As I said earlier in this thread - It is getting serious guys !

It is time that we (anyone who enjoys or who is associated with cervid hunting in ANY way ) have more focused and sober conversations about CWD.

This is NOT going to just "go away" or be contained.

I'm expecting this to be Native American- small pox level blood bath when all is said and done. Completely a hunch and admittedly I'm being a pessimist. Just what my gut says.

flashplayer said:

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I'm expecting this to be Native American- small pox level blood bath when all is said and done. Completely a hunch and admittedly I'm being a pessimist. Just what my gut says.

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I hope not. I like to think that our advances in medicine will help eradicate this virus. Even better if someone from A&M can develop a vaccine.

Forgive my lack of biology but I was always under the impression the prions that caused it were similar to that of rabies... that might be totally off base as well.

Yeah... a little scarier than I thought. Especially when I was under the impression that we had a treatment for Mad Cow, when we really don't.

Still going to be optimistic though. Not like it's going to hurt anything (being optimistic), as long as we take measures to limit the spread concurrently.

ttha_aggie_09 said:

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Still going to be optimistic though. Not like it's going to hurt anything, as long as we take measures to limit the spread concurrently.

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I dunno about that. A few years ago at Parkland hospital in Dallas there was a patient with suspected Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) that the Internists decided needed to go to the operating room. They were so scared about this prion getting loose in the hospital that they were seriously considering sacrificing all of the equipment that came in contact with his body fluids. I'm talking tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of dollars worth of stuff. The surgeons were scared shltless and were all jockeying to not be the ones that had to do the procedure. Residents were talking about faking illnesses and even quitting the program. They ultimately decided that he was too sick to take to surgery and so it didn't happen. But I can say that the only other time I saw anything close to that level of concern was when they thought there might be an Ebola epidemic after that one patient died over at Presbyterian. That was the only time I ever saw surgeons scared of anything.

I guess I should be more worried about it crossing over to humans then. If it's been documented since the 60s and no known infections have occurred, is it just a matter time? Or are we under the impression that we haven't had enough frequent interaction with it until recently to really know if it can or will effect humans?

Apologies for the elementary questions, I'm just curious to know more.

I saw several elk in Colo Sprgs near the AF Academy this past weekend. Looked healthy. Hope they do well.

agent-maroon said:

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ttha_aggie_09 said:

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Still going to be optimistic though. Not like it's going to hurt anything, as long as we take measures to limit the spread concurrently.

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I dunno about that. A few years ago at Parkland hospital in Dallas there was a patient with suspected Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) that the Internists decided needed to go to the operating room. They were so scared about this prion getting loose in the hospital that they were seriously considering sacrificing all of the equipment that came in contact with his body fluids. I'm talking tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of dollars worth of stuff. The surgeons were scared shltless and were all jockeying to not be the ones that had to do the procedure. Resident's were talking about faking illnesses and even quitting the program. They ultimately decided that he was too sick to take to surgery and so it didn't happen. But I can say that the only other time I saw anything close to that level of concern was when they thought their might be an Ebola epidemic after that one patient died over at Presbyterian. That was the only time I ever saw surgeons scared of anything.

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CJD is terrifying... Hopefully CWD doesn't jump to humans or we are all ****ed. Seeing as you pretty much have to destroy everything to denature prions (boiling strong acid, base, supercritical water)

That is why the Canadian study released about this time last year was so concerning. Before that, researchers were leery, but had never seen it jump out of cervids. Then all of a sudden you had Macaques contract the disease after being fed positively tested meat.

Even more fun is that it potentially has a really long incubation period.

In 2001, I had the pleasure of taking Dr. Jack Ward Thomas to the Corpus Christi Airport. He was headed to Denver to moderate an emergency CWD meeting. At that time he predicted that CWD would likely "drastically change hunting and wildlife management as we know it". That was 17 years ago. I think one of the worst things to happen was about 6-7 years ago that it started getting around that it really wasn't that big an issue. A lot of states started cutting research funds (why I have little respect for the governors of several Midwest states). Then all of a sudden, oh crap it's back to being an issue.

ursusguy said:

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http://www.trcp.org/2018/05/21/experts-respond-top-seven-gripes-see-chronic-wasting-disease-skeptics/

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Thanks for the read. Pretty good...and scary.

So what's the best combination of experts to help combat CWD?

It's certainly not just one of the following, right:

Federal Government (USFWS/DOI/etc)
Hunters
Biologists
State legislators/government

All the above. And let the scientists be scientists.

Set aside an hour and have fun with this one. I know there are several sentences that will make OB posters go into mental lockdown, but the background information is good.

http://mountainjournal.org/chronic-wasting-disease-hits-montana

Might have an hour to kill in the blind tomorrow morning. Will look into it. Thanks!

ttha_aggie_09 said:

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So what's the best combination of experts to help combat CWD?

It's certainly not just one of the following, right:

Federal Government (USFWS/DOI/etc)
Hunters
Biologists
State legislators/government

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I would say there are also subsets of the Hunter group and that the perspectives, expertise, and opinions very greatly between the subsets. I expect there to be differing opinions between some guy that lives in town and stuggles to find opportunities to teach his children about hunting, and some guy with lots of disposable income that has a $5000/year lease, and some guy who has inherited 200 acres of old ranch that isn't fenced that he loves to hunt, and some guy with several hundred high-fence acres that generates a couple hundred $k yearly in hunting and lodge fees. Not to mention powerful attorneys who lobby for some of these folks. They may have common ground but also have varying opinions.

Step one will be the science and research
The hard part will be Step 2, the business and political decisions. We all know hunting in Texas is big business, and some people won't like the technical answers to the problem. I can almost guarantee that.

Someone help me out...

How is it spread? Is simple exposure to another deer sufficient to spread the disease, is it congenital, etc?

How does high-fencing affect it? I'm ignorant of the situation, but it seems like it would help prevent it from spreading.

AgGrad99 said:

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Someone help me out...

How is it spread? Is simple exposure to another deer sufficient to spread the disease, is it congenital, etc?

How does high-fencing affect it? I'm ignorant of the situation, but it seems like it would help prevent it from spreading.

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Can be spread just by shedding of urine and feces, and the prions can stay for a long ass time. So if a deer happens to be feeding where an infected one pissed years before, then bam.

Gotcha. Thanks.

So how does high-fencing make the situation worse? Wouldnt isolating the infected deer help?

I don't think the high fencing itself has any impact on the spread of CWD if it is not already present. It's the breeding and selling of whitetail into these types of places that's the issue.

I suppose ther is an argument that if you fence in the deer they're at higher concentrations than outside and it's still possible to come into CWD, which would then be exacerbated by the number of animals... but if they were going to come into contact with CWD regardless, does it really matter?

so just for fun, if game fences were banned in texas

1)who pays to take all the current ones down and install a regular fence

2)who would travel the vast lands of texas and make sure they were down and enforce it

3)what happens to all the animals inside?? shoot them? let them out into the "wild" population??

4)what happens to the many thousands of head endangered species which have been conserved and increased #s due to high fence ranches??


CWD is like oak wilt in the sense that its in the wild, you can spend money and try to control it but in the end its going to do what its going to do and we can just take certain measures to reduce the chance of spread by humans (like regulating the breeders to make sure nothing with CWD is moved anywhere) --- at least thats how i see it

It is historically considered to be a density dependent disease. Hince the prevalence to breeder facilities (up north) and areas with winter yards.

Oak wilt doesn't present the very real possibility of crossing over to humans.