A News Flash From the MDC

It is not the change in climate that will destroy the United States… it is the awful change in people.

Anyone who wants to fish with me on the wilderness lake in Northwest Ontario can join me. The plane leaves Nestor Falls Ontario on morning of Aug. 12. The cost is $500 per person for a full week, includes the flight cost, lodge, boat, motor and fuel. This is one heck of a bargain. The Lodge is a big one, has a big kitchen, and lots of beds… has solar power. Call me at 417/777-5227 if you want to go. We can take any number of fishermen. I know the lake well, know where the fish are and how to fish it in August. In addition, fishermen will get to meet a real Canadian legend, my old friend Tinker Helseth.

In other news, the Conservation Department is holding a meeting at the Humansville United Methodist Church from 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday evening, Aug. 22, to discuss Chronic Wasting Disease (mad-deer disease). CWD infected deer have been found in St. Clair County, so now the Conservation Department is requiring all deer hunters to check their deer at a designated site in 25 different counties. If you do not do it you can be cited and fined.

This is some more flailing around by one of the most inept conservation departments ever. It is a useless endeavor and attending such a meeting is a waste of time. They have made an attempt to evade the truth at every turn. The letter sent out says, “CWD is an infectious disease which affects the deer family.” They have never ever, in any communication, mentioned that it can and has affected humans as well. There have been many, many documented deaths from this awful disease over the past few years. In humans though, it is called Cruetzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Twenty years ago the MDC could have prevented the spread of this disease by doing what Colorado’s conservation department did… closing down all elk and deer pen operations in the state, where the operators were buying deer from other states, trying to get rich on huge antlers grown by feeding bucks meat by-products, against every rule of nature. Deer are not and never have been carnivores. The disease was spread through that feed, and those operations would sometimes just release sick deer into the wild.

When a weak and dying buck was found near my home a few years ago that I believe had CWD, the landowner called game wardens in that county and they never came to look at it or sample tissue from it. I have never seen nor heard of an agent or biologist come to look at a sick deer and many of my readers who have reported sick deer say the same thing. WHY?

I got this letter only a month or so ago from Lucas Yeggy in Dent County…

“I’ve seen what you have written concerning about sick deer (the mad deer disease. I have seen lots of sick deer for years and have pictures of many of them. The MDC has always said I am wrong about all the sick deer. I have had bucks hang around in the yard and when the kids go out and play they just lay there. I have posted in the papers about it and the MDC tries to have the photos pulled. I have enclosed the photo of a very sick deer. For the third year I have been seeing deer like this one on my game camera. I have sent these photos to MDC and they have blocked me and deleted the pictures.”

If your newspaper doesn’t have the space to use Yeggy’s photo, you can see it on my website, larrydablemontoutdoors, or in the summer issue of my magazine, the Lightnin Ridge Outdoor Journal, on many newsstands now. If they have such an interest in doing what is best for deer and deer hunters, why doesn’t the MDC come to investigate sick deer found by the public. Of course they are very worried about the loss of revenue from dropping deer tag sales and I think controlling that loss is a main purpose of what they do.

But there is one thing I will pass on, and I will have more to say on it in later columns… If you have a really large and valuable set of antlers on a buck, do not take it to a check station, or you will lose it. It will be confiscated. In my fall magazine I will print a lengthy article about what has happened to so many who have had big deer antlers confiscated for drummed-up minor charges against a hunter. I hope all deer hunters will read that article.

For years, the enforcement division has lied about destroying the antlers taken from some poor hunter who lost his deer as a result of a false charge. Those valuable antlers are never destroyed. I found out recently that many of them are given to a craftsman who puts together antler chandeliers. Some wind up in the home of commissioners or high-level employees or places like Bass Pro Shops. Other sets of big antlers are sold, some for thousands of dollars, to wind up on mounted heads found in offices and galleries of well connected people. One southwest Missouri conservation officer has a shed just for confiscated deer antlers, which he has boasted about being his retirement fund.

When you check your deer by phone this fall, notice they want to know the circumference at the base and how many points. Want to see if I am on to something? Report your buck as an 18 pointer with a large base. Then wait for the agents to visit you. Or call and say you have found a monstrous buck in the ditch along the highway and ask if you can have it? See how long it is before an agent gets there. If you report hitting a fork-horn with your vehicle, you can keep it with the proper paperwork. They have no interest in seeing it.

If you kill a big-antlered buck, don’t put a picture of it on facebook, or in the newspaper or you will make yourself a target. Again, my magazine this fall will have stories from readers who have been antagonized by agents who try to get the antlers.

This goes to show the power the MDC has, because no large scale TV or print news media anywhere will investigate this or even mention the possibility it is happening.

And this article will go to over 60 newspapers in three states, but some will not print it.

That meeting in Humansville will be useless as far as changing anything in the spread of CWD. Nothing can be done to slow it. But that meeting will be an opportunity to say with a loud voice, that the MDC has decided to force you to do what they say, as useless as it is, or else.