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CWD and what I should know about it

floydfreak

floydfreak

Active Member
Joined
Nov 16, 2019
Messages
134
Location
Ontario, Canada
After talking with @Jgetch and finding out that where he hunts CWD rates have hit 60% I quickly realized I don't know enough about this. I do plan to start going down some rabbit holes myself but figured it would be good to get a discussion going about this. I've been on the site for over a year now and can't remember there being any kind of previous post about it and I'm sure the research has changed in the last year.

For context I live in Canada and as far as I can tell infection rate in our deer popluation is still relatively low but steadily increasing. Is it still widely considered to be a problem in heavily populated deer areas or has that been busted?

I'm sure I would have heard by now if transmition to humans was a likely factor so I'm assuming at this point it hasn't been proven.

Anyways thanks for the comments and hopefully we all keep this is mind as we go forward this year.
 

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) | Prion Diseases | CDC

www.cdc.gov www.cdc.gov
www.sciencedaily.com

Breakthrough in chronic wasting disease research reveals distinct deer, elk prion strains

Researchers have developed a new gene-targeted approach to study chronic wasting disease in mice, allowing opportunities for research that has not previously existed.
www.sciencedaily.com

For people worried, many of your state universities will test for CWD on harvested animals or send samples off to be tested. Make contact with your local state wildlife biologist / state veterinary diagnostics lab prior to season and harvest to determine how they would want you to prep and send the sample.

 
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Here in Wisconsin we have sampling stations set up around the state with quite a few in the heavily infected areas. Basically it’s a dumpster next to a bin with a saw and some paperwork. Testing is free. It’s been two seasons since we’ve taken a deer on our land that wasn’t infected. None of the deer that we have had test positive showed any signs of infection from what we could tell.

To be fair the “60% infection rate” isn’t completely genuine. Last year in our area 60% of the deer that were tested came back positive for cwd. So I guess who really knows the saturation rate in the wild but it sounds like a pretty randomizes sample to me...

It’s my understanding that there is no known transmission to a human at this time. However last year in a lab setting raw tainted venison was fed to some kind of monkey and it then developed CWD. Like mad cow disease I’d guess that it’s just a matter of time but who knows. At this point I’d just hate to be patient 1. Or god forbid one of my kids, especially considering I have access to easy and free testing.
 
CWD is the cervid equivalent of Mad Cow Disease for cattle, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease for humans, and Scrapie for sheep. There are no treatments, vaccines, or cure for CWD, and it's 100% fatal to infected animals. It's especially bad in the upper Midwest (Wisconsin) for deer and out West for elk (Colorado). Once it's in your area, there is virtually no eliminating it (even by tilling the soil under and waiting a decade--it'll still be there). We've known about it since the 70's (at least), and we still don't have it close to figured out. The biggest breakthrough in the last several decades of intense research and study has been figuring out how to kill it on stainless steel surfaces, which is great, but there's still a long, long way to go before we beat this thing.
Simply put, it's the single biggest threat to deer and deer hunting as we know them, so I strongly suggest reading up on it and learning how you can assist in research, data collection, spread prevention, and community education. I don't mean to employ "scare tactics," but it honestly is really scary stuff for a deer hunter.
 
Most CWD prions are contained in the lymph system, spine, brain and ocular nerve (eyes). All stuff most of us don't consume. Take care not to cut into any of that stuff and don't break any bones... especially the spinal column. Take those precautions and you are as safe as can be when consuming wild, untested venison.
 
So it looks like testing is being done in Ontario now but only in the far east (Ottawa region has 7 testing locations) and the north west (Thunder Bay has 3). I hunt in south central Ontario where to this point the only case I can find was at the Toronto zoo.

From the maps I'm seeing showing infection rates in Wisconsin and Michigan and now being flanked on either side of Ontario its probably only a matter of time before it starts spreading to areas around me.

I'm going to contact the ministry of natural resources and see if I would be able to send out test samples of deer from the areas I hunt, or if they will only accept testing from areas deemed high risk.

As a side note it seems like Ottawa tested positive on a single deer farm and not from a wild harvested deer. Up till now all testing in Ontario has come back negative.

Still scary stuff and something we all need to pay more attention to.
 
neonomad said:
Dang it CWD is like a glacial speed train wreck, I can’t come to terms with it, the truth is too much of a bummer.
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Yeah, I don't know how it is going to play out for me long term. I'm hoping someone develops a rapid test that hunters can do in the field before processing a deer.

Sent from my SM-G975U using Tapatalk
 
I,ve shot 14 deer here in Ohio so far and have 10 more tags. All the heads go to the biologist for testing but it looks like it takes quite some time for results. If you desire to eat one, you have to process and freeze and wait for the results, possibly throwing it out anyway. I don't see how we could beat it even if we killed most of them.
 
Blacksmith said:
I,ve shot 14 deer here in Ohio so far and have 10 more tags. All the heads go to the biologist for testing but it looks like it takes quite some time for results. If you desire to eat one, you have to process and freeze and wait for the results, possibly throwing it out anyway. I don't see how we could beat it even if we killed most of them.
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At this point we cant. It will persist in the soil and plant tissue way beyond the removal of the deer. Even if you removed them all from an area and restocked, you still are going to have CWD as soon as the new ones start feeding in that area.
 
Blacksmith said:
I,ve shot 14 deer here in Ohio so far and have 10 more tags. All the heads go to the biologist for testing but it looks like it takes quite some time for results. If you desire to eat one, you have to process and freeze and wait for the results, possibly throwing it out anyway. I don't see how we could beat it even if we killed most of them.
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Are you over by that north / central Ohio Marion ground zero?
 
@floydfreak you might check out the MeatEater podcast. They have several episodes discussing CWD (in the US), and it's something they follow pretty agressively. I can't think of a particular episode to recommend but a brief perusal of their library will get you a few dozen hours of CWD-related content to listen to in the truck or while mowing the lawn, etc.
 
neonomad said:
Are you over by that north / central Ohio Marion ground zero?
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Yep. I'm N.W. of Marion. Shot number 15 tonight and the farmer called and said there's 25 there after I left. Kinda feel bad killing them but they are destroying his corn crop.
 
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