Highly contagious
Tracking the disease again
AS HUMANS keep track of their pandemic—and try not to tire from the warnings and numbers and restrictions that come on an hourly basis—there’s another highly contagious disease that is targeting one of Arkansas’ most beloved activities: deer hunting.
Unlike news concerning covid-19, people have not become weary of the news concerning Chronic Wasting Disease. (NB: People should not dismiss covid-19 news, as weary as they may be. We may have to live with it, but let’s emphasize the “live” part.)
Another round of news about CWD hit the front page the other day in a story written by Lisa Hammersly. The state of Arkansas, more precisely the Game and Fish Commission, is tracking the CWD infection in deer and elk. The spread is alarming all Arkansans who hunt on a regular basis—and they are legion. Hundreds of thousands of people—perhaps as many as 300,000—hunt in Arkansas, according to Web reports about the number of licenses sold here.
The latest: The disease has broken out of the Ozarks and invaded the piney woods and Delta. One case has been found in each of these counties: Union (near the Louisiana border), Randolph (near the Missouri bootheel) and Independence (think Batesville).
The news has spooked hunters, because the piney woods of south Arkansas is a deer breeding machine, and a lot of money is poured into hunting clubs, land leases, etc. The Delta also produces some massive soybean-fed deer. And if the disease has appeared so far away from Ground Zero, the trail to these farflung places is likely littered with CWD.
The Game and Fish Commission is already putting out recommendations for hunters—including the suggestion to keep hunting. According to the paper, “Reducing the density of deer in areas where CWD is known to occur can help slow the spread, according to the state wildlife veterinarian Dr. Jenn Ballard. Added samples from around the state also help monitor the disease’s occurrence.”
Lisa Hammersly’s article interviewed hunters who had their own thoughts. There is talk that feeding deer artificially (through feeders or other methods) might have to come to an end. The experts call this “artificial congregation.”
In fact, after the Union County case was announced, Louisiana decided to take action, so it banned feeding animals in Union and Morehouse Parishes near the Arkansas border. We have wondered how that helps.
And if Arkansas decides to ban “artificial congregation,” what would that mean? The state, with all its power, can’t ban oak trees from dropping acorns. And it can’t tell deer not to patronize corn or soybean fields.
If the goal is to remove deer from the herd, wouldn’t it make sense to make it easier for hunters to take them? Would it make more sense to drop the threepoint rule and allow for larger limits? That would reduce the quality of “big bucks” in some areas, but it would also thin the herd. And isn’t that the point?
The experts at the Game and Fish Commission might have a ready answer for such questions. We think the best suggestion came in the last paragraph of our news story. The article quoted Emon Mahony of El Dorado, a hunter and, by the way, a former Game and Fish commissioner: It’s important that the state’s game regulators and managers “explain what they’re doing and why, so the hunters will accept it as a logical and appropriate response.”
Logical and appropriate. And explainable. That’s all the hunters of Arkansas need. Then they’ll take it from there.