When Did Oconto County Deer Feeding Ban Start
The Department of Natural Resources is urging deer hunters in Oconto and Menominee counties to cease tending their bait piles as Wisconsin prepares to permanently end deer baiting and feeding in those counties Nov. 1.
The DNR set the Nov. 1 baiting/feeding ban after a yearling doe killed in September at the Apple Creek Whitetails game farm west of Gillett tested positive for chronic wasting disease. The 1,363-acre shooting preserve in Oconto County holds an estimated 1,450 deer, according to the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.
State statutes require a baiting/feeding ban for counties with a CWD-positive deer, and any county within a 10-mile radius of the infected deer. The Apple Creek facility is about a mile east of Menominee County and two miles north of Shawano County.
Baiting and feeding deer has been illegal in Shawano County since February 2014 after a captive deer killed in neighboring Marathon County in November 2013 tested positive for CWD. That case also triggered a baiting/feeding ban in nearby Waupaca County.
Deer baiting/feeding is now illegal in 43 of Wisconsin's 72 "CWD-affected" counties, including all of southern Wisconsin and most of central Wisconsin. The DNR has confirmed CWD in wild deer in 18 counties. The always-fatal disease also has been found in captive deer or elk on 15 privately owned game farms. According to DATCP, Wisconsin has 387 registered deer farms, of which 65 include shooting preserves where clients sometimes pay more than $10,000 to shoot large-antlered bucks.
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Ben Treml, northeastern Wisconsin's regional conservation warden in the DNR's Green Bay office, said the agency will spend the next three weeks making hunters and wildlife feeders aware of the baiting/feeding ban.
The DNR website includes a four-page "FAQ" that explains how the agency enforces distinctions between bird/wildlife feeding and deer feeding/baiting, as well as what baits, scents and quantities are allowed. In brief, people can feed birds and small animals as long as their feeders are within 50 yards of their home and above the deer's reach.
Treml said the DNR prefers to use "education and information" when enacting such bans, but said wardens still have the discretion to issue citations.
"We're hoping our educational efforts will get people to comply with the baiting/feeding ban," Treml said. "We're announcing this early to urge people to start removing their bait and feed from the woods, and then honor the ban."
The state's archery-deer season opened Sept. 17 for the state's approximately 275,000 compound-bow and crossbow hunters. Archery season sees its highest participation levels from late October through mid-November during the whitetail's rut, or mating season. That's when deer are typically most active during daylight.
Wisconsin's annual firearms deer season, which opens Nov. 19, is expected to put about 610,000 hunters into the woods opening weekend.
Treml said most hunters comply with baiting and feeding bans, but wardens still write baiting/feeding citations each autumn in areas with and without bans. In fact, baiting/feeding is perennially the leading hunting violation statewide, and resulted in a record 513 citations in 2015, with 430 citations for illegal baiting and 83 for illegal feeding. Fines are typically about $530.
Baiting/feeding citations dipped to 375 statewide in 2012, but have risen each year since. In other words, compliance hasn't improved since the DNR's chief warden at the time, Randy Stark, reported 300 such violations during the November 2006 gun season. "No single issue in my 23 years as a conservation warden has consumed as many pages of warden (reports) like baiting and feeding issues have this year," Stark wrote.
Meanwhile, DNR plans to monitor the Gillett area for CWD remain "a work in progress," said Tami Ryan, the DNR's wildlife health section chief. Even though the CWD-stricken doe at Apple Creek Whitetails lived inside a high fence, research shows it's possible for CWD to be transmitted between deer living inside and outside of fences. Treml said the integrity of Apple Creek's fence remains "under investigation."
People who hunt deer in any of the state's 43 "CWD-affected" counties should consider the Wisconsin Division of Public Health's advisory on Page 33 of the DNR's 2016 deer hunting regulations: "Venison from deer harvested from CWD Affected Areas (should) not be consumed or distributed to others until CWD test results from the deer are known to be negative."
As of Wednesday afternoon, however, the DNR hadn't found any "cooperators" to collect CWD samples from the area's hunters. In many cases the DNR contracts with taxidermists or others willing to collect lymph nodes from hunter-killed deer.
CWD testing by the DNR has declined sharply in recent years because of budget cuts imposed by the Legislature and approved by Gov. Scott Walker. The DNR collected 3,139 CWD samples in 2015, the lowest testing effort since the disease was discovered in February 2002 in southern Wisconsin. Even so, those tests revealed a record 295 CWD-positive animals, or 9.4 percent of deer tested.
The DNR analyzed a record 30,272 CWD samples in 2006 before budget cuts reduced annual tests to an average of 9,054 from 2007 to 2010; and 5,428 from 2010 to 2015.
Although the Oconto County doe is the first CWD-positive whitetail found in northeastern Wisconsin, it isn't the region's first CWD case. A Manitowoc County game farm had an elk test positive for CWD in March 2003.
Ryan said the DNR will continue searching for people to collect CWD samples in the Gillett area, and encouraged hunters to keep monitoring the DNR's "registration station database" web page for updates on sampling sites. If the DNR cannot locate any cooperators, hunters wanting their deer tested can contact Dave Halfmann, Oconto County's wildlife manager in Peshtigo.
The other option is to take deer to one of three CWD-sampling stations in Marathon County or one of five sampling stations in Portage County.
Even though Manitowoc, Sheboygan and Calumet counties have been "CWD-affected" since 2003; and Shawano and Waupaca counties have shared the same distinction since 2014, none of these counties offers CWD sampling.
Ryan said "buffer" counties next door to counties with confirmed CWD cases don't necessarily offer sampling. Other counties in the DNR's northeastern district that offer CWD tests are Waushara, Adams, Juneau and Wood.
Patrick Durkin is a freelance writer who covers outdoors for USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin. Email him at patrickdurkin56@gmail.com.
Source: https://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/story/sports/outdoors/2016/10/14/oconto-menominee-join-counties-under-baiting-ban/91750610/
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