all hug these people for feeding the rest of us for such a pitiful income. Who do you think deer breeders are? I can assure you most are just normal, hard working people, so come at this with facts and a well thought out plan before you give double birds and burn it all down.
And why the insults? If we were sitting next to each other at Kyle watching the ags and having a beer….would u really talk to me like that? That is the most depressing aspect of all of this. Civility and conflict resolution skills are at a premium.
Some thoughts:
I do have to say that no cwd case has ever affected a human.
I will also say that I cannot guarantee that wont change.
In 2021 I believe 14,000 stocker bucks were tested for cwd.
No positives
I clicked on some (not all)of the breeder deer positives someone posted above. It looks like cwd is confined to a few breeders. That would make sense. If a few breeders have all the positives then that is better than all breeders having a few positives.
There is no hiding cwd from tpwd. All deer moved are tested. Almost all dead deer are tested. If you dont test dead deer you will lose the ability to move deer. Tpwd surveys each breeder annually to make sure nobody is cheating. Is this bulletproof? Probabaly not but the clamps have tightened dramatically and cheaters will be dealt with harshly. The govt can giveth or taketh away.
If you dont like the ante mortem tests complain to ATM. The lab is on campus.
You underestimate the value to the state of Texas deer breeders provide. A lot more than Joe Hunter does by buying a license and shooting doe off the farm.
Lastly, you didnt quit shooting deer locally because of cwd. You quit cause it is boring and old hat to shoot a spike behind the barn at the farm. You seek adventure, challenge, and possibly a trophy in OKlahoma and Nebraska, or elk hunting out west. Those places are a fun getaway that the local setting cannot provide.
None if this is a personal attack. It is a conversation. I want to understand all sides.
Gig Em
You do realize that deer breeding isn't the same as farming or ranching, outside of the fact that animals and land are involved, correct?
Nahh, I won't thank somebody that has a niche market that provides very, very little positive benefit to the population as a whole that also is proving to provide a massive negative benefit not only to the entire current hunting population, but also to landowners as well as to future generations by knowingly operating a system that we have demonstrated to be not only a source of development of the disease, but the single largest contributing factor to the spread of that disease.
The fact that they might be normal hard working people is irrelevant. Hell, one could argue that drug mules are normal hard working people as well - but I'm not about to go out and thank them for their service or anything dumb like that. You can be a great person at heart all day and twice on sundays, but the fact of the matter is that if you have demonstrable proof that what you are doing has far worse consequences, even if unintended, than benefits and you continue to do that very thing....you aren't worthy of any thanks at all.
Would it be awesome if deer breeding had nothing but positive outcomes and no downside? Absolutely, I'd love to have 180 class bucks running around on my place. But that isn't happening, and I'll argue all day long that the "value" provided by deer breeders is not in the same league as the value provided by the hunting population in the state. If you are making the claim that a very select few white tail deer breeders provide more value, both monetarily as well as in other mechanisms such as conservation, than the 2.5 million hunters and fishermen - then I'm asking you to provide hard data proving your claim. Because I'll tell you that people will still hunt, lease land, by corn and protein, feeders, etc. whether deer breeders exist or not.
The fact of the matter is that some animals are not meant to be domesticated and doing so has bad outcomes. White tail deer appear to be one of those species and continuing to push what is obviously a bad position absolutely has the very real potential to essentially remove that species from the list of what we can hunt and consume as humans. Tell me how that is something I should thank a breeder (who aren't ranchers) for?
