" Mad Deer Disease....should you worry?"........

[Deerslayer]

.....that was the headline at the top of the latest issue of Outdoor Life magazine.


It seems the DNR in Wisconsin has decided on a hardline approach.....
..."and the plan is to wipe out all 25,000 deer in a 360 square mile area,"

".....honestly, we don't know if we can get it to zero, given the number of deer, the large geographic range and the terrain. What we do know is that we need a significant reduction to slow the spread."

The DNR has been given far reaching powers to accomplish this, including the ability to shoot deer from roads and even from helicopters. Landowners whose property is in the "Eradication Zone" receive essentially unlimited hunting permits and can allow anyone to hunt their land.

The DNR's management plan might be the biggest irony of all. To save Wisconsin's 1.6 million deer herd, hunters might have to destroy a substantial part of it. Of course that's assuming hunters have the stomach for the task.
The article showed pix from this summer when hunters and agents went out and starting piling up deer.....it showed the deer piled up in carts..a sad sight for sure.
There is also a report of the disease showing up in New Mexico deer......man, no end in sight, this shit will get bad before it gets better, that's for certain.
DS

<FONT COLOR="#800080" SIZE="1">[ 09-10-2002 15:03: Message edited by: Deerslayer ]</font>

 

[1_pointer]

I'm not for shooting them, I don't think it will work. For one, we only kill the ones we can find which will include those that are immune and won't be able to pass on that gene. Also, we can only shoot those that we find, and anyone who's hunted whitetails knows that's easier said than done. I think this will come back to haunt the game departments.

 

[Westman]

Not to mention that the critter that does all this lives in the soil for a long time.

Pointer could tell us about the lifetime of this little infectious agent, but IFIRC it lives for quite some time in the soil.

So, killing as many deer as possible can only delay the inevitible, no?


Bill

 

[Elkhunter]

I think it is a pi$$ poor plan also. It is going to happen so this will only slow it down a little in that area of 360 sq.miles.

 

[KC]

Deerslayer:

I think the Colorado DOW needs to do the same in your back yard. That's GMU 9 and adjacent units. Sooner or later someone will die from Kruetzfelt Jakov disease that can be linked to eating CWD infected wild game meat and when that happens everyone's going to ask "why didn't somebody do something thirty years ago?" In fact they are doing the wrong things. Yeah sure they are going out of their way to inform everyone. But at the same time they are also going out of their way to get hunters to hunt in GMU 9 and adjacent units while maintaining the legal requirement to "provide for human consumption" of wild game meat.

They say "there's no evidence that CWD can be transmitted to humans". I dissagree but even if their claim is true there's no evidence that it can't either. It's clear that mad cow disease can be transmitted to humans and kill them and CWD is caused by the same rogue protiens called prions, that cause CWD. That looks to me like pretty clear evidence that Mad Cow Disease = CWD = Kruetzfelt Jakov Disease = Dead People.

I think that Colorado hunters should initiate a class action suit to force the DOW to round up all the wild game animals in GMU 9 and adjacent units, euthenize them and incinerate them. Let's get rid of the disease once and for all.

KC

 

[Deerslayer]

KC,
They have pretty much taken that approach I think. I know they are giving unlimited tags and removing as many animals as possible, at least they have the last two years. They also went out on a slaughter hunt last year in units to the west of there to kill as many animals as possible before they went back up to their summer range.

It's a tough order to try and take wild animals out of an even wilder environment, and an even tougher call to make the decision to attempt it. But it is spreading...even to other states, and there is no end in sight......I hate to think of where we might be with this in another 10 years or so...it don't look good.
DS

 

[1_pointer]

These things live in the soil for a long time, right? What do you do about that? If all the animals are removed from an area it won't be too long before some find their way back in. Animals don't care what unit there in, so wiping them out based on hunt unit designations is faulty logic, IMO. I don't have the answers, but I feel that these aren't it either.

 

[Deerslayer]

So help me understand this.....

....if they eradicate a unit or area of living infected deer, eventually, new deer re-inhabiting the area will catch the disease through the ground contamination.....so we may as well let the living infected deer keep spreading at alarming rates rather than eradicate to try and contain them?......I'm scratching my head on this one.

I would think it's bad either way, but you can't just let the infected herds keep spreading out. Yes, you still have some ground contamination once you have reduced the infected herds, but at least you don't have the live infected deer carrying the disease to Lord knows where. I for one am a proponent of eradication of any herds which are found to be infected, in captivity or the wild. We can repopulate, and keep reducing the spread, but if this goes unchecked, we will be dealing with this in every state in the union.....
DS

<FONT COLOR="#800080" SIZE="1">[ 09-11-2002 11:42: Message edited by: Deerslayer ]</font>

 

[Nut]

I also am concerned about the spreading of the disease. I want my future grandchildren to enjoy hunting deer. I also am as confused as everybody else seems to be. Dont know what the future holds for sure.

 

[Wolf4Skin]

The sky is falling , the sky is falling!!! What was all of your guys responces 2 or 3 years ago??

 

[KC]

Wolf4Skin:

My position ten years ago was that same as it is now. We should stop this while we have a chance. Ten years ago it hadn't moved down the Platte River into Nebraska. But it has now. How long will we wait before we act?

The reason that the DOW is issuing so many permits in infected game management units is they hope that by reducing population densities they will reduce the probability of cross infection. Then maybe the disease will die off. I'm saying that they/we need to do three more things in addition to that.

One they/we have to eliminate the requirement to "provide for human consumption" of game meat from infected GMUs. You will see a lot more hunters eager to help if they don't have to risk their lives and the lives if their families to do so.

Second they/we have apply much greater effort to rounding up and eliminating all animals in infected units. That will best be accomplished in the middle of winter when they are consentrated in low elevations.

Third they/we have to coordinate with Wyoming to ensure that the same measures are enacted there simultaneously.

KC

 

[jackfish]

First of all these prions that cause the condition are not "critters" and second they are not alive. They are mutant proteins that can cause normal proteins to "fold" in their form. There is no evidence that TSEs are transmissible between animals contrary to what you may have heard. There is no evidence that scrapie in sheep has caused BSE in cattle. There is no evidence that people in Britain eating cattle got nvCJD. There is no evidence that CWD can cause nvCJD in humans. The cause of TSEs is unknown, but new research is pointing toward systemic biological and environmental factors. In short, abnormal manganese and copper levels in the brain. These data are being repressed because of the implications for large multi-national food companies and the governments that have been barking up the wrong tree. Hence, in Wisconsin they may remove almost all of the deer in the eradication zone and still have CWD in the area when the population is restored because no one is looking at the possible environmental factors. That is except Brown, Purdey and Whatley.

http://www.markpurdey.com/bse_theory.htm

http://www.markpurdey.com/articles_educatingrida.htm

http://www.purdeyenvironment.com/IntroHyp.htm

http://www.markpurdey.com/index.html

<FONT COLOR="#800080" SIZE="1">[ 09-13-2002 07:57: Message edited by: jackfish ]</font>

 

[Nontypical]

in answer to the question opening the thread.... YES



jackfish... the vast bulk of the evidence indicates that the Purdey hypothesis is horsepuckey
Keep in mind there's always someone willing to advance a different hypothesis, at odds with the bulk of the evidence. For example, there are still people claiming HIV doesn't cause AIDS- what do you believe?

Wolf4skin, you're right, Pug and some others ridiculed this concern a couple yrs back at Huntinfo; DS did some of that as well, though he wasn't as vocal as some of the others.

give him some credit though, it's better late than never

for those who advocate the "head in sand" approach of wait-and-see...

I've got a worst case scenario for you to think about if this disease jumps the barrier into humans.

Imagine a prion disease like this in people, where there IS good evidence of horizontal transmission. What if it can be spread in people through saliva (one of the hypotheses for cervid horizontal transmission)?

If your wife or daughter gets it, do you shoot her so she doesn't infect you and the rest of your family? Send her to a "leper colony" where all the nvCWD-infected people wait to die?



the stakes have always been very high, they are just better recognized than a couple of yrs ago

 

[Deerslayer]

I don't remember ever taking CWD lightly, but what I do remember is taking the main "poster boy" for CWD at HuntInfo lightly....VERY LIGHTLY.

Nontypical.....I think you'll find that a lot of folks were against not the message, but the messanger over there. Wild Elk was enough to make anybody puke!

Just like the game farm issues......I told Greeny early on I was not a proponent of game farms in Montanny, but I was against the daily cut and paste propaganda Wild Elk was puking out. He took about 10% substantiated fact and added 90% BS to it...then hit the post button about 100 times a day.....HELL YES you are going to turn some people off doing that. LMH was about as bad over there ......but since I have come to know him better, as Buzz H here, I still think he is a prick!

But CWD as a rule is bad mojo......and anybody who can't or won't see it needs their head examined. I think we all realize this.....what no one can seem to agree on is how to deal with it.

Now, I have to go......my elk hunt comes up in a few weeks and I need to finish knitting that burlap elk decoy
DS

 

[Moosie]

I'll still post it

"The sky is falling , the sky is falling!!!"

HEY NON-TYP... SEEMS like you know some History here.... HAVE we crossed paths before ?!?!

If we did, AND I like you, WELCOME ABOARD !!!! If we did And I thought you were a prick, TELL me so I can keep the same MOJO

 

[Nontypical]

Moosie, I have no idea what you thought of me

I went as backpack elkhunter for a while at Huntinfo and elsewhere, then publicly changed my handle there

I haven't posted much anywhere for a while

the sky may or may not be falling, no one knows for sure

but if it is, ignore it at your peril

 

[Moosie]

NON-TYP. WELL.... MY Memory is as Short as my MAnhood so I have no Idea who you are .. (NO OFFENCE, that was a slam on me)

I'm actually with DS on this one, Ithica is a strong believer of MOO-sickness and I've actually read many articles on it.... I ALSO didn't like the CUT and PASTE "POSTER" on H.I.S. .. ALOT of the stuff was good info, BUT like DS's thinking.. ELKY and 280 are CRACK HEADS

PS, HAVE I changed any since my HUNTINFO days

 

[jackfish]

Nontypical, And just what is this overwhelming evidence that Purdey is wrong? There is more evidence in one paper on the relationship between manganese and copper levels and TSEs than all of the research portending the spurious claim that TSEs are transmissible. Just in my limited review of the so-called evidence for the classic theories of TSEs I have found that if one looks at that research in total it does not add up to the conclusions they are making. They's running scared because they don't know for sure and are afraid that all they've invested in barking up the wrong tree will be revealed. I stand by my previous assertions and will gladly review and critique any study one would like to put forward to counter those assertions.

 

[Nontypical]

jackfish,

there's an enormous literature that relates in various ways to transmission of prion diseases

It started w/ the literature on Kuru, are you familiar with that story?

it has notably continued with the more recent literature on BSE and nvCJD

I most definitely don't have the time to point you to all the relevant papers, but go to

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed

and start plugging in some of these words if you want to find and read some of the enormous number of papers relating to these diseases

some are available on line, others you'll have to go to a University library to find

you can choose to believe and listen to whoever you want

at present, I choose to believe the prion hypothesis, and think it prudent to behave accordingly

regards,

Nt

 

[Nontypical]

by the way, jackfish,

you should keep in mind that using phrasing like you did above... "there is no evidence..."

would be considered irresponsible by many people, and could even cause you to be held liable in the event someone takes your opinions as expert, eats infected tissue, and gets sick

something to keep in mind