“The only true wisdom in knowing is knowing you know nothing.” Socrates
“In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.” John Muir
The other day our bird dog showed up at the back door with an entire rear leg of a small deer.
It was about as rank as one can get. And there is no telling how long it had been separated from the rest of the deer. Judging from the stench, and the lack of meat, it had been around plenty long enough for the flies to notice.
The dog, the horse and I spent a good deal of a day looking for the rest of the deer to no avail.
It was during this time combing the bushes that I unfortunately allowed the old paranoia about pandemics to seep into the inner workings of the vivid fantasy life I sometimes refer to as the deeply bizarre inner voices. This sort of negative thinking normally happens when I get frustrated trying to locate things that I can’t seem to find.
Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) in deer, elk, moose and caribou tends to create some level of high anxiety, spinning me in a tumble down some negative, dark and mysterious rabbit hole. I’m currently having a real difficult time expunging the depressing thoughts of this particular pandemic. The more I read about it, I just can’t seem to put the dark thoughts pertaining to this terrible disease away when searching for the rotting remains of a three legged deer.
Unfortunately, all I really know about this disease is what I read in the media. Just to set the record straight, there is a very large portion of media output I just plain don’t trust any longer. To further iron out the record; there is a good deal of what some refer to as “quality academic level research” about mis-folded proteins, called prions in print. I struggle to comprehend this level of academic output. Related nightmares about prions that aren’t folded properly results in a tendency to confound me pretty quickly to the point of bewilderment. What I’m trying to say is, so much of the information that the academic and medical researchers share about prion related disease is way beyond this laymen’s comprehension and understanding.
With the admissions of ineptitude, and other failures related to poor academic understandings out of the way, even the old Ranger can surmise that we’ve got a pretty serious problem. A world wide problem in fact, with this particular, mysterious and potentially deadly disease we will refer to as CWD.
So, if you buy what’s being communicated to us regarding CWD, by both the media and world wide government experts, in my humble opinion, here are just a few terrifying facts from a rather lengthy list of truly alarming issues related to the decades old pandemic of deer and elk disease:
1. No one seems to know exactly how the disease originated.
2. Since jumping a research fence in the 1960s, CWD has spread throughout the US, Canada, Norway, Korea, Finland and Sweden.
3. The disease has taken decades for a Doctor to figure out what was happening to these deadly proteins. The Doctor ultimately was awarded the Noble prize for his research.
4. It’s possible that state agencies without strong animal disease surveillance systems have inadvertently allowed CWD to spread, or even be traced.
5. The disease is fatal and currently isn’t curable.
6. Currently there is no vaccine. If there was a vaccine, how would it be administered to free range animals?
7. The disease cannot be effectively killed. Heat, gamma radiation, and chemicals have basically been proven to be ineffective in eradication.
8. Incineration is ineffective at temperatures less than 1,832 degrees Fahrenheit. In addition there is no assurance that the air expelled from the incinerator with that power is safe enough to breathe.
9. No one seems to definitively know exactly how CWD is transmitted. Research seems to indicate that the disease is located in the dirt, but there seems to be nothing they can do about decontaminating the earth. Research indicates that there is no effective way to decontaminate soil.
10. There are other prion diseases that have been transmitted from animals to humans. Mad Cow Disease jumped to humans resulting in over 200 Creutzfeldt-Jakob deaths in the UK. Scrapie in sheep has been passed to humans and resulted in prion related deaths.
11. Unless home test kits have been overlooked, in my limited research, home test kits for your harvested deer are at best, questionable with the USDA . You must take your harvest to a sanctioned test site.
12. After your harvest is tested there seems to be no real assurance from authorities that the test is actually valid. A negative test result does not apparently positively guarantee that an individual animal is not infected with CWD. Research indicates that the risk of eating diseased meat seems to be at “a lower risk” after negative testing. What does a lower risk of infection really mean?
13. AND FINALLY, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); “To date, there have been no reported cases of CWD infection in humans. However, some animal studies suggest that CWD poses a risk to certain types of non-human primates, such as monkeys that eat infected CWD meat”…(This particular primate research makes me question; Is this animal study what Senator Rand Paul, or Dr. Anthony Fauci would label as,”GAIN OF FUNCTION TESTING?”)….”These studies raise concerns that there may indicate a risk to humans”… The CDC goes on with these helpful hints;…”Do not shoot, handle or eat meat from deer and elk that look sick, or are acting strangely, or are found dead.”
In addition to this information about the disease, the protein “horror” can lay in the ground for years before it is ever detected. How many “untested” or “potentially” infected animals do you think have returned to our town in the form of frozen meat? Or, head mounts ready for taxidermy in the last twenty some odd years while this disease has been spreading unchecked world wide?
When you turn your thoughts to farmers that raise deer and elk for profit; the whole disaster just seemingly multiplies exponentially. Farmers have apparently sold diseased animals all over the continent. This took place long before there was available testing or even any understanding of the disease.
Apparently there is a long history of profit in pen raised deer and elk. Do some quick research to determine how these farmers panic when they have to exterminate their diseased herd and then, try to decontaminate their land. If you need details about bankrupt, disease spreading farmers, you can go to Google and read those sad stories on your own. Remember that this disease was first identified in a research pen, and it apparently spread from that particular point in the 1960s.
How is this disease being researched? How are wildlife agencies managing this pandemic? Some might come to the ready conclusion that It’s not really being effectively managed at all. We’ve been in this CWD nightmare for decades now and it looks like there are little effective measures for spread prevention.
Like so many other big businesses that get mismanaged, maybe all we should consider is just following the money.
Where is the source of funding for deer and elk managers?
The answer in large part is license sales and taxes paid for through the purchase of hunting and fishing gear. What management strategy are we paying for as it relates to CWD management? From where I sit the future is basically fairly bleak.
Remember when just seeing a deer track was notable? Almost every track was a mystery. Just seeing the fact that a big deer with dew claws had been here created a little excitement. Remember when any eight point buck was ceremoniously strapped to the hood of a car and hunters wearing goofy hats drove a blood covered car up and down Main Street to brag about a very rare and traditional southern success?
Remember when small town newspapers, which have sadly passed away, put photos of dead deer and proud deer hunters on sports pages? Could one liken it to a wily hunter who had just scored a super bowl winning touchdown? There were no such thing as suburban deer herds back then. Car collisions with animals in those days were essentially limited to slow dogs, possums and an occasional loose cow.
CWD prevention? Managers prescribe that we “thin” the deer herds in areas that exhibit CWD. Kill the deer and that might slow the spread. Manager’s apparently even tried to incentivize killing additional deer. How you ask? Sell more licenses, increase limits and free CWD testing. Kill the large majority of the deer and it may slow down the spread? Does that really make sense to you? If the disease lives in the ground for years; how does eliminating deer effectively prevent a disease that survives in the soil?
Ask the agencies in Alberta who tried herd culling. Management agencies in that province seem to have come to the conclusion that free range herd reduction is not sustainable. So why have wildlife agencies continued this form of disease mismanagement in better than dozens of states? The answer seems to be wildlife managers don’t really any other recourse.
Look at multiple state agencies and other management techniques that are also apparently failing to stop the spread of the disease. In what little research I’ve managed to suffer through, it appears that no one management team seems to have a solution that even prevents this particular disease from spreading.
One glaring management technique that seems to be missing in the research of the disease is the absence of complete statistical data. For example;
1. How many North American farm raised deer and elk have been infected and destroyed in the last two decades?
2. How many infected animals have been sold and shipped from diseased herds? If a state has an area infected with CWD, how many wild animals are in that area and how is the culling ratio established if that count is inaccurate?
3. How many animals need to be culled and how do agencies determine that the spread has slowed?
4. How many animals are living in CWD infected areas of North America?
5. The list of these types of missing statistics just seem to go on forever.
6. Why are these statistics not being made available?
7. Are the statistics too difficult to obtain, or are the numbers too detrimental to the future of the hunting industry?
8. Is the apparent lack of data too disturbing that it potentially impacts agency management and hunting industry viability and profits?
9. Is this lack of data a transparency issue?
Or, is the lack of accurate data not being published regarding the severity and outcome of the disease really an attempt to prevent the loss of the next hunting generation? Once again, follow the money.
Are hunters disease enablers? Does the “supplemental feed and attractant,” or baiting industry need to be charged with the crime of actually making the disease spread faster?
I have friends that actually brag about the tons of corn, yes, I said tons of corn, that they pour in feeders to concentrate their deer herds so it makes their deer easier to hunt.
If this disease is passed from saliva, fluids, scavengers, predation and other impacts from attracting and feeding deer in concentrated locations, why haven’t deer and elk agency managers outlawed a practice that apparently spreads the disease?
Follow the money? Imagine the outcry when wildlife managers shutdown the big money “supplemental feed and attractant” industry. Just imagine the howl and outcry when wildlife managers shut down deer and elk farmers that sell “trophy level” animals to hunt clubs and outfitters with high fences, who in turn, pocket big profits from high dollar hunts off of hunters who pay for high scoring deer heads.
Imagine the deer and elk hunting industry, a billion dollar a year industry, that we all subsidize, going under because of a disease. Remember even the CDC has a stake in this. So far there is no real research that says eating infected meat will kill you. Is that due to the lack of research dollars or is there something else more important here?
Imagine the impact on the number of hunters and others that depend on this meat as a food source. What are the statistics related to people that consume wild and pen raised meat annually?
Imagine deer processors who are required to process deer and elk individually to ensure “potentially” diseased animals do not “potentially” infect other customer’s meat.
If you’ve ever taken a deer to a local meat processor you’ve seen coolers stacked with deer like cord wood. Just try asking your processor to keep your meat clean and free from other deer that haven’t been tested for CWD because you can’t get a CWD test in a timely manner.
1. Do we then assume that the management strategy of eliminating most of the deer in CWD impacted area is ineffective in eliminating the disease?
2. Are we to assume wildlife managers are unwilling or unable to pay for testing of every deer that is harvested to determine if there is a spread of the disease that we don’t really know about in our area?
3. If we assume there is no really effective way to stop the disease from spreading, where are we?
What does all of this mean? Less license sales, fewer deer hunters willing to take the risk of eating diseased meat? Less money for less research and less funds for agencies trying to manage diseased deer herds?
Does this disease, and the lack of a cure, spell the end of deer and elk hunting as we once knew it? Maybe the bigger question is how does this pandemic play out? Where does it take us?
As of this date, it seems fairly apparent that we’re not too awful far from some tragic and slow deer and elk as a quality food source death spiral!
Maybe Mother Nature didn’t intend for mankind to research deer and elk. Maybe Mother Nature didn’t intend for us to pen up and breed these particular animals, or to supplemental feed and attract them. Maybe this is just another unique way that Nature has devised to eliminate overcrowding. Maybe in our rush to successfully grow deer and elk the whole push to have more animals to hunt has gotten somewhat out of control. Maybe Mother Nature had to step in to save us from ourselves and those that profit from this particular passion.
A friend of mine, who I just happened to be with on the day he shot his first deer, called me not too long ago and asked what we were going to do when CWD shows up in our county. It was truly a sad question. I didn’t take long to think about it. I had been mulling this question over in the dark recesses of the “dark rabbit hole” of inner voices
for some time.
“Well, hell Charlie, you didn’t seem to care much about pulling the guts out of deer anyway. Why we’re going back to hunting squirrels just like we did when we were kids.”
I didn’t feel like telling him we couldn’t hunt ducks like we used to because they quit showing up. I didn’t feel like telling him we couldn’t hunt rabbits like we used to because the coyotes have essentially exterminated the majority them. I definitely did not have the heart to tell him that almost all of the quail we used to hunt have been so badly decimated to the point that they are mostly impossible to find around here locally.
Apparently the next generation of young hunters will learn to squirrel hunt like we did when there weren’t any deer around except when some dude strapped a buck to the hood of his 55 Belair and cruised Main like he was some kind of Prince.
This is a pretty negative, dark and deep hole I seem to have mentally stumbled into when I’ve spent the better part of the day looking for a rotting, three legged deer.
The good news is, if there is any, we can still hunt what we want, when we choose.
When asked by non-hunters, “Why do you hunt these beautiful animals?”
The best answer I can come up with is, “Because I still can.”