Ohio Governor DeWine signs law allowing use of owls in falconry

 

Not that many people will give a hoot, but on May 11 Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed into law a proposal to allow the use of most owl species in the ancient sport of falconry.

The proposal was introduced and shepherded by Ohio State Senator Senator Frank Hoagland, R-30.

In all, Ohio has fewer than 100 licensed falconers, each of these dedicated practitioners having undergone a rigorous apprenticeship period under the watchful eye of a master sponsor before obtaining a license.

And then only after also passing a tough exam requiring answering correctly at least 80 percent of the questions. Fail this test and one must wait six months before taking the exam again: each exam costing $75.

On top of that, pay another $75 for a three-year license as overseen by the Ohio Division of Wildlife with the eagle-eyed support of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. At the same time, a person may apply for a Raptor Capture Permit to acquire a bird.

Yet while today’s licensed Ohio falconers are using such approved raptor species as Harris hawks and red-tailed hawks they’re now likewise going to be allowed to use various owl species; among them being great-horned owls and barred owls.

The new law exempts the use of barn owls, which is a state-threatened species in Ohio. American bald eagles also are excluded from the list of approved raptor species.

Admittedly, the idea of using a night-time avian predator for falconry is a novelty and likely will appeal only to the most dedicated of Ohio’s tiny falconry community, says Ken Fitz, the Wildlife Division’s law enforcement executive administrator.

In over 25 years of field work Fitz said he could think of only one time when he engaged a falconer, and that was just to conduct an inspection of the licensed holder’s so-called “mew,” or the structure that houses a raptor.

“Falconry is such a small segment of our hunting population in Ohio that very few of our officers even ever encountered a falconer,” Fitz said as well.

Fitz said too that the new law was a collaboration between the Wildlife Division and the Ohio Falconers Association, noting also that several other states which license the sport do allow the use of owls.

“My guess is that any falconer who does obtain an owl will do so for demonstration purposes,” Fitz said as well. “Falconers are very serious about their sport.

- Jeffrey L. Frischkorn

JFrischk@Ameritech.net

JFrischk4@gmail.com

New chronic wasting disease field ID test could be a game changer for deer hunters

 

A promising new way of field testing for chronic wasting disease (CWD) has the potential to become a game changer for hunters in determining whether the deer they shoot are infected with the disease.

Such a development and deployment could help “hunters decide the fate of the carcass before they even gut it,” says Ohio’s deer management administrator Mike Mike Tonkovich with the Ohio Division of Wildlife.

What has happened is that researchers with the University of Minnesota’s Center for Prion Research have developed a “novel approach to field testing chronic wasting disease,” the school said in a release that is enjoying a cascade of positive reviews among wildlife management officials.

Last spring, the Center’s team worked with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to analyze tissue samples from CWD-positive white-tailed deer using a scientific technique known as “RT-QuIC.”

This collaboration managed to obtain confirmation of protein-misfolding “in just nine hours,” the school says.

“Only a handful of labs currently have access to this top-of-the-line technology for CWD testing,” the school in further comments.

Now, the MNPRO researchers have developed a new assay that generates a color change of red for a positive CWD result and blue for negative. They have named the test “MN-QuIC” to honor the state of Minnesota.

“It is the product of an intense multi-disciplinary research effort that united scientists across the University of Minnesota,” says Peter Larsen, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine and co-director of MNPRO.

The team confirmed their findings in southeast Minnesota the week of March 8, 2021, making them the first-ever scientists to successfully deploy a CWD field test.

The school says also the new test “is a lot cheaper than those using traditional equipment and uses field-deployable equipment to garner preliminary results in just 24 hours.”

“We have performed over one hundred confirmatory tests in our MNPRO lab and this was our first field-deployment. We will continue to validate MN-QuIC over the coming months, and plan additional field deployments this fall,” Larsen said through the university.

Tonkovich is cautiously optimistic that field test kits with a 24-hour results turn-around time and made available to individual hunters will prove an important ally in both mitigating hunters’ fears and also helping contain CWD.

“Testing is a critical first step for managing this disease since if you can’t define its extent, you certainly can’t fight it,” Tonkovich says.

Tonkovich believes the hunters who would/will benefit the most from a CWD field test kit are those sportsmen who process their own deer - and to a lesser degree, those that pay to have a deer processed.

A large part of the reason for this expectation now, says Tonkovich, is that most hunters can’t wait two weeks to process their deer if they likewise have to await the results from the current procedure needed to test an animal’s carcass.

Thus, says Tonkovich, a successful hunter can proceed with processing, with “those hunters who then ultimately learn they’ve harvested a positive animal only having wasted a bit of time, should they then decide to pitch the venison from the deer they put in the freezer.”

Yet the flip side is how a hunter who uses a deer processor will react should his animal be dropped off, found to be infected 24 hours later, and ultimately take a pass on paying to store and process the deer, Tonkovich wonders.

“Since disposal is not free, my guess is that there will be a charge passed on to the hunter, and I’m guessing it will likely come in the form of a deposit,” Tonkovich said.

Even so, once a CWD field test is widely available, “hunters can decide the fate of the carcass,” Tonkovich says.

“This will not only be a time and cost savings for them, but obviously - and more importantly - it will completely eliminate the possibility of that hunter moving the disease around on the landscape. Hats of to Dr. Larsen and his collaborators,” Tonkovich said.

By Jeffrey L. Frischkorn

JFrischk@Ameritech.net

JFrischk4@gmail.com