Feeding and baiting increase the likelihood of deer traveling and coming in contact with feed or mineral sites. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources and I agree on this, however they are dead wrong on how to prevent it. Increasing the number of sites is the answer, not reducing them with a ban.
In full disclosure, 21 years ago I developed a mineral for wild white-tailed deer called Lucky Buck. I manufacture it in Hillsdale Co, Michigan and market it nationwide. It is considered a feed or a bait, depending on how it is used. I have an obvious economic interest in this debate, but that is of far less importance than slowing the spread of CWD in Michigan.
The Sound Science is Not Fact
The “sound science” is being presented as fact and indisputable, but it is far from it. The key is to provide everything you can for the deer so they don’t leave their home range as far or as frequently. The better the habitat, the smaller the home range and the more they will stay in it. If these 5 things are not available, deer will travel to get it: water, food, mate, shelter and sodium.
What if Water Was in Limited Supply?
Water is the easiest to understand. A dry year and arid climate with just a few remaining water holes and you have a recipe for quickly spreading a disease of any kind through an entire species. Each of these water holes have animals congregating and traveling from long distances. Since the water holes are the reason the animals are congregating and traveling, is the answer to close up some of the water holes? It would only make it worse. However, this is exactly what a feeding and baiting ban is doing. Michigan doesn’t typically have a water shortage problem, especially this year! But we do have a food problem for the deer when we have snow cover. We always have a sodium deficiency, state wide.
Deer Will Travel for Sodium
Food impact is difficult to summarize because of various seasonal differences and variations in availability between farmland and deep woods. I will use sodium in this example to demonstrate the impact in Michigan. We know deer will travel for sodium. They come to our roadways in the spring to get road salt and we all know that doesn’t work out well for the deer or the motorists.
A study done in Virginia by Campbell, Laster, Ford, and Miller shows that radio-collared white-tailed deer moving up to 5.5km out of their core area to the brine discharge of a gas well to consume sodium.
A similar study was conducted on the Isle Royal moose in 1985 by K.L. Risenhoover and R.O. Peterson. Their findings revealed extremely similar results. The movement to natural salt licks on the island was tracked. To give some prospective to how this could impact Michigan on a state wide level, let me give you some numbers. According to the DEQ, Michigan has about 14,000 gas and oil wells. Most have some sort of brine discharge that the deer can access. Michigan Cattleman’s association reports about 12,000 cattle operations in the state. If half are pasture operations, most will have a salt lick for the cattle which the deer can come to, for a total of about 20,000 sites if my product and others are banned. There are other sources, but I think this is enough for you to get my point. There are about 1.6 million deer in the state, or an average of over 80 deer per site and average travel distance of 4.8 miles. I sold about 55,000 buckets in the state of Michigan in 2018. I assume Trophy Rock sold a similar number of rocks in the state and perhaps all of our competitors together a similar number for a total of 165,000 more sources. That added to the other 20,000 totals 185,000. Now instead of more than 80 deer on each site we have less than nine and instead of 4.8 miles average we now have a travel distance of .6 miles. Which scenario is causing more potential spread of disease?
More Food Sources Could Help the Problem
So, what about the sound science we always hear about? A study by Plummer in 2018 from Wisconsin is often cited as proof that mineral licks will increase disease transmission. Soil samples, water, and droppings were tested in mineral licks and prions were found in most of them. The study used 11 salt licks, nine man-made and two naturally occurring sites. What the study fails to address is what the levels of prions would have been in the two natural sites if the man-made ones were not there. They certainly would have been higher! More sites would make less travel and contact and slow the spread of CWD. Another study sited to prove the increase in contact at bait sites is (Mark Garner Michigan State University 2001). One of the methods used in this study was dumping 5 gallons of corn out in a single pile in the Alpena area in the winter with snow cover and count the deer that came to it and the contacts they made.
There were up to 30 deer in it at one time and the criteria to be considered a contact was and deer within three feet of another deer. You can imagine the numbers you could get. Again I would propose that more feed sites, less travel, less at each site and less contact, slowing the spread of CWD.
Take a Closer Look
Let’s look at past results: It’s difficult to determine a cause and effect, but of the 26 states that have CWD in the wild, only 4 have a complete ban on all feeding and baiting: Colorado, Montana, Illinois, and New York. I believe Colorado has had a complete ban the longest, since 1992 and they have the highest rate of CDW in the country!
In the Michigan Senate committee meeting discussing bill 3,7 a senator on the committee said that “our county (Newaygo) has 20,000 to 30,000 hunters and if they all put out bait, that would be a lot of places for the deer to congregate.” If his county was near average for the state in deer numbers, it would have about 20,000 deer. One deer per bait average is the ideal: no travel, no congregating!
I am not advocating indiscriminate or irresponsible activities. I would like to give some very specific recommendations to go along with the freedom to feed or bait. Spreading the feed or bait out if it is a food source (not mineral or salt) is almost always going to be a preferable choice. Smaller and more frequent applications as well. A truck load of beets or carrots or corn in one location is always going to be trouble.
Even though the research on transmission methods of CWD is very limited, we just don’t know for sure how it is spread. It is a good idea to not have a situation where you are encouraging the deer to eat the soil. There is some credible research that looks like there is a connection to clay-based soils being more likely to hold and transfer the prions. I would encourage everyone putting out feed, but especially minerals and salt, to use some kind of barrier between the product and the soil like a piece of plastic or tarp or in the case of salt and mineral, I make a simple feeder out of a stump or log by dishing them out with a saw. Also beneficial in the case of salt and mineral is just don’t let them run out. If you keep adding it, they can consume the actual product rather than go after the sodium that has leached into the soil. A giant hole in the ground can be very impressive, but it is an indicator that the product was not replenished soon enough.
Another reason to continue to supplement minerals specifically is their benefit to the immune system. To make this as simple as possible I would like to use selenium as an example. Our livestock farmers know all about the beneficial results of supplementing selenium. There is a lot of research supporting the benefit to the immune system by feeding selenium. There is no reason the not to have the same results in deer and other wild animals. I did find one study on bighorn sheep in the wild and one on black tail deer that did support this. I am not saying a better immune system would prevent CWD, but it will almost certainly help against EHD, Blue-tongue and maybe even TB. Supplementing deer with the proper minerals and responsible feeding has huge potential benefit to the herd while having little risk. CWD has never been eradicated once it has been established, but decisions made now could impact future numbers of cases dramatically. Much more research needs to be done to save our deer herd for the future.
Lucky Buck Mineral began in 1997 as a deer attractant that would also improve the health of the deer. We didn’t realize the impact the mineral would have on antler size until later. We just knew the deer would be healthier. We knew this because of our nutrition work with dairy farmers and knowing which minerals are important to cattle.
Mar-Vo Mineral Co., the parent company of Lucky Buck Mineral and other Lucky Brand products, began formulating and producing livestock mineral in 1918. Dave Wheeler bought the company in 1996 after working in feed and nutrition industry for almost ten years. He saw the implications of minerals on the cattle and knew the deer could benefit from some of these ingredients. Most of the deer industry previously has and continues to make a critical error in their formulations; they don’t control intake. This is the most important part of formulating a diet for any species of animal. Using the same methods of controlling intake as we were using on pasture cattle, we were able to make a much more aggressive formulation of the most critical nutrients in Lucky Buck.
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