Yeti GOBOX Collection

Cwd

wacknstack

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Recently attended a CWD info meeting here in the Midwest. Sounds like the #1 threat to deer/ elk hunting as we know it. Thoughts? Anyone living in a CWD outbreak area in this part of the country?
 
IMHO it's way overblown and seeing as how it has been around since the 70s out in CO and the deer herds aren't all gone it's the last of my worries as a hunter and conservationist. EHD that is spread by a midge bite kills thousands of animals in a fairly small area within several weeks when the conditions are right and that's a lot more than CWD probably takes in a number of years.
 
I live smack dab in the middle of the cwd area in illinois. It's seems to be way overblown to me as well its been going on here for about a decade now, we are in an eradication zone. The dnr has brought in sharpshooters to shoot as many deer as possible in that areaover bait. Along with that we also have otc firearm tags now and two extended antler less firearm seasons. I'm not saying it doesn't exist or isn't a problem but I've yet to meet anyone who has or knows anybody who had a deer test positive in the area. We used to have an awesome deer herd in this area that was second to none, now it's as if they never existed in much of this area. Just seems like poor management to me with the eradication zones other states that I have read about seem to do a much better job, while still maintaining healthy deer numbers.
 
It's not overblown at all. I feel it is one of the major management issues facing whitetail deer of our time. The disease continues to spread in the core areas of SW Wisconsin and pop up in new areas of the state (always at a game farm). Would you eat a deer with CWD? How about feeding your kids? I'll quit whitetail hunting and stick to ducks if it comes to the point of having to eat a diseased animal.

Interesting articles on CWD:
http://host.madison.com/wsj/sports/recreation/outdoors/patrick-durkin-shot-show-consensus-is-cwd-major-animal-threat/article_05203ba5-4a6c-558d-b93a-e1e38cd8fb6e.html

http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/story/sports/outdoors/2015/09/04/-cwd-wipe-deer-future-hunters/71718364/

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0161127
 
IMHO it's way overblown and seeing as how it has been around since the 70s out in CO and the deer herds aren't all gone it's the last of my worries as a hunter and conservationist. EHD that is spread by a midge bite kills thousands of animals in a fairly small area within several weeks when the conditions are right and that's a lot more than CWD probably takes in a number of years.

CWD prions stay in the soil for years and years. Attempts to clean infected sites have failed. EHD is driven more by drought in summer months (which due to climate change may become more frequent). Wildlife diseases are not overblown and sportsman should be concerned about the health of the animals that we enjoy, hunt, and consume.
 
CWD prions stay in the soil for years and years. Attempts to clean infected sites have failed. EHD is driven more by drought in summer months (which due to climate change may become more frequent). Wildlife diseases are not overblown and sportsman should be concerned about the health of the animals that we enjoy, hunt, and consume.

I know all about CWD, so thanks, but I don't need any schooling from you on it. I also know all about EHD and when it hits I can guarantee it ain't pretty and I would bet that it kills a lot more deer on a yearly basis than CWD ever has. Scientists are no closer to figuring out a good plan or cure for CWD than when they started back in the 70s when it was found in a captive study herd in northern CO. To the best of my knowledge the area has not had any significant reduction in the deer herd there in all these years. Sure we should be concerned about the health of our herds, but I also don't believe in the "sky is falling" attitude that some have regarding CWD when very seldom do any significant numbers test positive in control units. Right now an area north of our state Capitol has been designated as a CWD area and all deer taken in it are under mandatory testing and few, if any, are being found to be positive after one was found with it and our DNR took that action. IMHO your state of Wisconsin screwed the pooch and went bananas when they shot and dumped thousands of deer in landfills without even doing any significant testing after CWD was found in that state.
 
I know all about CWD, so thanks, but I don't need any schooling from you on it. I also know all about EHD and when it hits I can guarantee it ain't pretty and I would bet that it kills a lot more deer on a yearly basis than CWD ever has. Scientists are no closer to figuring out a good plan or cure for CWD than when they started back in the 70s when it was found in a captive study herd in northern CO. To the best of my knowledge the area has not had any significant reduction in the deer herd there in all these years. Sure we should be concerned about the health of our herds, but I also don't believe in the "sky is falling" attitude that some have regarding CWD when very seldom do any significant numbers test positive in control units. Right now an area north of our state Capitol has been designated as a CWD area and all deer taken in it are under mandatory testing and few, if any, are being found to be positive after one was found with it and our DNR took that action. IMHO your state of Wisconsin screwed the pooch and went bananas when they shot and dumped thousands of deer in landfills without even doing any significant testing after CWD was found in that state.

I have no idea which kills more deer, I'm not sure why you brought it up. I stated they both are serious. CWD ain't pretty either. Your statement that very few are testing positive is flat out false: http://www.outdoornews.com/2015/04/06/cwd-infection-rates-setting-records-in-state-of-wisconsin/. Also, I don't feel Wisconsin screwed the pooch at all. It's pretty basic biology to try and thin out a herd that was already overpopulated when a disease such as CWD is found. They did do extensive testing at the time, although rates of testing continue to drop each year. I'm not quite sure where you are getting your info on Wisconsin from.
CWD isn't going away. Biologists who have masters and doctorates in wildlife biology are concerned. Conservation groups are concerned. It is foolish for hunters to say it is overblown and no big deal.
 
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I harvested a deer this morning for a special CWD testing collection here in Iowa. Thinning the herd is very contradictory to what land managers have been trying to do, but think of it like this, when your kid goes to school and little Johnny is sick there is a good chance that your kid is going to get sick and everyone else in the classroom will get sick eventually too. If a CWD infected deer is feeding in the field with 75 other deer it is going to infect the other deer. It may take a while, but it will happen. We will not stop the disease, but by thinning the herd we will slow it down. In Iowa they are preaching to landowners that we have CWD in our area, Northeast Iowa along the Mississippi River roughly from Marquette to Lansing, we must thin our herd to slow the spread to the rest of the state.

Last week at the public CWD deer meeting here in Iowa put on the DNR the Iowa DNR state deer biologist showed slides of Wisconsins CWD and how it went from 1 case in the early 2000s to today roughly 25% of deer in Iowa and surrounding counties in Southern Wisconsin have CWD. If we lower the age class and the density of deer we will slow the spread of CWD down and we will be able to hunt deer in the future. If we leave it alone and let it spread there is a good chance that the deer will be decimated. This is not a short term solution, this is a solution for your kids and grandchildren to be able to hunt deer in the future.

The only argument for Wisconsin screwing the pooch would be that they have significantly lowered the amount of testing and research they have been doing on CWD under the Walker administration. Thinning the herd was the correct thing to do and Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, and Missouri are all doing the same exact thing in their CWD zones today as we speak.
 
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Don't panic on the CWD. We have been living with it for years here and no the deer herds are not decimated, elk either. We have taken positive deer and seen positive cow that was reported to G&F for harvest. The herd will survive. Yes you will lose some deer but it has been around for longer than officials will admit. Colorado was not decimated when it was found. Herd reduction sounds like good plan by the state.
 
Don't panic on the CWD. We have been living with it for years here and no the deer herds are not decimated, elk either. We have taken positive deer and seen positive cow that was reported to G&F for harvest. The herd will survive. Yes you will lose some deer but it has been around for longer than officials will admit. Colorado was not decimated when it was found. Herd reduction sounds like good plan by the state.

That's spot on and exactly why I used the word overblown when it's been around for decades where it was first identified and the deer herds sure haven't been decimated. For the gentleman from WI, sorry I was referring to my state of MI when I spoke of testing and finding few, if any, positives! The rate for WI according to the article in the link he posted is 6.1%, which is still not what IMHO is a staggering number, but not good either. Wisconsin came out and was going to kill every deer in the area CWD was found and were well on the way until the poop hit the fan money wise for the small percentage that were being found positive of the ones that they did test. Yes, it spreads easier when there are too many animals for the carrying capacity of an area. The real problem is all these game farms that are perpetuating the problem and because big money talks they just seem to be growing in some areas by leaps and bounds. If the states are serious about even coming close to eradicating CWD, all those places would never have been allowed to open or move animals all over the place, which has exacerbated the problem. The reason I brought up EHD is that is the real killer and a deer will be dead within 2-3 weeks from it, but one with CWD may be alive for years before it even shows any outward appearance of being sick.
 
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For those who value facts and actual data, here's a very recent article on the subject:

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0161127

This study was done on whitetails in a Wyoming population with a relatively long history of endemic CWD (likely since the 1970's). This study attempts to evaluate what happens to a population with long term CWD and minimal control efforts. Take home messages:

-CWD prevalence continues to increase, and is most likely a factor in a long term downward trend being observed in whitetail population in this area.
-CWD positive animals have a lower overall survival than CWD negative animals. They were also disproportionately susceptible to harvest. This supports conclusions from other studies that CWD positive animals are more susceptible to many proximate causes of mortality including predation, vehicle collisions, etc.
-High infection rates are leading to a shift in the demographics - fewer animals are surviving to older age classes, so overall the population is shifting towards a higher proportion of younger animals.
-As prevalence of CWD is increasing, overall mortality is also increasing and the population is declining. Models based on these data revealed that under the current framework of disease dynamics and harvest levels, this population may not be sustainable.

Here's the abstract for those who can't view the link, or who don't want to wade through all the science speak:

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is an invariably fatal transmissible spongiform encephalopathy of white-tailed deer, mule deer, elk, and moose. Despite a 100% fatality rate, areas of high prevalence, and increasingly expanding geographic endemic areas, little is known about the population-level effects of CWD in deer. To investigate these effects, we tested the null hypothesis that high prevalence CWD did not negatively impact white-tailed deer population sustainability. The specific objectives of the study were to monitor CWD-positive and CWD-negative white-tailed deer in a high-prevalence CWD area longitudinally via radio-telemetry and global positioning system (GPS) collars. For the two populations, we determined the following: a) demographic and disease indices, b) annual survival, and c) finite rate of population growth (λ). The CWD prevalence was higher in females (42%) than males (28.8%) and hunter harvest and clinical CWD were the most frequent causes of mortality, with CWD-positive deer over-represented in harvest and total mortalities. Survival was significantly lower for CWD-positive deer and separately by sex; CWD-positive deer were 4.5 times more likely to die annually than CWD-negative deer while bucks were 1.7 times more likely to die than does. Population λ was 0.896 (0.859–0.980), which indicated a 10.4% annual decline. We show that a chronic disease that becomes endemic in wildlife populations has the potential to be population-limiting and the strong population-level effects of CWD suggest affected populations are not sustainable at high disease prevalence under current harvest levels.

We are just getting to the point where some long term studies at the population level are being completed, and there is more work to do. This is the first I've seen published - it takes time to gather these kinds of data because this is not an acute disease. Chronic diseases take time to have impacts. They are also much more difficult to manage. Comparing CWD to EHD is like comparing apples to golf balls. They are not even remotely comparable epidemiologically nor with regards to impacts to populations.

We'll see what future research finds, but this study seems to bear out some of the more worrisome hypotheses that have been floated by wildlife disease professionals; it certainly doesn't refute any of them. Sure doesn't seem "overblown" to me.
 
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Populations will be affected but in areas where it has been documented first in Wyoming there is still a good population of older bucks. We have been hunting the endemic area of Wyoming for over 25 years , population numbers overall are down but mature deer numbers are not disproportionately down.These are mule deer however. I do agree, long term studies are needed. Be interested to see how the data supports the idea that they are more susceptible to vehicle collisions etc. I would like to know where that study is being conducted. Predator populations are on the rise and highway improvements has led to more traffic in the endemic area I am familiar with. The area adjacent to research center where it was brought in and studied has become known for big, mature bucks. The whitetail studies will be interesting to read. I will do some research into whether the infection rate continues to climb in this population or if it has leveled off.
 
-CWD positive animals have a lower overall survival than CWD negative animals. They were also disproportionately susceptible to harvest. This supports conclusions from other studies that CWD positive animals are more susceptible to many proximate causes of mortality including predation, vehicle collisions, etc

I find this very interesting and wonder the cause. Is is simply from an increase number of predator or increase in the number of roads and/or traffic. Or does the effect of CWD limit brain function somehow that makes infected animals simply more vulnerable and less cautious. Perhaps this is answered in Hunting Wife's reference url. I'll have to read it when I have time.
 
I find this very interesting and wonder the cause. Is is simply from an increase number of predator or increase in the number of roads and/or traffic. Or does the effect of CWD limit brain function somehow that makes infected animals simply more vulnerable and less cautious. Perhaps this is answered in Hunting Wife's reference url. I'll have to read it when I have time.

It is discussed tangentially in this reference, but has been covered more in other articles. It is generally attributed to altered behavior and cognitive ability - they do not appear to recognize or react to threats the same as noninfected animals.
 
HW---I wasn't trying to compare EHD with CWD since I'm fully aware of both. The reason I mentioned it is that it kills a very significant percentage of the animals in a given area within a few weeks and it's easy to find carcasses all over the place, especially near water. Very seldom does a hunter find a dead animal that probably died from CWD. As stable as the CWD prion is I have my doubts that it will ever be eradicated although it may be slowed down if the states got serious and deep sixed all these friggin game farms that seem to be a big source of it's transmission and spreading across the country because of movements of diseased animals.
 
Topgun: I agree 100% with you on the game farms being a major source. Every time this disease has been found in a new area in Wisconsin it is found on a game farm.
 
I agree that there is too much laxity when it comes to game farms - too many instances of direct fenceline contact with wild animals, too many escapes, too few requirements in some states for moving animals between farms. It has clearly contributed to the current geography of the disease.

I picked on the EHD comparison because its one that I hear frequently and I think it illustrates very well a point of confusion for many people who don't really have a good understanding of disease. As you correctly state, it's easy to go out and find carcasses everywhere after an EHD outbreak and clearly attribute those to a pathogen. But many people then fall into the false assumption that this should be true of any disease. Because they don't find a bunch of drooling, staggering deer that tip over dead, they don't believe CWD is really an issue. That is where I think educating the general population of hunters and conservationists is important.

You will never see a bunch of end stage CWD animals dying on the landscape because the course of the disease is such that most infected animals never make it to the end stage. The clinical progression of CWD is such that the vast majority will succumb to something else simply because of the impairment created by CWD infection. Lets face it, nature is brutal and even those with all their mental faculties don't always survive. It's not hard to see then that those with diminished nervous/cognitive function stand even less of a chance. However, this masks the real impact of CWD on individual animals as well as populations - a lot of mortality is attributed to other causes, though the underlying reason they were more vulnerable to the other cause was because they had CWD. This is also one of the biggest hurdles disease folks are having in getting the public to understand why CWD is a big deal - it doesn't provide a clearly identifiable, high body count with a discreet time scale. Its not neat and tidy, and people in general have a hard time with ideas that aren't neat and tidy.

Anyway, I'm glad people are willing to engage in the discussion. I too wish the research was going faster, but this particular subject demands an excruciatingly slow pace.
 
In many states, game farms fall under the jurisdiction of the Agriculture Dept. In my experience, Ag. Departments tend to be less than aggressive when it comes to enforcement actions with game farms. When game farms fall under the eye of the Fish and Game Departments, (major stake holders !!) there tends to be tighter controls and inspections.
 
In many states, game farms fall under the jurisdiction of the Agriculture Dept. In my experience, Ag. Departments tend to be less than aggressive when it comes to enforcement actions with game farms. When game farms fall under the eye of the Fish and Game Departments, (major stake holders !!) there tends to be tighter controls and inspections.

True story. In Iowa the only time the Dnr can have a say is if they are a shooting preserve as well. Otherwise it is under the ag department (IDAL) all deer at fenced shooting preserves must be tested for CWD. All of the positives lately can traced back through their deer genetics to 1 deer farm.
 
Good discussion here. Let's hope research sheds some light on this disease. Too bad we lost a great researcher years back , Beth Williams was deeply invested in the CWD research for WG&F. She had valuable experience with the disease.
 
Gastro Gnome - Eat Better Wherever

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