Bird flu
- Thread starter lucky1982
- Start date
Springer22
Active member
No
GetTothePoint
Well-known member
Very concerned. In fact come fall I will put down any male pheasant and any quail I see. Just doing my part.
Wind River
Well-known member
Nope
Alaskan swamp collies
Well-known member
I do think it will affect us in some ways. There are a lot of stories about migratory bird hunters having their dogs bring back more than they shot. Some of those sick birds will infect some pheasants, probably not to a great extent since pheasants don’t flock up for the most part and are not migratory.will it change the way I hunt, no. It probably won’t change the way I clean birds either. However if I am in an area where there are a lot of dead migratory birds I probably go somewhere else. Me I don’t worry about much, but my dogs are a different matter,
gimruis
Well-known member
This is my field, so I can offer some advice on the subject.
A range of wild birds can get it. Pheasants and quail are wild birds. Generally speaking though, upland game birds are not common carriers or hosts of it. Waterfowl are, especially Canadian Geese.
The risk with avian influenza lies with domestic poultry operations. Chickens or turkeys are jam packed into a barn in close proximity. That's why it spreads so quickly in these situations. Its devastating. It wipes out entire flocks quickly. That's why you see such wild swings with egg prices all the time. Wild birds are outside and generally not tightly packed like domesticated poultry.
That being said, I would advise using gloves while cleaning birds and washing your hands thoroughly afterwards (which is something I've done for 20 years already). Although cases in people are rare, they can happen. There has not been a single documented case of a person getting it from having contact with a wild bird though. The cases with people we know of originated from workers in domestic poultry operations or more recently at dairy farms, because dairy cattle now have it.
I compare it to field dressing a deer. The chances of getting CWD is remote, but I still wear gloves and wash my hands in that situation too.
A range of wild birds can get it. Pheasants and quail are wild birds. Generally speaking though, upland game birds are not common carriers or hosts of it. Waterfowl are, especially Canadian Geese.
The risk with avian influenza lies with domestic poultry operations. Chickens or turkeys are jam packed into a barn in close proximity. That's why it spreads so quickly in these situations. Its devastating. It wipes out entire flocks quickly. That's why you see such wild swings with egg prices all the time. Wild birds are outside and generally not tightly packed like domesticated poultry.
That being said, I would advise using gloves while cleaning birds and washing your hands thoroughly afterwards (which is something I've done for 20 years already). Although cases in people are rare, they can happen. There has not been a single documented case of a person getting it from having contact with a wild bird though. The cases with people we know of originated from workers in domestic poultry operations or more recently at dairy farms, because dairy cattle now have it.
I compare it to field dressing a deer. The chances of getting CWD is remote, but I still wear gloves and wash my hands in that situation too.
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gimruis
Well-known member
Agreed, and the odds are of you getting close enough to a poultry operation are low too. Some of them are like armed prisons now because the risk is so high. They take biosecurity seriously nowadays.
Bob Peters
Well-known member
What I'm gonna do is catch some of the pheasants in areas I hunt before the season starts. I'm going to put masks on them, splash their wing tips w/ hand sanitizer, and inject 
them with an experimental vaccine that doesn't work very well. Then I'm going to sprinkle paxlovid pellets in popular areas where they come for grit. This probably won't help, but that's not the point, it's keeping up appearances that matter. Even the two month old chicks need to mask 
up.
them with an experimental vaccine that doesn't work very well. Then I'm going to sprinkle paxlovid pellets in popular areas where they come for grit. This probably won't help, but that's not the point, it's keeping up appearances that matter. Even the two month old chicks need to mask up.