# N D Outdoors and Nontradional Livestock



## 4590 (Jun 27, 2004)

I thought you all might be interested in a letter by Shawn Schaffer to Gov. Hoven in regard to the Valerius Geist article in ND Outdoors.

TO: Governor John Hoeven

FROM: Shawn Schafer

North Dakota Deer Ranchers President

DATE: July 11, 2004

RE: Response to damaging article in

June 2004 North Dakota OUTDOORS

___________________________________________________________________________________________

It was with great disappointment that I read "A Conversation with Valerius Geist" in the June 2004 issue of the North Dakota OUTDOORS. It was a relief to read the sidebar at the beginning of the interview and find out that the "opinions stated are those of the author or Mr. Geist and are not necessarily the opinions of the North Dakota Game and Fish Department."

It does make me wonder what the true agenda of the article really is. Why would the NDGF reprint an interview of opinions (not facts) that the NDGF does not necessarily agree with? The reason given in the sidebar is "North Dakota OUTDOORS is reprinting this provocative and wide-ranging discussion between these two leading advocates for ethical hunting, because it addresses several contemporary issues that involve the Game and Fish Department and North Dakota citizens." To provoke the citizens of North Dakota with a discussion based on opinions, not facts, is journalistic terrorism and unprofessional. I would think the NDGF would be as concerned with Mad Journalist Disease as it is with wildlife diseases.

The Game farms in North Dakota are a highly regulated legal agricultural industry governed by the Department of Agriculture Board of Animal Health. The Non-traditional livestock industry is required to have both a Premises License from the ND BOAH and a Propagation Permit signed by the NDGF.

If the NDGF has issues with the game farms of North Dakota, why have they not brought these issues to the representatives of these industries? It was only a few years back that representatives from the ND Elk Growers, ND Deer Ranchers, ND Game and Fish, and ND Board of Animal Health stood along side Governor Hoeven in a news conference and said we were going to work together to keep CWD out of North Dakota.

The NDGF has a seat on the Non-Traditional Livestock Advisory Council to the BOAH and has had an active role in rewriting the NTL regulations (Article 48-12) to address past and present NDGF concerns. The NTL advisory committee is made up of representatives from the State Health Dept., ND Game and Fish, County Extension Agents, Zoo's, Industry members and a Consulting Veterinarian from NDSU. The NTL advisory committee makes recommendations to the ND BOAH who is made up of two licensed veterinarians, six domestic livestock representatives, one NTL representative, and a consulting veterinarian from NDSU.

As you can see game farms are not a self-regulated industry, but an industry regulated by professionals and experts concerned with all health aspects of North Dakota, to include human, domestic and nontraditional animals and wildlife. The game farm industry is very active in disease control and welcomes the regulations that protect both our livestock and the wildlife of North Dakota.

In NDGF Director Dean Hildebrand's "Matters of opinion" article, he states that the "whitetail deer population is above management goals" and "we need to reduce deer populations, but we'll only be able to do it with the cooperation of hunters and landowners." Reprinting articles like "A Conversation with Valerius Geist" and attacking the Game Farm industry is a funny way to gain the cooperation of the land owners of North Dakota. The large majority of Game farms in North Dakota are farmers and ranchers who have tried to diversify and make a living off the land to stay on the family farm. They are not out of state investors and corporations or people living in the city, they are citizens of North Dakota just like you and I. They are your neighbors, friends and family, they attend the same churches, shop at the same stores, and their children attend the same schools.

I take great offence at Mr. Geist comments "with poaching and genetic pollution, diseases and other perils generated by wildlife ranching" and at the NDGF attempt to slander the business that my family enjoys. I don't know of any Game Farm that promotes poaching and the spread of diseases. I have been very active on the Tuberculosis Committee for the United States Animal Health Association; one of the problems we face is finding T.B. positive animals to validate the new test with, being the only T.B. reservoir is in the wild deer population of Michigan.

The North Dakota Game Farm industry has been very proactive in the fight to keep CWD out of North Dakota, with more than six years of testing all cervid mortalities and developing a strict import protocol, the only "known CWD positive" cervid to be found in North Dakota was shot in the wild of Colorado and brought into North Dakota by the hunter who then processed it and disposed of the remains in a field behind his house, a very likely source for the spread of CWD as reported in the Center for Disease Control research paper "Environmental Sources for Prion Transmission in Mule Deer" http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol10no6/04-0010.htm .

When you look at the number of hunter killed deer and elk brought back from Colorado and Wyoming over the last thirty seven years since CWD was discovered, CWD may likely already be here. When you read the "So Far, So Good" article on page twenty of the June issue of North Dakota OUTDOORS, you find that NDGF has only sampled half of the State with only two of the eight units meeting their goals. One can only believe that the NDGF is dragging their feet until CWD is spread to a Game Farm so they can point their finger at the Game Farm industry. With record number of deer tags issued and millions of dollars in the emergency reserve fund, there is no excuse for not testing a significant portion of the population, 1,600 deer tested out of the 91,900 killed last year is not being proactive.

To condemn the Game Farm industry for "Genetic pollution" and "legal movement" of animals and then show a picture of a wild-trapped Prairie Chicken on page six, and a wild-trapped Big Horn Sheep on page ten of the same issue being released into the wilds of North Dakota, with little or no disease testing, is a slap in the face. To slander the Game Farm industry for profiting off animal sales and on page 18 print that there were "2.5 million dollars worth of Fat head minnows trapped and sold in North Dakota last year, and to print "the only constraint to canned killing of privatized wildlife is the size of the killer's pocketbook" and then print on page 21 that a man in Minnesota paid 40,000 dollars for a Big Horn Sheep Tag that the common man must apply for on a "once in a life time tag" is hypocritical!

Respectfully

Shawn Schafer

701-448-9189 phone/fax

[email protected]

cc: State Board of Animal Health

Roger Johnson, Commissioner

Lance Gaebe, Governor's Office

Susan Keller, DVM, State Veterinarian

Dean Hildebrand, Director Game & Fish Dept

North Dakota Elk Advisory Members

NTL Advisory Council


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## gandergrinder (Mar 10, 2002)

Journalistic terrorism?

Opinions are posted in all newspapers and magazines everyday in the very same format.

I would like to believe that most people are smart enough to realize that this is the opinion of one person and more information should be sought out. The article does no harm in bringing up things for people to think about. No harm in that.

Also, only testing 1600 deer may be all the deer that need to be sampled from a statistical standpoint and further sampling may only be a waste of Game and Fish Funds.

As far as the Big Horn Sheep Tag is concerned. The animal belongs to the people and the money that is earned from that goes back to the Game and Fish who manage the resource for the people. Hopefully the money will help with studies which in turn produce more animals for the public to enjoy.

Again we revert back to the ownership issue. Who owns the wildlife. The public or private citizens.


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## Dick Monson (Aug 12, 2002)

4590, thank you for posting the letter and helping to inform North Dakotans. Any chance your organization could bring in Mr Geist to your annual convention, maybe have an exchange of views and invite the public? Would be interesting and well attended.


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## jhegg (May 29, 2004)

Mr Schafer,

I attempted to deliver this letter to you via the email address included in your letter to Govenor John Hoeven. It was returned as undeliverable. Perhaps 4590 can forward it to you.

Jim Heggeness
2406 9-1/2 Street North
Fargo, ND 58103

7-12-04

Shawn Schafer, President
North Dakota Deer Ranchers Association
[email protected]

Mr. Schafer,

I read a copy of your July 11, 2004 letter to Governor John Hoeven as posted on nodakoutdoors.com by a person identified only as "4590". Your letter commented on an article titled "A Conversation with Valerius Geist" in the June 2004 edition of North Dakota Outdoor magazine. I can not accept many of your conclusions.

You stated "To provoke the citizens of North Dakota with a discussion based on opinions, not facts, is journalistic terrorism and unprofessional." To characterize this article as "journalistic terrorism" is absurd. If you have the "facts" to repudiate what was said in the article, provide them! Do you think that only your opinions are to be considered factual and valid?

You also stated "I take great offence&#8230;at the NDGF attempt to slander the business that my family enjoys." The second sentence of your letter stated "It was a relief to read the sidebar at the beginning of the interview and find out that the 'opinions stated are those of the author or Mr. Geist and are not necessarily the opinions of the North Dakota Game and Fish Department.'" (By the way, "offence" in this usage is spelled offense.) Where did the North Dakota Game and Fish Department slander your family business?

Your final paragraph puzzles me. I do not understand the analogy between trapping minnows for bait and auctioning a bighorn sheep permit to activities conducted on private game animal ranches. The minnows are used for fair chase angling opportunities and the bighorn sheep hunter will certainly use fair chase methods in harvesting his sheep. Are you trying to equate these activities with walking into your fenced-in pasture and shooting a farm animal? These activities are not equivalent!

I applaud you and your industry for taking a proactive approach to disease management. Contrary to your statements, the North Dakota Game and Fish Department is doing the same. In addition to the on-going parts collections from hunter harvested deer, they are conducting a year-round Targeted Surveillance program throughout the state.

I think you need to step back and review your opinions which you present as fact. But, nonetheless, thank you for sharing them with us.

Jim Heggeness

cc: nodakoutdoors.com


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## 870 XPRS (Mar 12, 2003)

nice letter jhegg


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## 4590 (Jun 27, 2004)

What is really troubling to elk and deer producers is the accusation that we are spreading disease which Geist states as a fact he predicted and is now reality. That is not the truth and not a fact. It does great harm to my business to have someone think that buying meat from me may be contaminated. I wonder how many of you would react to someone making false accusations that affect your business or job. The fact that G/F made no effort to correct this error in a State endorsed publication is very troubling to our industry.

I cannot speak for Shawn and I will try and steer him to this site. The whole point with the Big Horn sheep auction is that we here many people make an issue about our fee hunts and commercialization to hunting and then your G/F sells a tag to the highest bidder for $40,000. The justification is that the $$ goes to support the sheep program for ND. Why does an agency that has $24,000,000 of your license dollars in reserves need to sell a sheep tag for that kind of money when another ND resident could get the wonderful opportunity to harvest a Big Horn. Maybe I should start raising Big Horn Sheep. That is commercialization of wildlife in its truest form.


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## buckseye (Dec 8, 2003)

What makes you want to even risk something that catastrophic. Just because you can get by with it don't make it right or good, some people only think of themselves.


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## Wood Duck (Mar 22, 2002)

I personally thought the article by Mr. Geist was the best ever written on the subject. The guy is a straight shooter. 
there are probably a thousand or more joe average sportsmen for every one single game farm operator. Why the He** should we allow the risk to benefit so few.


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