"Wasting" Meat

[Jtaylor]

The CWD thing is odd. If the state has designated disposal sites, how are the remains ultimately disposed of? It seems to me that leaving it where it lies is a better solution that transporting it

It's definitly a weird disease. Concentrations of deer carcasses at historical dump areas (bridges, etc.) or leaving them in the field could possibly transfer CWD prions via the grass the deer eat. Obviously there's no way to control where a deer dies in the wild but I think they're trying to slow potential concentrations by informing hunters and/or providing locations to dispose. I live in a CWD area and the suggested method of disposal is via garbage which then goes to the landfill with all the other creepy crawlies. Landfills are concentrarions of who knows what but in theory they have better runoff control via liners, etc.
Here's an interesting atricle on PubMed if you have the time: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4449294/

 

[Plebe]

I pretty much agree, but have an additional thought.

Increasingly species are forced into "islands" of habitat. I think it's possible to export biomass from a small parcel to its detriment. I don't know if we harvest enough deer to do this, but the principle is definitely sound. Grow crops on a parcel year after year, ship the harvest off site, don't amend the soil, and while on a global scale the equation doesn't shift, locally it very much does.

The CWD thing is odd. If the state has designated disposal sites, how are the remains ultimately disposed of? It seems to me that leaving it where it lies is a better solution that transporting it. Alabama DCNR seems to agree.

View attachment 76441

Prions

 

[Shed84]

I have another thought provoking circumstance when talking about waste. One area I hunt had a bad coyote/fox problem.If I shoot a deer in this area and don't track quickly I'd find an half eaten carcass at the end of the blood trail. The quickest was 45 min from the time my arrow left the bow to the time I found my deer with the rear eaten out. Let's say it was a good buck ,do u wait and not push the deer and know u will recover the rack and "waste" meat to the coyotes or do u take up the track quickly in hopes to recover the meat and chance pushing the deer? Any deer left over night just figure no meat left.Ask yourself ,do the horns mean more to u then the meat?

 

[Nutterbuster]

It's definitly a weird disease. Concentrations of deer carcasses at historical dump areas (bridges, etc.) or leaving them in the field could possibly transfer CWD prions via the grass the deer eat. Obviously there's no way to control where a deer dies in the wild but I think they're trying to slow potential concentrations by informing hunters and/or providing locations to dispose. I live in a CWD area and the suggested method of disposal is via garbage which then goes to the landfill with all the other creepy crawlies. Landfills are concentrarions of who knows what but in theory they have better runoff control via liners, etc.
Here's an interesting atricle on PubMed if you have the time: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4449294/

I guess I don't know enough about landfill liners to know how well prions would be contained.

My thoughts are that there's a big difference between hauling it off and dumping it under a bridge vs leaving it where it fell. If that deer had cwd, I'm assuming that since it was traveling a well-used trail that area is already contaminated to some degree. The local deer can catch it and spread it, but the spread should in theory be slow since it has to be passed from deer to deer. It should take a while for it to travel, say, 20 miles to my house.

But if I take that carcass and dump it in the woods behind my house, it's there now, and it may not have been before I introduced it. In Alabama most landfills I've seen are in fairly unpopulated areas or at least on the edges of them, where deer are likely to be. It seems to me if we're hauling carcasses (particularly if we're dumping a bin of suspected infected like in an earlier image) we're running an elevated risk of introducing that disease to the area faster than it otherwise would have traveled.

Again, I have no idea what precautions are supposed to be in place at a landfill, or what actual compliance with that looks like. Completely ignorant.

I just think leaving a deer where it died is probably the slowest way something spreads, unless you could cremate the carcass or otherwise destroy the prions. I guess 2ft of burying may be enough to get below the topsoil and reduce what gets transferred to plant life, but then around here that may very well get you into the water table, and I don't know what that looks like.

 

[Plebe]

Sooo, how do we feel about cremation now that we woke?

 

[NMSbowhunter]

Yeah, because when a deer dies of CWD (or natural causes) in the woods the other deer bury it at least 2 feet deep, right? I agree with Nutterbuster. The remains are best left where the deer lived. If people transport carcasses all over and dump them, I'm sure the chance of spread is much faster.

Below is a doe I quartered and packed out the hindquarters, backstraps, front shoulders neck and tenderloins from. Picture was taken 6 days later.

 

[Plebe]

Yeah, because when a deer dies of CWD (or natural causes) in the woods the other deer bury it at least 2 feet deep, right? I agree with Nutterbuster. The remains are best left where the deer lived. If people transport carcasses all over and dump them, I'm sure the chance of spread is much faster.

Below is a doe I quartered and packed out the hindquarters, backstraps, front shoulders neck and tenderloins from. Picture was taken 6 days later.

Who cleans them bones? Not the deer.

 

[NMSbowhunter]

Not the deer, they are Vegans.

 

[Plebe]

Not the deer, they are Vegans.

Nor, flightless birds...maybe.

But the prions go to ground, and they sprout and deer eat them. And critters that can cover more ground than we can track do too.

It's still an in progress study, a bit scary. Hopefully it will end up less so in the end.

 

[NMSbowhunter]

Yeah, but my point is that many deer die every year having never come into contact with a human at all. They lay where they fall and quickly return to nature. That has been going on for eons and will probably be going on long after we humans have our hour in the sun and are long forgotten.

 

[sweats]

I vaguely recall that they did some testing and found that prions were still present even after incineration.

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[Hunter260]

I vaguely recall that they did some testing and found that prions were still present even after incineration.

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This is correct. A prion is immune to all disinfectant techniques. It is not destroyed by any amount of heat. It isn’t alive so you can’t kill it. A prion is basically a self replicating protein and they cause disease by converting other normal proteins into this dysfunctional prion

 

[NMSbowhunter]

I was just thinking about the thread where it was asked how far people travel to our respective hunting locations. Some people said their backyards and others had several hours drive. If people are carrying their deer home from these other places and disposing of the remains locally in any way short of biohazardous waste, that could be an issue. Would it not be better to leave the remains where the deer lived?

 

[Plebe]

I was just thinking about the thread where it was asked how far people travel to our respective hunting locations. Some people said their backyards and others had several hours drive. If people are carrying their deer home from these other places and disposing of the remains locally in any way short of biohazardous waste, that could be an issue. Would it not be better to leave the remains where the deer lived?

How far does the crow fly?

 

[Nutterbuster]

I vaguely recall that they did some testing and found that prions were still present even after incineration.

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does incineration kill prions - Google Search

www.google.com

Seems like the jury is kinda still out, but incineration at or above 1000 Celsius appears to do the trick.

It doesn't appear that there's a real solution. It's almost inspiring how well imperfect replication and selection for survival works. On the flip side, it's kinda terrifying.

 

[Plebe]

does incineration kill prions - Google Search

www.google.com

Seems like the jury is kinda still out, but incineration at or above 1000 Celsius appears to do the trick.

But then nobody gets to clean the ribs.

 

[NMSbowhunter]

Wherever they like. They have never heard of prions.

We have only recently had any CWD in our area. It is confined to a few areas and only a small number of deer were proven to have it. At the time it seemed like it was being hyped up to be the end all do all. CWD was all you heard about a few years ago, then this contagious thing came along that directly affected people and now I don't hear much about CWD.

EHD seems much more prevalent, but it doesn't get much ink. We had an unreported bout of EHD wipe out a lot of deer from that area where my old lease was. I talked to some game wardens, and they were aware of it, but they seemed to hint there was no money in EHD.

 

[Nutterbuster]

Wherever they like. They have never heard of prions.

We have only recently had any CWD in our area. It is confined to a few areas and only a small number of deer were proven to have it. At the time it seemed like it was being hyped up to be the end all do all. CWD was all you heard about a few years ago, then this contagious thing came along that directly affected people and now I don't hear much about CWD.

EHD seems much more prevalent, but it doesn't get much ink. We had an unreported bout of EHD wipe out a lot of deer from that area where my old lease was. I talked to some game wardens, and they were aware of it, but they seemed to hint there was no money in EHD.

EHD to my understanding is "just" a virus. Organisms can develop immunity and even pass that immunity on to their offspring. EHD is also tied to areas with midges (wet) and rainy/dry year cycles. It can hit a herd hard, but it rarely strikes twice in a row and deer develop immunity against subsequent attacks from that strain. Not much you can do to stop it, and no real point since it doesn't seem at all likely to threaten the species.

CWD is, again to my limited understanding, more concerning because of how well the prions survive and spread, and the fact that we're unsure if it's possible to develop immunity. You can kill every animal in a pasture with a prion disease, and a decade later reintroduce animals and have them all die from it all over again. We don't know a lot about it, but what we do know doesn't seem good. So you have fear of the unknown, magnified by the mad cow/crutzfield-jacobs disease species crossover

 

[NMSbowhunter]

EHD to my understanding is "just" a virus. Organisms can develop immunity and even pass that immunity on to their offspring. EHD is also tied to areas with midges (wet) and rainy/dry year cycles. It can hit a herd hard, but it rarely strikes twice in a row and deer develop immunity against subsequent attacks from that strain. Not much you can do to stop it, and no real point since it doesn't seem at all likely to threaten the species.

CWD is, again to my limited understanding, more concerning because of how well the prions survive and spread, and the fact that we're unsure if it's possible to develop immunity. You can kill every animal in a pasture with a prion disease, and a decade later reintroduce animals and have them all die from it all over again. We don't know a lot about it, but what we do know doesn't seem good. So you have fear of the unknown, magnified by the mad cow/crutzfield-jacobs disease species crossover

Yes, it is definitely not good. Until we can come up with something, if ever, that will stop it we will be living with it. Hopefully it never crosses over.

 

[Nutterbuster]

Yes, it is definitely not good. Until we can come up with something, if ever, that will stop it we will be living with it. Hopefully it never crosses over.

If we come up with something, it may be something like this:

Wiping out scrapie in goats, the genetic way

More consumers are developing a taste for goat cheese, milk, and meat as they become aware of the high protein and great taste of these products. While U.S. goat

www.thefencepost.com

The USDA has WAY more brainpower and money at its disposal than state conservation agencies though, what with being responsible for feeding the world and all. To my knowledge we haven't discovered any alleles that make deer resistant to CWD, and if we did it'd be tough to breed those into wild populations.

If I had a time machine, I'd go back to teenage dirt bag nutterbuster and make him get an undergrad in biology and go on to grad school to pursue microbiology or genetics. It gets "sexier" and more in-demand every year lately, and will probably continue to do so going forward.