college of AG said:
Does anyone know why some county risk is high with a 1 but other county risk is low with 10 or more deer?
I am not sure. It may involve how long or close the exposed animal's contact was with the deer that tested positive, or it may involve what kind of facility the animal was released at (another breeder, high fence/low fence, private property, etc.) and whether they were able to verify that it was still there and in good health or tested. I know that TPWD put alot of time and manpower into the "trace-out" process to track all of the deer that were exposed at the facilities involved in the latest rounds of positive tests. So I am sure they have some basis for it.
A big part of the problem with tracing out these deer is that once they are released, unless they are tagged in some way it becomes very difficult to track and/or recapture them if testing is needed. Big trophy hunters tend to shy away from spending alot of money shooting deer with ear tags I guess... I believe that one of the emergency measures TPWD may be considering is a requirement to visibly mark or tag any breeder deer released on a property so that they can be readily identified in the future.
One of the lines you will hear from breeders and others in the trophy industry in the coming days is "well this is just 'exposed' deer, show me the positive tests". Since most of the released deer cannot be easily identified or recaptured, we generally won't get testing data unless the exposure at a site is bad enough that they decide to cull the entire herd for testing. Otherwise, it may be years before the disease actually shows up in an animal that was exposed, and who knows how many other animals they will expose before then.
