Stupid deer question (so I'll ask it again...)

[Bogie]

So, if you're hunting in an area where Bambi has that chronic wasting disease...

(1) is it dangerous to humans? Or do people just not know yet?

(2) is there a way for folks to be able to tell if they've got a healthy Bambi or not?

[ReadyOnTheRight]

Here's what I know:

I got two deer in Northern Wisconsin last weekend. Far away from the evidence of the disease -- which showed up about 250-300 miles south near Madison, but the Wisconsin DNR is doing their best to learn more about the disease.

When I registered the deer, they asked if they could check for the disease. I said "sure" and they cut the heads off. They will post results in 4-6 weeks.

A few precautions:

1. Wear latex gloves when gutting the deer
2. Don't touch brain or spinal cord/tissue
3. To check for the disease yourself (if you could), you would have to dig into brain or spinal cord and expose yourself, so there probably won't be a self-test in the near future.
4. Fully cook the meat No rare, fresh tenderloin this year.

This is probably over-cautious, but not really that big of a deal.

I'd certainly appreciate any additional info from people who know more.

[priv8ter]

According to my latest issue of 'American Hunter', a good place for you to go would be:

www.cwd-info.org

To quote: It is a Clearinghouse of information on Chronic Wasting Disease.

Hoepfully, you can find what you need there.

[ReadyOnTheRight]

priv8ter -- good site. Thanks!

[Gewehr98]

They're definitely concerned about it. My mother is an administrator at Devil's Lake State Park, which is one of the locations deer are brought in to have their tags recorded and supplemental tags issued. Devil's Lake is in Sauk County. The goal, per the Wisconsin DNR, is to hunt the herd down to just 4 deer per acre in the affected CWD zones. How they came up with that number I don't know, because the only way to tell if a deer is infected with Chronic Wasting Disease (similar to Mad Cow Disease) is to biopsy the brain. So if they get the herd down to that magic 4 per acre number, who's to say none of those 4 remaining deer aren't infected?

There are more than a few private, state-licensed deer farms, where the venison is sold to restaurants, etc. Just a couple weeks ago, the DNR killed and biopsied a deer in a private farm. It came up positive for CWD, so that particular deer farm is quarantined, and the remaining deer will probably be destroyed. So much for that deer farmer's livelihood.

Current public health statements by the DNR advise that when you field-dress your deer, avoid handling or cutting into the brain, spinal column, spleen, and lymph glands. To do so would risk contamination of the edible portions of the deer with the CWD prions.

That has come under fire a few days ago from the health professionals, who have refuted that avoiding those deer parts may not actually remove the risk of human ingestion of the CWD prions.

Where it rubs deer hunters wrong is the moral objection to hunting and killing whitetail, then NOT eating what you have taken. And the state of Wisconsin is quite vocally advocating a systematic decimation of the whitetail deer herd, for the purpose of eradicating CWD. Hunters are told to shoot up to the new bag limit, but perhaps not prepare and eat their venison.

[Ben Swenson]

From the website priv8ter posted (www.cwd-info.org)

Although CWD is a contagious fatal disease among deer and elk, research suggests that humans, cattle and other domestic livestock are resistant to natural transmission. While the possibility of human infection remains a concern, it is important to note there have been no verified cases of humans contracting CWD.

And ...

There is currently no scientific evidence that CWD has or can spread to humans, either through contact with infected animals or by eating meat of infected animals. The Center of Disease Control has thoroughly investigated any connection between CWD and the human forms of TSEs and stated "the risk of infection with the CWD agent among hunters is extremely small, if it exists at all" and "it is extremely unlikely that CWD would be a food borne hazard."

However, public health officials advise caution and recommend that human exposure to the CWD infectious agent be avoided as they continue to evaluate any potential health risk. Hunters are encouraged not to consume meat from animals known to be infected with CWD. In addition, hunters should take certain precautions when field dressing and processing deer or elk taken in areas where CWD is found.

Concerns over CWD shouldn't stop you from enjoying this hunting season. State and provincial wildlife agencies are stepping up their surveillance for CWD, so be alert to their advisories and follow the recommended safety precautions.

The safety precautions can be found here:
http://www.cwd-info.org/index.php/fu...ns.precautions

[scotjute]

gewehr98,

Are you sure about the 4 deer per acre figure? Isn't it the other way around. Can't possibley see how 4 deer could live on one acre.

[rock_jock]

4 deer per acre

Yikes! In Texas, that would be 40,000,000 deer. We would indeed be hunting for survival with those numbers.

[MeekAndMild]

From what i have heard, not only does cooking not help but it is possible to get it from bone marrow as well.

[Nanaimo Barr]

thanks a lot guys.. I'm sitting here reading this and my wife is on her first deer hunt..

trying to find out if Idaho is an infected area. thanks for posting those links

NB

[pdmoderator]

4. Fully cook the meat No rare, fresh tenderloin this year.

If chronic wasting disease is a prion disease (like mad cow), cooking won't help.

- pdmoderator

[AndrewWalkowiak]

CWD is the big news in Wisconsin since it was just noticed here in the past year of course. Other states have been dealing with it longer.

But what really has me wondering is if it is a prion disease, how in the hell do the deer contract it?

Prions are mutated protiens that when they attach to normal protiens they start converting the normal protiens into more of the prion protien in a chain reaction. Since there's no DNA or RNA involved prions are even "less alive" than a virus, much less a complete cell such as a bacterium. Prions are scary, because they are single protien molocules, even the finest filters that catch viruses will still pass them, and cooking, and irradiaton, and sterilizing chemicals won't break them down unless the infected meat is turned into ash and inedible anyway.

Mad cow, and the human varient, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease are caused by cannibalisim where the protiens of brain and nervous tissue are "recycled" through several generations of the same speices and somehow mutate into the prion.

The cows in England were being fed protien enhanced feed that used cow offal left over from slaughter which included spines and brains. Cows ate the feed with cow protiens in it, those cows were slaughtered and put back into feed and so on...

The original case in humans was the cannibalistic funeral rites of certain primitive tribes where essentialy the same thing happened as the cows. A son eats his fathers brain, the fathers brain protiens are incorporated into the son's brain, then the grandson eats the son's brain some years later at his funeral and so on.

So how does this apply to deer? I'm no biologist, but AFAIK, I haven't heard of them eating one another lately... I'm wondering if it's a virus that simply hasn't been isolated yet, or some kind of common industrial pollutant that is "safe" but has begun to affect deer in this way.

[dZ]

the CWD Deer & Elk are suspected to be farm raised animals that were fed an enhanced protein deer chow

i wonder what happens to the 'yotes scavanging the carcases...

[WYO]

(1) is it dangerous to humans? Or do people just not know yet?
I don't think we know yet, but when you look at the death toll from mad cow disease in England, it's still a pretty low risk from a statistical standpoint.

(2) is there a way for folks to be able to tell if they've got a healthy Bambi or not?
Well, this year I made the decision based upon the quality of the rack, its general external condition, its mental alertness based on his actions, and the thick layer of fat. I figured it wasn't wasting away. We process our own deer, and bone out the meat. One of the tenderloins was consumed for breakfast within two hours of the kill.

[labgrade]

Probally a good enough bet, WYO, but seems that CWD takes a good 4 years to actually start to show up in the critters health-wise.

They could have it & just not start to show yet.

I duuno.

Seems from some telling points, that the whole deal may have started in a Ft Collins, CO deer research farm .....

Bone it, stay away from the brain, spinal column, lymph stuff, eyes, etc. Not a big organ-eater anyway ....

Cooking won't help.

Good enough thing though is if you get it, prolly won't know - and, get to read the same book over 'n over 'n over .....

[Gewehr98]

The DNR is saying that nose-to-nose contact by the deer spreads the CWD prions. This happens where people bait and feed the deer. The deer group together, feeding nose-to-nose. This happens to an even greater extent on the private deer farms.

[Don Gwinn]

Yeah, most affected areas have banned feeder piles and such.

I think the thing to remember is that CWD has been in the states for awhile now and there hasn't been a single known case of a hunter contracting it from a deer. Also, from what the DNR here in Illinois has said, there IS a self-test in development. That probably means it won't be available this year, but maybe next. And if your check-station folks have the option of testing your kill for free, what's the problem? Just be careful butchering and don't eat any until the tests come back.

I don't want to sound like I didn't think long and hard about this, but I'm going this year. I don't know if dad's coming along, though.

[Art Eatman]

The idea of "farms" for deer and elk has long bothered me. Cattle, sheep and goats have been held in close proximity for thousands of years. Deer and elk, no. It seems to me that such things as CWD are gone from the former animals through natural selection. Animals whose history is of being widely spread across a habitat would be more susceptible to new diseases when penned.

Dangfino,

Art

[AndrewWalkowiak]

Andrew, the transmission method has been supposedly identified.

The DNR is saying that nose-to-nose contact by the deer spreads the CWD prions. This happens where people bait and feed the deer. The deer group together, feeding nose-to-nose. This happens to an even greater extent on the private deer farms.

Ahh. Wondering how it was getting transmitted around was really racking my brain...

Although it still seems like a "low probability" method of transmission compared to ingestion of infected tissue. Unless it's a more transmissable prion. that would be bad news.

If we're lucky, it's a protien that's incompatible with humans and would be no different than a normal protien and be simply metabolized. But I don't know if that's possible or not.

I wonder if prions are some kind of population check that's naturally evolved into certain species? Perhaps they lay dormant, but start to spread only when conditions would normally be considered "overcrowding" for a given species. Farms would create an unnatrual crowding condition and the prions would start up. And cannibalisim would also indicate crowding, since it is usually a desperation measure to survive and might indicate famine or overcrowding as well, and the prions kick in, reducing the poplulation, but ensuring the survival of the species.

Just random thoughts on prions I've been having. Sorry to ramble.

[WYO]

labgrade, good points. The other issue is how long before a deer is infected will a test even show it anyway. Maybe there's information on this somewhere, but I don't recall seeing it.

The other thing that I wonder about is, if it could get from one herbivore species to another, who is to say it can't jump to squirrels, rabbits, grouse, domestic cattle, and any other creature that roams the same ground and eats the same forage as infected game. One other poster on another thread also discussed the carnivores who may munch down on brain/spinal cord tissue. Are we ultimately going to have to test everything?

This all kinda reminds me of the 1980's concerns about whether people can get AIDS from mosquito bites.

[ReadyOnTheRight]

The idea of "farms" for deer and elk has long bothered me.

I agree. One big reason I like deer hunting is that the deer live free and wild before they are harvested, and they certainly have a chance to avoid ever being harvested (especially if I'm clomping through the woods) -- unlike chickens, cows and pigs.

[rock_jock]

single protien molecules

I though that proteins were by definition supermolecules. Did you mean "single-molecule proteins"?

[M1911]

I think the thing to remember is that CWD has been in the states for awhile now and there hasn't been a single known case of a hunter contracting it from a deer.

There are cases in the US of Creutzfeldt-Jakob. I think it is safe to say that, in general, they don't know how these people got CJ. CWD is certainly closely related to CJ, and they certainly believe that people in the UK who got CJ got it by eating meat from affected cattle. Personally, I think they really just don't know what the level of risk is.

Regarding CJ, there are lot of unanswered questions. How many prions does someone need to ingest before getting infected? Are some people genetically more likely to get infected than others? How long after exposure before the symptons occur?

M1911