"As poet Robinson Jeffers has noted, it is the fang that has created the fleet foot of the antelope." Listed below is information about the importance of natural predators for the health of prey animals.
Predator's Fang
The Benefit of Predators
"In general, hunters take animals in the prime of life, while predators disproportionately take out older, younger, or less fit individuals.
Predators can also limit the effects of disease. Diseases like Chronic Wasting Disease found in elk, deer, and moose since infected animals are more vulnerable to predators." ~ by George Wurthner
Chronic Wasting Disease
"Chronic Wasting Disease otherwise known as (CWD), is a prion disease that affects several cervid species: deer, elk, reindeer, sika deer, and moose. "
~Centers for Disease and Control
How You Can Help
Colorado Parks & Wildlife CWD video Series
What Hunters Can Do
Mississippi State CWD video series
Butchering Your Kill
How to butcher your kill if you are concerned with Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD)
- Be alert for deer or elk acting abnormally or that look sick; report any such animals to agency officials.
- Wear rubber or latex gloves when you field-dress your animal.
- In areas reported to have CWD, minimize your contact with a dead deer's brain and spinal cord and wash your hands after contact.
- Don't eat deer brains or spinal cord.
- Bone out your deer meat and discard the brain, spinal cord, eyes, spleen, and lymph nodes.
- If an animal is from a CWD-suspect area, unused parts, especially skull and spine, should be disposed of in an approved landfill or incinerator.
- "In many parts of the country the deer population has grown out of control, causing tens of thousands of deer-related car crashes and the destruction of natural habitat." By Sean Page
Hunting in area's with known CWD
"If you’re hunting in an area with chronic wasting disease, get the animal tested before it ever hits your plate, and don’t eat meat that tests positive." ~Brent Race - High Country News
Predators Help Manage Disease
Manage for and maintain a diverse and healthy Ecosystem, which of course must also include two of nature's historically proven management tools; the Wolf, and the Mountain Lion.
The Wolf
Wolves, by design keep deer and elk populations strong and healthy.
MME's
Mass Mortality Events. What are MME's?
In conclusion
The demands on wildlife are great. With Chronic Wasting Disease spreading across the United States. Predators, by their very nature are disposed to kill and consume the weak and sick. This process is tens of thousands of years old. It's the original wisdom.
LANSING, MI — State Sen. Tom Casperson apologized Thursday for including a fictional account of a real-life incident in a 2011 resolution urging the U.S. Congress to remove Michigan gray wolves from the federal endangered species list.
Chronic wasting disease (CWD) of deer and elk is endemic in a tri-corner area of Colorado, Wyoming, and Nebraska and new foci of CWD have been detected in other parts of the United States. Here is more information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Chronic Wasting Disease and Potential Transmission to Humans.
And Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, with possible transmission from Squirrels.
Dear Brian – the picture portrayed in your comments is indicative of many persons inaccurate perceptions of predators, especially wolves.
Without the onset of technology, humans have hunted prey species in much the same fashion as other less advantageous predators. Deer, Elk, Bison, Moose, Antelope, Big Horn Sheep, Mountain Goats, etc. have been run off cliffs, chased into box canyons, run into pit traps full of torturous spikes, and many animals have suffered from a misplaced shot by rifle.
I personally have encountered many gut shot animals, one which remains thoroughly entrenched in my mind. It was a doe antelope standing with her entrails hanging to the ground, left by idealistic hunters looking for the big buck, and not food taken home to the family. On the very same day I encountered an antelope fawn butt shot, with his haunch filleted, still alive and dying a slow agonizing death.
Let us not forget the many other agonizing ways in which we dispatch animals to their deaths, steel legs traps for which animals have died in untold agony, snares where animals are snagged around the neck or legs and hung until dead. These deaths are not painless nor are they quick.
Your dog is a direct descendant of the wolf, their genetics match to this day, and had humans not created a more palatable form of feeding pets, they too would dispatch food sources as do wolves. Many hunters who use dogs to hunt other animals, legally and illegally are fully aware of the way in which dogs will dispatch an animal to its death, and revel in the process.
Man did not create weapons as a way of dispatching animals more humanely, it was done to give us the means with which to kill at longer distances, faster, and ultimately easier, a distinctly unfair advantage. Killing has become ugly in societies removed from the process and yet each and every time you purchase a fish, chicken, pork chop, steak from your local market, someone somewhere has killed it for you and not with a bullet.
I was taught hunting was for food and all other forms of killing were done for humane purposes or self preservation, but my first kill was by hand in order to teach me that the death of an animal is to be respected and not taken lightly. Feeling the life drain from that animal was profound and I have never killed lightly or without reason. It was only after that first kill I was given other forms of weapons to dispatch an animal with knowing I would forever carry the respect and admiration deserving of all life including other predators.
Wolves do not generally kill healthy animals as do humans, they look for the unhealthy, the weak, the old, the injured, cleaning out the herd from disease insuring healthier fitter animals. Man on the other hand, kills the healthiest and biggest animals weakening and often leaving herds at risk by removing their protection and not just for food, but for trophies mounted on walls collecting dust, instead of shared and spread to their offspring.
Am I against hunting, no, not for man nor wolf, bear, cougar, eagle, owl, for we are all hunters in one form or fashion and we all prey on other life forms for food. I am against the destruction of all life forms just for human convenience. The wolf is also feeding his family, Brian.
dont o know that the wolves kill for plesure? think of your self as a deer “you feel like your being whached. and the all of a sudden you see a wolf running after you so you run. then all of a sudden you fell a sharp pain in your hind leg you just got bit but yoou keep running while loosing large amounts of blood. but you finaly fall over cause you cant run any more from blood lose and the wolf eats you while your still alive. then when hes done he leaves and you have to wait to die in the heat. ……but with a hunter they shoot you and its painless and they come and take you home to feed his faimly.” so tell me how would you like to die quick and painless or slow and pain full death with them ripping off you limbs one by one?
“Park Service wildlife veterinarian Margaret Wild says wolves could also purge chronic wasting disease from the elk herd by killing weakened, diseased animals (HCN, 10/28/02: Deer, elk disease doesn’t scare hunters). While the theory has not been tested on infected herds, Wild says computer models show that wolves can reduce and perhaps eliminate the disease in elk and deer. “It really makes a lot of sense, if you think about it,” says Wild. “I think we can take the experiment in steps,” tracking the proposed four-pack of wolves to see if they’re killing infected animals.”