MT CWD positive?

[DFS]

I guess it would really show who is actually hunting for meat. Not that that changes the grand scheme of things. I suspect nonresidents would still come and shoot and be happy but maybe I’m wrong.

 

[Hunting Wife]

Can not blame you one bit. A dilemma for sure and not just for the hunters but also managers. Do hunters like you start to target one and half year old forkies because the chances of a CWD positive are lower? Same with B tags, fill two B tags with fawns instead of shooting one older doe might provide the same amount of meat with out the risk of a CWD positive. Will NR still come and shoot a small buck if you don't learn you have a CWD positive until after you are half way across the country? Not going to be easy.

Prevalence in does is lower, so perhaps folks who are really just in it for the meat will just be more likely to shoot does than bucks. Obviously that presents its own problems.

Several states have reported fewer hunters hunting in positive zones once prevalences reach higher levels. Not sure if that will happen or not in MT. Obviously that just places more pressure on the healthier populations. Although looking at a map of CWD in Montana, it seems unlikely we’ll have any truly “negative” places in another decade. It certainly presents added management challenges.

Not to cross-pollinate threads, but this is the reason I think eventual point-of-kill testing capabilities could be a game-changer.

How so?

 

[Treeshark]

How so?

In my view, the main threat of CWD is related to humans handling/transferring the deer and consuming the meat.

Point-of-kill tests could drastically curtail these activities.

 

[Nick87]

At least they aren’t being like some midwestern states and having extra CWD tags with virtually limitless free tags in CWD zones.

Going on 18 years now.

 

[brocksw]

Just want to offer a correction to one of my earlier posts.

Doe to fawn CWD transmission has been shown to happen in muntjac deer inoculated with positive whitetail infectious agent. Having a positive mother affected term viability and post birth survival. I usually have to read these studies a couple times to really grasp it, and I haven't had a chance to do that yet. But I've absorbed enough of this to be confident that my previous post was wrong. Can't comment on the difference in the realities between muntjac and whitetail/mule deer, but I'd guess there isn't enough difference to argue about.

My apologies for putting out bad information. Study below.

Mother to Offspring Transmission of Chronic Wasting Disease in Reeves’ Muntjac Deer

The horizontal transmission of prion diseases has been well characterized in bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), chronic wasting disease (CWD) of deer and elk and scrapie of sheep, and has been regarded as the primary mode of transmission. Few studies ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov