The white-tailed deer is so beloved in Illinois that schoolchildren voted to make it the official state animal in 1980. So proposals to mess with the health and habits of the forest-dwelling does and bucks tend to generate ferocious debate.
Such is the case with a bill that would launch a trial program to see what might happen to the state’s wild herd if Illinois lifts a 15-year-old rule that makes it illegal to feed deer. In a five-year experiment, feeding deer would be legal in some parts of the state in a study gauging the health effects of doing so.
Supporters, including the makers and distributors of deer feed, say the test will show whether the wild animals could better fight off some illnesses if they are given a nutritional feed infused with supplements like proteins, vitamins and minerals.
A leading proponent is Dr. Clifford Shipley, a newly retired professor at the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine who raises deer and has consulted on deer feed formula. He hopes the study would show feed with nutritional supplements helps deer thrive.
“Instead of you going to McDonald’s every day and having three Big Macs and fries, it would be like sending you to a health-food place where you’re going to get a balanced diet,” said Shipley, who added that the supplemental feed is more sophisticated than simply throwing down a pile of corn for deer to pick over.
“It’s there to make the deer healthy,” Shipley said. “It’s not just an ice cream store.”
Foes fear that establishing feeding stations would attract large gatherings of the animals, making healthy deer vulnerable to catching and spreading a variety of diseases. The most worrisome is chronic wasting disease, often known by the shorthand CWD. It’s an infectious, debilitating condition that wrecks a deer’s nervous system. It is present in deer saliva, urine and feces. And it is fatal.
The proposed change in state policy, even if temporary and in controlled settings, could cause a rapid increase in the spread of the disease beyond the 17 Illinois counties where it has been found, they warned.
“It opens the door to statewide devastation of the deer herd, and no one knows the human or livestock implications,” said Brent Manning, a leading opponent who formerly served as director of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. “This is the biggest wildlife bungle the General Assembly could possibly make.”
The measure is now just a signature away from becoming law, sitting on the desk of Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, who has until late August to decide what to do with it. The governor’s office says the bill is under review. For Rauner, it’s a challenging issue, given the fissures in the hunting, wildlife and environmental communities.
The study
Sen. Chapin Rose, the study’s chief sponsor, is hearing fervent arguments from all sides.
“Everybody’s got an opinion of whether this is the right public policy or the wrong public policy,” said Rose, a Republican from Mahomet in central Illinois. “But no one has a factual basis to support that.”
To Rose, the study would answer a bottom-line question: “Is supplemental feeding, on balance, more supportive of the deer population even if it means there will be a few more cases of CWD or not?”
“The question is a scientific question,” Rose said. “It’s not a political question, and the answer will be what the answer is … I’ve never seen people so afraid of getting a scientific answer to a question.”
Based on talks with experts, Rose envisioned testing could be done inside a fenced-in area, but he said the parameters ultimately would be up to the scientists.
Eric Schauber, director of the Illinois Natural History Survey — which would have a lead role in conducting the study — cautions that discussions are preliminary. But he sees a minimum of three open sites, perhaps in east-central, west-central and southern Illinois with similarities in farmland, forest, pasture, soil type and other characteristics. Schauber said there are no plans to test areas where CWD is known to be present.
Noting the bill calls for a study of the wild deer population, he said the study would look at the effects on “free-ranging deer.”
But the question of free-range versus fenced-in deer is a flashpoint in the discussions.
“Inside a fence is fine,” said Manning. “Outside for free-roaming deer, for God’s sake, don’t take the chance. It’s not worth it.”
State regulations in place since 2003 ban feeding wild deer in Illinois as part of the state’s effort to control the spread of chronic wasting disease and address overall disease concerns in the wild deer herd, said Ed Cross, spokesman for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
Under the proposed study, the U. of I. Prairie Research Institute, which houses the natural history survey, would work with the state’s natural resources agency and the U. of I. vet school for at least five years. They would look at the health and social effects of allowing supplemental deer feeding from Feb. 1 to Aug. 15 — which is outside of any deer hunting seasons — to ascertain whether it increases the risk of disease transmission.
The social component is in the mix because deer lick around branches and water sources that other deer lick, frequently groom one another and interact in ways that produce fawns. Supporters say this intermingling means CWD is going to spread anyway, but opponents see deer feeding as a way to bring more deer together and hasten the speed at which CWD happens.
How deer interact with people is another issue to be considered, such as whether the animals will lose their fear of humans, create more traffic hazards when they cross roads, and chew up more landscaping and gardens. The feeding would not be on public lands but done on private lands through voluntary participation. Discussions are ongoing about how many sites there would be and where they would be located, Schauber said.
Cross, the natural resources spokesman, emphasized that Illinois hunters still would not be allowed to put down bait to draw in deer if the measure becomes law.
“We see this as a chance to put a study in place to where we can gather information so that we can sort through that information and hopefully get answers for questions that our agency and our constituents have to see if there really are any benefits or negative impacts of feeding in Illinois,” he said.
Even so, deer feeding is not universally loved within the ranks of the state’s natural resources agency.
Paul Shelton, the wildlife programs section manager, raised concerns that bringing deer to a common feeding spot could contribute to making the healthy ones sick.
“It’s kind of like telling all of the kids in the school cafeteria that we’re no longer going to use plates and trays during flu season,” he said. “We’re just going to dump all of your food out here on the floor and just ignore everything that the physicians have been telling us for years and really increase the risk and probability of transmitting any number of diseases.”
Shelton questioned the idea that Illinois deer need help with their diets. “Our whole landscape is this breadbasket of food for wildlife, and we have a history of having some of the largest deer that are produced anywhere, and yet Illinois is supposed to be deficient, our deer are supposed to be nutritionally deficient — even though they have evolved over the eons in concert with the landscape that’s available to them?
“Suddenly, they are in need of man taking care of them, or they’re just not going to be healthy by themselves?” Shelton asked, pausing to laugh. “It’s preposterous.”
Problem’s scope
Illinois detected chronic wasting disease in the northern part of the state more than 15 years ago, shortly after Wisconsin did.
So far, chronic wasting disease has been found in just 17 of 102 Illinois counties, ranging from the northernmost border counties to as far south as the Pontiac area. State officials track where the disease is spreading by testing deer killed by hunters each year.
Fifty-one deer tested positive out of more than 8,650 sampled in the natural resources agency’s annual review completed this year. Thirty-two of the positive tests came from the 147,730 deer that hunters killed during the winter seasons that ended Jan. 14, while most of the remaining 19 positives were found in deer taken by agency sharpshooters.
If new CWD hot spots are detected, agency sharpshooters go in and kill deer in those areas. After the last season, they took out 997 deer, officials said.
If new hot spots are detected, hunters go in and kill deer in that area. Last year, that meant taking out nearly 950 deer, Shelton said.
Manning, the former natural resources chief who also once ran the DuPage County Forest Preserve District, said he worked with Wisconsin years ago to try to slow the spread of the disease and hailed Illinois for holding the line while CWD spread more rapidly in Wisconsin.
After 25 years of dealing with the disease, Manning said CWD is “unquestionably spread by the aggregation of animals in high concentrations” that would occur if Illinois allowed feeding.
Shipley, the retired U. of I. vet school doctor who has hunted deer for half a century, acknowledged that fear during April testimony before a Senate committee. “If we find that to be the case, we can stop it,” he said.
But Manning insisted at that point, it’s too late because trying to rein in the disease would be difficult and costly.
Shipley countered that science has made strides over the last two decades and the new advancements should be harnessed to improve deer health overall and help them “fight off diseases” other than CWD, including epizootic hemorrhagic disease, a viral illness transmitted by gnats and known as EHD.
Shipley acknowledged he has consulted on a feed formula for Real World Wildlife Products, a company that markets and distributes the feed and other products from a warehouse in downstate Arthur. But he said his testimony on behalf of feeding deer was delivered to lawmakers “as a pure scientist” rather than as a consultant.
The company, whose co-owner Don Higgins is one of Sen. Rose’s constituents, said Illinois should do more advanced testing to see what supplements can help deer build up resistance to various diseases.
“I want to use my company’s products on my own private property to improve the health of the deer herd that lives there,” Higgins said.
There are no cost estimates or funding earmarked for the study, but Rose hopes to land private grants to pay for it.
Beyond the debate over the spread of disease, Sen. Bill Haine, D-Alton, was one of four lawmakers in his chamber to vote against the bill. He cited worries by sportsmen in his district that the deer would get into a habit of going to the feeding spot and unfairly become easy pickings during hunting season.
Hunters would “shoot them like fish in a barrel,” Haine said. “They’re real sportsmen. They want to give the deer a sporting chance.”
Twitter @RayLong
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