Another article re: GMO's , roundup, neonics.

[Hunter John]

http://www.northamericanwhitetail.co...etail-decline/

[werner.reiche]

Having many hundreds of pages of deer research - that article is hard to take seriously.

BTW the ratio of m:f fawns is driven largely by age (does bred @ 6mo) have more buck fawns (60+%) as do malnourished does, again (60+%). Under no conditions will female fawns hit the 50% mark.

I think before we look at GMOs as the source of whitetail decline, we should look at the obvious things like wolf reintroduction (same time - mid 1990's) and the overallocation of antlerless tags in many areas.

Where the article really misses is that whitetails have declined similarly in crop intensive and non-crop regions....oooops.

[JBen]

There have been a few suggestions to that effect though haven't there?

Either way, anytime we create a splash be it "this", "that" or the "other", we always seem to underestimate the ripple effects.

[Hunter John]

I agree Werner , I have read much fro Ozaga ,Geist Ect and understand the buck to doe ratios and yes it would of been nice to have a comparative study from a non agricultural area . The article got me thinking (along with the other thread) that we really don't know what the long term outcome will be with creating a Frankenstien.
Much of this food id fed to livestock that we eat and despite the FDA ect telling us its safe they are really just gambling and guessing no?

[werner.reiche]

I agree Werner , I have read much fro Ozaga ,Geist Ect and understand the buck to doe ratios and yes it would of been nice to have a comparative study from a non agricultural area . The article got me thinking (along with the other thread) that we really don't know what the long term outcome will be with creating a Frankenstien.
Much of this food id fed to livestock that we eat and despite the FDA ect telling us its safe they are really just gambling and guessing no?

No there is actually quite a bit of testing goes on. The problem is that its over fairly short periods. When something new is "invented", it gets tested before it gets approved, but there is usually a rush to approve because of some perceived positive benefit. Once it has been approved, little more testing is done unless there is a reasonable suspicion that there is something wrong.

If you tested tobacco over a 5 year period, you might find it is "harmless" too - but we now know conclusively its long term effects. GMOs have been around for about 20 years now - a conclusive negative hasn't been found - yet.

Re: feeding GMOs to livestock has a fairly short life - chickens 8 weeks, beef 20 months, so it will be hard to see a negative effect in that period of time.

[JoePa]

I have a large number of different fruit trees on my property - I know all the work it takes to keep diseases and bugs away from my trees - I try to use only organically approved sprays but I'll tell you something - it is a real hassle to get quality fruit - when I go to the supper market and see the perfect fruit that they sell I can only imagine how much spraying is done to accomplish such good looking fruit - but then lets face it - people are looking for this stuff - if there is a mark on the fruit they won't buy it - the only time I use Roundup is to get rid of the Canadian Thistle - this stuff is impossible to pull up or till under - at first I tried tilling it but all you do is create more thistle -

I live out in the country with fields around me - for years one farmer planted potatoes in the one field - first he would spray the field to kill all the weeds - then he planted the potatoes that were covered with some kind of fungicide - then he would spray the plants a couple times to kill the bugs - then before he harvest the potatoes he would spray and kill the potatoe plants - then eventually the potatoes are sprayed again so they don't sprout - God only knows what you are eating when you make your mashed potatoes -