CWD found in Minnesota wild deer

[Cyclic-Rivers]

Clark,

Very interesting and sounds quite logical. Feed may be how it is so easily spread over 1000 miles seemingly overnight.

Personally I dont care where it came from although it would be nice to know for the sake of science.

[1oldbowguy]

Whip, at least to me, is spot on.  MONEY and deer hunting just don't seem to mix.  Far to many rich so called hunters just in it for the rack and not the hunting sport.  Each to their own, but my 2cents is more sport and less money.

[BlacktailBowhunter]

That is a bummer. Here in Oregon, it has depleted the Blacktail herd by about 1/3 and that is devistating to what was about 400,000 animals.

The Columbian Whitetail don't seem to be as affected by CWD or the Lice.

[Robhood23]

I blame the wolves! just kiddin, In this case I would bet that it was spread by the elk farm across the hi-way!

[highelk]

I gotta say that I agree with Whip as well.
We here in Colorado have been dealing with it as long as I have been old enough to hunt.Unfortunatly there it still is.
I hope and pray that they can figure out a way to get it fixed but it still doesn't stop me from going up in an effort to harvest Game. There is quite a bit of info on CWD on Colorado DOW web page.

[Bent Rig]

High elk the first case to show up was in Fort Collins Co., thats where it originated
 . Whip , we had a scare in Ny about 3 yrs ago , an infected Whitetail was purchased and brought in , all animals were terminated , but for at least 2 yrs I believe one county had all harvest checked by the DEC before consuming those animals - everything is back to normal now . Also those animals weren't in an enclosed hunting enclosure -they were just raised for the meat for sale down state in the Big Apple .

[ny state land]

Yes but they were still on a farm which seems to be the consistent theme. They have repealed the mandatory carcass testing in Oneida county, for now i believe we got lucky.

[MAT]

I've known about CWD since the early 1990's, mainly because I hunted Colorado and always had in interest in wildlife disease (almost a major in college).  CWD was the worst thing to find east of the Mississippi.

All indications are still that CWD can wipe out a deer population.  This isn’t a normal disease, the body has no defenses, in fact the body doesn’t even know it’s infected.  Stanley Prusiner won the Nobel Prize for medicine by proving that a non-living protein (prion) can cause an infection.  This was a huge discovery that no one thought possible.  No normal disease is 100% fatal, but this one is.  

It may not be transmittable to humans, but it will have an impact on hunting.  We know a lot more on how it affects white-tailed deer (the most susceptible of all the deer species) since it was found in WI because of the increased research.   We now know that it is spread  orally, which includes baiting and feeding.

It can reduce deer densities to the point hunting is no longer needed, or even permissible.  But it’s a slow disease, and this may take 30+ years or more.  Western states are just starting to see this happen.

Bucks have a higher prevalence rate than does, since they are exposed to more urine during the rut.  What this means is that even if it doesn't wipe out a population, it will take out bucks before they reach prime trophy age.  How ironic is that for QDM?  And the rate is related to deer densities.  One game farm in WI that was depopulated (outside the CWD zone, so it came to the farm by moving deer) had a 75% infection rate (might have been higher as this is from memory).  I think wild mule deer on the front range are approaching 45% infection rates a few years ago.  

To deny that it’s not a problem for hunting is just short sighted, and total contrary to the research .  What gets me are these game farm addicts like Allen Warren who say we have to stick together to protect the future of hunting.  IMO we need to ban game farms to do just that.

[Orion]

Yahderehey, you're on the right track. I can't prove it either, but this is what I've been told from people in the know, i.e., regulators and game managers (and they will not say this openly). QDM did play a role in bringing the disease to Wisconsin, but not likely in the feed folks put out in the early QDM areas.  Rather, it was trucked in from a game farm in Alberta in the form of a few large Alberta bucks to improve the genetics in the QDM area.  State DNR and Dept. of Ag officials have a pretty good idea who did it, when and where, but for some reason they can't or won't prosecute.  In fact, there is probably no way to prosecute because at the time it was done, there was no law against it.  Another case of man tampering with mother nature with disastrous results.

[Bent Rig]

First known case was found in 1967 in Fort Collins Co. in a Mule deer that was held in a captive research facility . First wild case was found in a Mule deer in 1987 in again Fort Collins Co. so there ya go - 20 yrs from captive to the wild . But nobody really heard about it till it was out(87) and spreading to this day .