CWD

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Well,CWD has raised its ugly head for the 3rd time in Pennsylvania.This time on a deer farm.When are the authorities going to clamp down on these operations.Transporting farmed deer has brought CWD to the eastern U.S.This may destroy the sport hunting economy to enrich a few deer farmers.It ticks me off to hear a deer farming association officer say "When the wild deer are gone the hunters will have to patronize our operations."
 
im in mo and just got a flyer from the conservation dept on cwd.

the mo legislature bowed to captive deer lobbyists and passed some laws redefineing captive deer as livestock.this keeps the dept of conservation from being able to have authority to fight cwd. the gov vetoed these bills.to save the wild deer. legislators hope to over ride his veto in sept.


REALLY? screw a whole state full of hunters for a few captive deer farmers???REALLY?

WHO and i mean who votes these aholes into office?

it appears if yu have a big enuf lobby you can do bout anything apparently.

give gifts and money to your local legislators thru your lobby and they will pass about any law yu want? am i mistaken?

everybody i know hunts wild deer but i dont even know of a deer farm in my area. so basically they are catering to the few and screw the many?

just because the few have more money to lobby them?

when is it going to be politician season?
 
after reading more about this subject from various sources i am really mad.

deer in my area are healthy now but who knows what will happen if this keeps on.

we had a bad outbreak of blue tounge a couple years ago. it really cut down on the deer pop.

what a lot of people dont realize is that venison is a major source of protein for a lot of familys in my area. many people i know depend on getting a deer or two every year to supplement the grocery budget.i know i do. for a few captive deer farmers to endanger a whole way of life is insane.

i hope our govenor stands strong.

i know i live in kind of a depressed area but that dont mean we shud be hungry on top of being poor.
 
No need to get overly excited. Cautious, concerned and preventive yes, but CWD has been in Wisconsin for some time now and there are still so many deer that I won't ride a motorcycle at night and you still get a free antlerless tag with every hunting license. Here, where deer are scarce, there is no CWD present, the populations are low because of over harvesting. CWD is a deer disease of high populations and close proximity and for the most part, other than some measures to prevent the spread, most hunters won't notice the difference of before and after.
 
Well,CWD has raised its ugly head for the 3rd time in Pennsylvania.This time on a deer farm.

OP, do you have a link to this story? If not, what part of PA was it in?
 
Its in Jefferson County.The new disease management area involves Jefferson and Clearfield Counties.Check the PGC website.
 
Ridgerunner 1965,my sentiments exactly.The more money these deer farmers make,the more money they can throw to politicians to keep the scheme going.I also hunt deer for the venison as a supplement to the grocery budget.I don't trust venison from a disease area,so my hunting area is being reduced.No way will I pay to hunt deer.A few years ago a fellow told me he was going to pay $5,000 dollars to shoot a trophy buck on a "preserve".This is what we are up against.
 
Another Missouri resident here and I agree with the above posts. I don't know anybody that's "hunted" captive deer but apparently there is a lot of money in it. CWD started in Macon county then spread to adjacent counties quickly. Now the dept of conservation is fighting an uphill battle. Just highlights the fact that every dollar you put towards conservation matters.
 
Just because CWD was first discovered in captive deer, doesn't mean it originated there......... again, it is a disease of close proximity. Thus captive deer are more susceptible to exposure. They are also more closely observed and monitored, thus sick animals are quickly recognized......not so much with wild deer. Since the disease acts and kills quite quickly once it manifests itself, sick deer in the wild are not around for long to be observed. The promotion of feeding wild deer, baiting wild deer and planting small food plots to attract deer to a small area also greatly increases he odds that deer will be exposed to the prions that spread the disease. Thus, those that hunt wild deer and do those things are just as guilty as folks that raise deer on deer farms. Wisconsin has found the only way to reduce CWD is to reduce deer populations. Hard to do when the majority of prime habitat is privately owned and access to hunting there regulated by landowners looking to keep a high population of animals on their property. Want high populations of game animals, expect to have the diseases that come with them. This is true whether they are captive or wild.
 
But,the transporting of farmed deer brought the disease to the eastern states.It did not spring up spontaneously here.For it to spread through wild deer from Colorado to Pennsylvania would have taken much longer.Read the article about CWD in the Charleston Gazette/West Virginia June 29,2014.Its posted online under CWD in West Virginia.Read the last part about the disease monitoring of the Agriculture Department.It states that infected animals are lost in the the system and farmers are shipping deer all over the country.
 
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But,the transporting of farmed deer brought the disease to the eastern states.It did not spring up spontaneously here.For it to spread through wild deer from Colorado to Pennsylvania would have taken much longer.Read the article about CWD in the Charleston Gazette/West Virginia June 29,2014.Its posted online under CWD in West Virginia.Read the last part about the disease monitoring of the Agriculture Department.It states that infected animals are lost in the the system and farmers are shipping deer all over the country.

Yes, but there is evidence that wild deer were originally infected from domestic sheep and research on the disease inadvertently passed it on to penned deer. Penned deer shipped across the country help spread it to other penned deer. Supposedly escaped pen deer exposed wild deer to the prion. Much like the Emerald Ash Borer, other invasive species and other diseases of ungulates, man unintentionally helped the spread. We know should know better. One reason deer cannot be shipped in from other states here anymore. I need not read the West Virginia articles, because they are no different than what we have been told for the last dozen years here. West Virginia has long ways to go to catch up with current knowledge of the disease. Most states that have not encountered it yet, tend to completely ignore it till it shows up, and then they panic. Again, the disease is not passed casually. It could have been around for all eternity, but when deer are at natural numbers in natural environments, exposure is so little, that very few cases ever manifested themselves.


Good article on it here........http://www.stopcwd.org/library/library2.cfm?articleID=13
 
OK.So, a known method of spreading the disease is shipping deer around the country. Why would we enable the spread with so much at stake?If this disease is found in nature,why is it not reported in those states with large deer populations outside these disease areas?Surely hunters or others spending time in deer habitat would have reported it.Here in PA,there are pastures shared by sheep and deer and in my 50 years of deer hunting I never read or heard of infected deer.If I were a betting man I would bet that researchers experiments created this disease.
 
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OK.So, a known method of spreading the disease is shipping deer around the country. Why would we enable the spread with so much at stake?If this disease is found in nature,why is it not reported in those states with large deer populations outside these disease areas?Surely hunters or others spending time in deer habitat would have reported it.Here in PA,there are pastures shared by sheep and deer and in my 50 years of deer hunting I never read or heard of infected deer.If I were a betting man I would bet that researchers experiments created this disease.
I doubt that research experiments created CWD. From my understanding it is caused by a prion which is an improperly folded protein. It is a type of spongiform encephalitis, which mad cow is also. Spongiform encephalitis is a naturally occurring thing. Have you ever heard of Creutzfeldt Jacobson Disease in humans (CJD)? It is caused by prions and is like mad cow disease, only it is in humans. The misfolded proteins or prions can occur naturally in all populations. It is rare, but can happen when proteins are made in the body and fold in a random improper manner. It can also be genetic instead of random, stemming from an allele that codes for improper protein formation.

For one animal to get it from another animal there has to be a transfer of the prion from one to another, so ingestion is one way that prions can transfer from animal to animal. However since deer are not carnivores I doubt that that is how they spread. Generally it is spread through the ingestion of infected tissue, and since it effects the brain this means eating brains. There are cannibalistic cultures where spongiform encephalitis is more common than the rest of the world, simply because they eat the brains of people. Prions are thought also be transmitted through blood, again a possible vector of transmission during fighting. However "catching" prions is not like catching a virus when someone coughs, or bacteria from a dirty surface. However the prions that cause CWD may have another transmission vector that is unique to CWD that I have not heard about yet, but the above is based on the general transmission of prions as taught in biochemistry. It is my understanding that the mad cow outbreak in England was because of the incorporation of animal protein in feed rations (using the parts of a cow that were not eaten in feed to boost the protein numbers).

Now this is just a guess of mine, but I feel like the reason that CWD is seen more in captive deer is that it generally takes a large chunk of time before symptoms develop. In cows it can take as long as 8 years (but generally shows itself in 4-5 years) for an animal that has prions to exhibit mad cow disease. Now in the wild where there is predation the chance for an animal to be infected is already low, combine that with a possible long "incubation" period, and the animal will probably be eaten before it shows symptoms. Now take away the predators and prolong the deer's life so he becomes trophy size, and you may have allowed the disease enough time to impact the deer's brain to the point of showing symptoms. Again this is just a theory of mine, but it seems plausible.

Again this is my understanding based on what I was taught in biochemistry, and yes I did pretty well in it, lol. But knowledge on the subject of prions may have changed since then
 
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If I were a betting man I would bet that researchers experiments created this disease.


OMG....another conspiracy theory!

Same BS was spread around here when CWD was first discovered. Musta been the DNR that infected deer to lower the deer population. Or an antis plan to take away our deer first, and then the guns we use on them. Of course the same conspiracy theory was claimed about the Deer Tick.
 
Here in NC there are some stiff regulations on what and how you can bring dead deer parts in to the state from infected areas. I'm sure regulations for bringing in live deer from anywhere are similarly regulated. So far we have no CWD. Hope it stays that way.
 
I did not say conspiricy.I don't believe in conspiricy theories.I don't believe anyone would purposely do that.There is the possibility that sheep could infect deer.I can imagine a researcher trying to duplicate that to see if its possible.Research involves venturing into unknown territory with unknown results.Things can happen out of the researchers control.I understand that.Check out the book "The Hot Zone".On the subject of deer parts,we have had that ban for years but the deer farms brought it into the state.
 
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As far as I know, there is no CWD in Florida. To try and prevent it from coming in, it is illegal to import deer (all cervids) into the state. Out Of state hunters aren't supposed to transport deer or elk carcasses into Fla. unless it's just the meat.
Of course, we all know that hunters with their Colorado elk or their Wisc. deer aren't going to pay much attention to that if their taxidermist is here.
Having the law is one thing, enforcing it is quite another.
 
Check out the book "The Hot Zone".On the subject of deer parts,we have had that ban for years but the deer farms brought it into the state.


Read that book back in the 90s. One book that is just as relative to CWD is the 1969 Michael Crichton book The Andromeda Strain. About a virus that evolves from fatal to harmless. This is supposedly what happened to the prion that causes CWD....it evolved from a sheep disease to a deer disease. The fear is that at some point it may evolve(like mad cow) into a disease that may infect humans. Just as likely is that it may evolve into something totally harmless. As it is now, the disease is not a threat to humans, nor is it easily transmitted to deer with normal population numbers, feeding on normal browse, in wild habitat. The baiting, feeding and the attracting deer in high numbers to small areas via food plots is the most probable way wild deer will transmit it.

It doesn't matter how it got there now that CWD is present. What matters now it how to keep it from spreading or how to keep exposure of healthy animals to the prions to a minimum. While the transportation of penned animals may have brought the disease to your area, it has nuttin' to do with preventing it from spreading now that it is there. If there have been regs about the transportation of wild deer parts for years, then the appearance and the threat of CWD is not new.
 
When I wrote "created the disease" I meant introduced the disease to penned deer.But,my original post was about transporting deer.With out the transporting the disease would be more confined.I recently read an ad for the sale of hundreds of farmed deer from one farm.Also saw a picture of many bucks with huge antlers in a small pen.I don't know how old those bucks were.I'm just hoping this industry can be prevented from infecting new areas far from the present disease sites.
 
So not to comment on the politics or the attitudes of the deer farmers as I haven't seen the actual quote from the guy who supposedly made that idiotic statement about when the wild deer are gone. But we've been living with CWD for long time in the West. It is not one of those diseases that tends to wipe pout whole populations of deer. We have very strong deer and elk populations and CWD positive populations in most of the state.

Again not defending the idiocy of the deer farmer in question if he actually said that.
 
There is already a human form of mad cow or CWD. My father died from it in 2004. It is called CJD for short. Sorry H&H I know its not hunting related, but I wanted to share that information.

PM me if you would like to know more. Let's not derail the entire thread.
 
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