Trad Gang

Hey guys, the MDC has advised to have all deer taken in containment zones to be tested.

Just wondering your thoughts on this, it is 25 miles to the nearest guy who takes the lymph gland to send in. Then 3 weeks or so to get results back, so I guess you could quarter it and freeze it til results come back, then cut it up.

They have tested monkeys by feeding them infected venison and also putting it directly into their brain and say the monkeys got CWD.

But, the stuff has been around since 1964 at least and no human has contracted it , from what I find. There has been cases of another disease from eating squirrel brains but none of this one.


So, what say ye?  :campfire:

While we're at it, thoughts on the wholesale slaughter of deer where they test and find a positive?

I don't really agree with this, as there are still deer out west where it was first discovered, so are we killing off the ones that may have some resistance to it?

I'm not overly concerned about contracting it where I'm at, but I see the reason to take precaution. I definitely wouldn't take the chance on any animal that acted strange/sick, even in areas not known to have CWD.  I think the best thing that can be done for MO, is to start with completely banning baiting and mineral. I know that will step on some people's toes, but that's just my take. I would also like to see a statewide ban on commercial deer farming in MO. It's a black eye for the hunting community in my opinion, and a good way to spread disease to wild animals. I hope they hold off on the wholesale slaughter in some areas, but I also understand why it's being done. It's a shame it showed up here in the first place.

A real touchy subject here, as I'm in a core CWD area in Michigan, and our DNR is of the mind set to shoot as many deer as possible to see how wide spread it is.  I agree with getting them tested, as it is possible for humans to contract the disease.  But I think as you have said it has been around for quite a while.  I will err on the side of caution if I am fortunate to take a deer this year and wait for test results before consuming any of it.  Hopefully calmer heads will prevail and we here in Michigan will still have a deer herd for our future.


Jason

I believe as long as you don't grind up any brain or spinal matter you should be fine. That's where the prions are concentrated. If only they had caught on to this back in the late 60s at CSU...

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I contacted MDC after I killed my first of the season and asked them if they wanted deer to test or if it was just for our own good knowing the deer was ok.  They didn't want an abundance is what I was told so I haven't been taking the 6" of neck and head in.  I'm in Cape Girardeau Co where it hasent been found yet so I'm not bringing them in and only shooting healthy looking deer and haven't seen any un healthy deer.
Tim B

I won't have one checked if he's not poor. Not sure how I feel about mass killin. May just kill more than CWD would

I don't know of anybody in my circle here in Colorado that worries about it much, I won't feed my granddaughter any venison though out of an overabundance of caution, she's little and still has a developing brain. But I know lots of people that grew up here eating a regular diet of venison and they are smarter than average. I do avoids bone in cuts and try to just filet the meat off versus cutting through bone, don't know if it matters a lot though. Probably have better chance at winning the lottery than being the first person to have it jump the chain

I hunt in a cwd area. I have never seen an animal that appeared sick. When they were doing the deer eradication and testing them something like one out of 800 tested positive.  I shoot and eat, don't test. We don't eat the brains and fillet the meat off the bones. Frankly I'm not concerned. Cwd has been around a long time and still no documented cases of a human contracting it.

From what I'm reading here there is a lot of misunderstanding about CWD.  The thing that stands out is the comments about not shooting deer that look poor.  This is a non strategy since the animal is typically carrying the prion for several years before it goes active and is infections all that time.  Once it's activated the animal is dead in a week or so.

There are studies that could not link the disease to humans and I find them convincing enough that I don't test and don't worry about eating it.  Anti hunting groups have tried very hard to convince the public that CWD is transmissible to humans.

It is clearly linked to saliva and even to the soil where infected animals are concentrated.  Wildlife managers have no excuse for not knowing what is presently understood about CWD and that includes the consequences of deer farming and feeding. 

Politics and wildlife management don't mix very well. :)

As for eating it, there is no known case of people contracting the disease from the consumption of meat from an infected deer. However there is no good or logical reason to consume an animal that you know is sick with anything for that matter. I test mine. I bone them out in the field and put it all in one big food saver pack until the results come back with a label for buck/doe and date.

As for the management of the spread of the disease, I would be in support of banning ALL forms of baiting as well as the use of all forms of permanent scent/lures. You want to sit out some Tinks while your on stand, go for it. You leave it in the woods in a dripper bottle, no good. I would not object to food plots as I see that more like agriculture than I do sitting up a 50-gallon broadcaster and letting it go.

What Polk said above
Terry

Thank you all for your thoughts, pretty much mirrors mine... :thumbsup:

I retired from the Wisconsin DNR 2 years ago. I was involved in the CWD program from the time it was discovered here until I retired. I heard a lot of the scientific discussions and also heard from the hunting public. I've got some perspective that most people don't have. I've found that most people have their mind made up. Some are based in logic, some based on emotions, some don't have a base. I'll give you my thoughts.
I test every deer I kill and won't eat a CWD positive animal. I have had to dispose of 2 already, after I had processed them completely.
Every time a person consumes a CWD prion, it goes into a biological laboratory(the human digestive system) that can change it, or it can mutate while in it. Even though no one has ever caught it(that we know of), I don't want to be the first one.
As far as testing only sick looking animals, both deer of mine were very healthy looking, with a thick layer of fat. You can't tell by appearance.
As far as the "wholesale slaughter" of deer around a positive, it is the only way we could ever hope to contain an outbreak. If a cow in a herd gets some contagious disease, it's standard practice to kill the herd and any herd that may have had contact with it. It's much harder to do that with a wild herd, but it's our only chance.  Of course no one wants to kill the deer herd where he hunts, and that's the hard part. Nobody wants to make that sacrifice for the common good. I understand that. If it was something that affected squirrels or rabbits, almost everyone would be ok with depopulation efforts, but deer are different. We have a lot of emotional attachments to deer. The people who should be pushing for depopulation are the hunters and landowners that are not yet affected by CWD. If no one will stop it's progress, you will be affected by it eventually.
That's enough of my opinions. I'm heading to a tree stand.

Hey Jim, how you doin?  Thanks for your input.  Hope your hunt goes well!! :thumbsup:

My thought on killing the whole herd is unlike cattle which are supposed to be enclosed by a fence, the deer herd goes where they like.

If the prions stay in the soil for up to 10 years, have we done anything? As soon as the food supply gets greater than where they are, ( because no deer are eating it) the surrounding deer will move in there. So we are back where we started?

Another question, we live in hills that are now farmed, so if the prions are in the soil and it washes downstream, do those deer also get it?

We had a new area on the Missouri River  pop up  couple years ago, made me wonder. Of course there could have many other ways for it to get there.

check this out for great info on cwd. Joe Rogan exp #1154

since there is no visible signs that a deer has it, maybe they should figure out a way to make it possible for the average hunter to test his own deer, just thinking here... :dunno: and what about all the mud that's flung up under everyones wheelwells with these prions in it. then transported halfway across the state to contaminate your little honey hole close to home?...just thinkin here..      surely we cant test every deer harvested.

I guess I'm one of the "ignorance is bliss" guys. But I'm also not in a high risk area. We do have one mandatory reporting area in Ohio where CWD was found on a game farm.

Seams to me that a person could be just as prone contracting CWD handling the deer, not necessarily eating. I mean, do you wear rubber gloves any time you touch a deer?

Another question, Does cooking kill the prions?

Hi Kenny! The hunt always goes well. No deer shot at yet, but I can always look at the bow in my hand. It's made off a takedown form some guy from Missouri came up with.
As far as CWD, there's a lot we don't know about it. Can the prion travel by water? Can we transfer it by mud? Can it transfer between species? There's a million questions with no answers, and it doesn't help when someone states an answer with no basis in fact. As an example, I hear all the time that "it's always been here." How do you know that? From the science I've seen, it hasn't always been here. If you look at the Wisconsin DNR website, there is a CWD link where you can check on the past history of known CWD positives in your area. When I check Dane county in 2004, there were 2921 deer sampled and 41 positives. In 2017 there were only 561 deer sampled and there were also 41 positives. That alone tells you the prevelance rate has increased. If it was "always there", the prevelance rate would be fairly stable everywhere. We still have areas in Wisconsin that haven't had any positives. If it was "always there", it would be everywhere.
To find those answers costs money. Unfortunately that money has dried up. The federal and state funds to study CWD have been reduced or eliminated. That money could  also be used to find a faster test. I know Wisconsin spent a lot of money in the early days trying to find a faster test. The test we use now is much faster and easier than the one we first used, but the tissues still have to go to the lab. It's not for home use.
Back to the "wholesale slaughter" issue. If we have a square mile with 10 deer in it, and some are CWD positive, and we kill them all, they don't travel and spread the disease.  If we do nothing, those deer will travel and spread CWD to the surrounding area. Now instead of having one square mile of a "hot zone" to control, we have several square miles to control. Even if we can't totally eliminate the disease, we can slow the spread. If we ever find a way to stop it, it's easier to treat one square mile than two.
No easy answers

Jim, very sobering information and as drastic the current solution seems it's the only means Biologists have to prevent further spreading of this condition at this time. Thanks for your input based on your background and experience, it helps us understand the situation much better.....

Thanks again Jim, I will reread that when I get on the bigger screen computer tonite!

BVas, I just noticed your question. Unfortunately, cooking does not "kill" the CWD prion. I use the quotation marks because the prion isn't even alive like a bacteria or virus. It's a misfolded protein that can transfer from one deer to another. Don't ask me how that works because I don't know. It takes total incineration at something like 1000 degrees to destroy it. I like my venison a little less well done. It's another one of the unusual and difficult things about CWD. Again, no easy answers.

Obviously there are a lot of unknowns with CWD.  50 years from now when the solution is found, we will look back and say, "We should/ should not have done such and such, while this other solution helped slow the spread"; hindsight is 20/20, after all. 

At the moment, we dont know what will or will not work, so any possible method to delay the spread and possible advancement of CWD is better than no action at all.  Some may turn out to be misguided in the end, or maybe the most drastic option will turn out to be the best solution. 

http://cwd-info.org/faq/

As far as crossing species lines go, Colorado has detected CWD  moose. Our moose population was established in the 1980's.  It could have arrived with the transplants but it seems more likely they were infected cross species.

Pronghorn seem to be unaffected.  There is a lot of intermingling of cattle and deer on public land and ranchers put out salt blocks which are shared with deer but there are no known cases of transmission from deer to cows.

Colorado is still funding CWD research.

For those with some interest in test results, it is also important to remember that the current testing is not a food safety test. 

The results of the current tests are "detected" and "not detected."  "Not detected" doesn't mean that a deer is not infected with CWD, just that no CWD prions were detected by the lab analysis.  The disease has to progress to a certain point before it can be detected (in addition to any incubation period).

On the positive side, the currently used tissue analyses are more sensitive than the tests of a decade ago.  Ten years ago most tests were based on looking at slides of stained, fixed tissue (the CWD prions would fluoresce).  Now most testing is molecular-based; so progress is being made in some areas at least.

Mississippi had the first positive test a couple of years ago in the southern part of the state, but in October a young buck tested positive in the county next to mine. The first detection resulted in a large zone being established from which no deer parts can be removed or imported unless they have been completely processed, and the importation ban is statewide. The state hasn't yet established the zone for the second deer, but it's almost certain to include my property. I had not heard about this "wholesale slaughter" in other states, and I understand the rationale (thanks for your input, Jim) but I have serious doubts as to whether it will stop the spread. We can only hope. It's almost impossible to "wipe out" a deer population by regular hunting methods, but it can be effectively done by using dogs to find them in daytime, and headlighting at night. I sincerely hope it doesn't come to that, but if it has to be done, let's hope it works! Re transmissions to humans, there was a woman in north MS who died from what was diagnosed as mad cow disease, but some people are convinced it was CWD, because she had not traveled past Illinois, where she did go into a CWD zone.

For those that enjoy podcasts, Randy Newberg's Hunt Talk Radio had a very informative episode on CWD recently.  It was the September the 21st episode and his guests were Dr Kelly Straka and Dr Krysten Shuler.  Both of these women are hunters and scientists studying CWD. 

I'll second the Joe Rogan Podcast referenced earlier in this thread. It is excellent and contains a lot of information.

The Meat Eater podcast with Steve Rinella also has an episode on CWD with the same biologist I believe, and it was also excellent.

Norway is experimenting with the eradication of a CWD positive reindeer herd. If I remember right, they are culling the infected herd and monitoring the area for a few years (3?) to ensure that no other deer enter the area. I think the results of this trial will have some pretty big implications on how CWD is dealt with in the future.

From what I recall, like creutzfeldt jakob disease, CWD has an incubation period where it can be undetectable even though it is present within the deer. Humans can have CJD for 40 or 50 years before they start to have symptoms. To me, this means that even though a deer looks healthy, if CWD has been found in your area, it's a roll of the dice.

Also, I believe that there were cases of CJD in the UK that could possibly be linked to the mad cow outbreak a few years ago. All of these are types of spongiform encephalopathy so they do the same thing to the brain. To me, this means that CWD 'could' at some point be picked up by humans, but from what I've heard from biologists it's unlikely.

They've begun testing for CWD in the unit that I hunt, but it hasn't been detected. However, it's been detected in the next adjacent county in Wyoming. I tend to think it's not already in my unit, it will be within the next decade or two unless they can come up with something to stop it. When that day comes, I will check my deer at check stations if they are open, but will likely continue to eat them as long as they looked healthy when I shot them.

In my opinion, just being alive in this 21st century is far more hazardous than anything that a deer could do to me. I'm sure that if I don't die in a car wreck tomorrow, global warming or lung cancer will get me sooner or later.

Eradication is the only recommendation I've seen, and nothing says it will be effective long term. If it's in the soil, it's in the saliva, then it's in human food when crops are harvested and processed. There's been no human cases since discovery, and in MI my 2 areas are now CWD zones, so kill them all is the mantra by the state. It isn't even transferring to cows. Kenny, I sent the same question to the state of MI about all this and they have a whole lot of zero answers. Their regulations this year are based on a combination of emotions and science. They admit that. And so nothing makes any sense. Wisconsin posted an article about CWD after years of dealing with it and say their efforts have had minimal impact. Im thinking it's here to stay, and at this point with no human contraction I'm not going to worry about it.