[fabsroman]

This is all the research I am going to do on this issue, because now it is pretty clear that this guy was all about greed and profit. This article is from the Wisconsin Journal. The gist of this article is that the breech that I mentioned earlier, was in the trophy buck pen, and it appears that all 40 bucks escaped, but nobody in the area has seen any of them. Giving this guy the benefit of the doubt, it is horrible that they escaped. Not giving this guy the benefit of the doubt (i.e., he smuggled them out), what exactly is he going to do with them? I guess he might be able to get semen from them, but I have no idea if CWD can be transferred that way. He definitely should not introduce them into another herd, or sell them to anybody for that matter, but that does not mean he will not. Something tells me that he finally decided to let DNR shoot all the deer because he knew that most of them were sick by now and if he waited much longer there would be no deer left to negotiate over. Let me know if you have any more doubts about this guy and I'll see what else I can find.

Article follows:

When hearing early this month that the government would pay the chronic wasting disease-infected Buckhorn Flats game farm in Portage County a maximum of $4,500 per deer, some of us grabbed our calculators to see how much 120 whitetails would fetch.

Wow! $540,000! That assumed a lot, of course, including the false belief that every deer - whether fawn or big-racked buck - was worth the maximum. Actually, with age being the gauge, most deer fall far short. The Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection estimated about 80 does and fawns lived inside the game farm's 10-acre breeding area of four or five small pens. The agency also believed 40 bucks - some of trophy proportions - lived inside a separate 59-acre "shooting preserve."

No matter what the pay-off, we felt relieved. The case was finally ending. This dispute between the government and the game farm's operator, Stan Hall of Almond, started when CWD was discovered there in September 2002. As the sides wrangled for nearly 40 months, 16 more Buckhorn Flats deer tested positive for CWD.

In the past two weeks, however, our interest was again piqued. Funny how news of a mysterious hole in the preserve's fence can do that. The U.S. Department of Agriculture brought in its shooters Jan. 16, and they killed 76 whitetails inside Buckhorn's breeder pens. They also found three deer already dead, but didn't know what killed them.

Nothing strange there. That meshed with the pre-shootout estimate. But when USDA's shooters moved to the shooting preserve, they killed only four deer: two does and two fawns.

Where were all those big-antlered bucks that could have once enticed well-heeled clients to pay thousands of dollars for a trophy? Because the USDA, DATCP, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and Portage County Sheriff's Department are all investigating, officials are careful about talking. Most DNR employees must follow a "talking points" memo.

Other folks have resumed assuming, and fear CWD has a new beachhead. Maybe, but it's difficult to believe 40 bucks would all rush through a breeched fence. Captive deer typically don't flee far once they escape. They aren't POWs and this isn't "The Great Escape." For example, when the DNR audited game farms three years ago, conservation wardens cited many instances where escapees stayed near home and known food sources.

Just to make sure, government shooters monitored nearby bait piles Jan. 13 to 16 and killed only four deer outside the fence. No bucks went back inside, either. A DATCP check of bait piles inside the pens Monday revealed they hadn't been touched.

So where did the deer go, or how many were there to begin with? Among the state's Jan. 20 "talking points" there's this: "We don't know why we found only four deer in the (shooting) preserve. Hall estimated early last summer that 40 deer were in the preserve. We did suspect the number was lower because DATCP and USDA staff on the property reported seeing few animals and tracks."

How much lower? That's difficult to say. The 60-acre shooting preserve is wooded, deer hide, and no turnstile leads to the fence's hole.

Even so, if 40 bucks suddenly sprung from one spot, you'd think someone might notice. Granted, mature bucks are usually the first to shed their antlers each winter, but captive bucks tend to hold them longer than wild bucks.

Either way, locals aren't seeing anything unusual. "If those deer got out, we haven't seen them," said Greg Swan, owner of Swan Oil in Almond.

Swan Oil has been a DNR deer check station for 15 years. Swan said he registered fewer big bucks this year than in 2004.

"A bunch of guys have been in here talking about it, and many of them have (infrared) game cameras in the woods," Swan said. "The only big buck I've heard about has been around a couple of years, so he didn't escape from there."

Maybe this picture will become clearer in time, but the only thing now certain is that Buckhorn Flats' indemnity payouts will be a bit lower than all those premature calculations.