NW Colorado CWD “Cleanse”

El Gringo

El Gringo

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It will be interesting to watch over the next few years, if this major winter kill curbs CWD in the Northwest corner. If it doesn’t, then there’s no curbing it, IMO (Bro science major). Seems any animal that was in any way compromised, should be laying dead out in the sage, at this point.

Guesses? Opinions?
 
CWD is impossible to hedge in and keep from spreading in the wild. In domestic herds, you can kill them all and start over (typically at a new location).

Infected animals don't show symptoms initially. Hunters consistently kill animals that look fine, but test positive. I know of several deer from last year alone that came out of Colorado and tested positive. The hunters were told not to eat the meat and I believe they were reimbursed for processing costs. Not that the science supports CWD spreading to humans.

A hard winter might help in some ways by removing many of the infected animals that are obviously sick, but it won't give the herd a clean slate. It's here to stay.

What is worse, losing 30% of the herd to winter kill or 30% to CWD? It's similar to the argument about feeding wildlife so they don't starve compared to concentration animals in feedlots and increasing the risk of spreading disease. Trade-offs. No silver bullets. No perfect answers. Nature can be brutal. And if I know one thing, it is that science and politics rarely align. ?

(Master of Natural Resources (2017), Bachelors degree in Wildlife Science (2012))
 
Could a bigger proportion of CWD deer and elk succumb to a tough winter than non CWD deer? Sure. Survival of the fittest.

Will it help in any way to “eradicate” it in any area. Nope. Once it’s there, it there. You can’t kill your way out of it. You could kill 100% of infected animals and new cases would still happen. That’s a fact.

No one is saying it can be eradicated. The current strategies are an attempt to keep it from spreading.
 
I think once we all realize that CWD is an absolute nothing, we’ll laugh about all the hysteria. It doesn’t kill animals until they are 6+ years old (G&F in just about every state is making sure that never happens). Isn’t transmissible to humans (there have been tens of thousands if not 100’s of thousand of CWD positive deer eaten in this country and no one has ever gotten CJD from it. There are also genotypes in whitetails that the high fence producers have isolated that don’t carry it (almost certainly in mule deer just no farm market to study it) so it will with generations slowly go away. The worst thing we can do is try to knock the population out in areas of “outbreak” as we are just killing off the animals that could be carrying a resistant genetic composition. I’m not s conspiracy guy but I do believe it is 110% hysteria driven. In the early days I remember an article in outdoor life about the “end of deer hunting” and here we are 30 years into it and in the middle of the true “good old days” of whitetail hunting all across the Midwest. What a crock.
 
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The top left and the lower left, all deer appeared healthy
 
hntnfool said:
View attachment 110385
The top left and the lower left, all deer appeared healthy
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That’s exactly my point, there’s nothing wrong with those deer. They were eating, rutting, just fine. We get panfish in our area with some kind of little black spots on their skin, can’t remember what it’s called. Doesn’t affect them at all, doesn’t affect the meat. The equivalent parallel would be if the G&F started poisoning all the lakes to kill every fish in them to contain the “spread” of it. It does nothing. Just leave it and it’ll eventually sort itself out.

EDIT: had to look it up. Absolutely love the quote at the end about “no practical way to stop the spread”. That quote alone would be the perfect cure for billions of dollars and wasted hysteria on CWD.
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yotebuster17 said:
I think once we all realize that CWD is an absolute nothing, we’ll laugh about all the hysteria. It doesn’t kill animals until they are 6+ years old (G&F in just about every state is making sure that never happens). Isn’t transmissible to humans (there have been tens of thousands if not 100’s of thousand of CWD positive deer eaten in this country and no one has ever gotten CJD from it. There are also genotypes in whitetails that the high fence producers have isolated that don’t carry it (almost certainly in mule deer just no farm market to study it) so it will with generations slowly go away. The worst thing we can do is try to knock the population out in areas of “outbreak” as we are just killing off the animals that could be carrying a resistant genetic composition. I’m not s conspiracy guy but I do believe it is 110% hysteria driven. In the early days I remember an article in outdoor life about the “end of deer hunting” and here we are 30 years into it and in the middle of the true “good old days” of whitetail hunting all across the Midwest. What a crock.
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I agree with you.
 
I have heard of documented cases in WT that were symptomatic by 2 yrs old. It’s not all hysteria. It HASNT been here forever. In the US, it was created at CSU and spread from there. People that don’t believe that haven’t really looked at the facts with an unbiased view. It’s the deer farms that want you to believe it has been here forever and was the product of a simple mutation.

I don’t want it on my ranch in Texas. It’s def not here yet. Anything we can do, short of shooting all the deer, to limit its spread I am in favor of.

Biggest thing to stop spread: Quite hauling deer around in a trailer!
 
Jist of it is they were conducting experiments on sheep with scrapie, another prion based “Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy”. They did stressors such as starvation on the sheep to see how it would affect the disease. Then they noticed some mule deer housed with the sheep began showing similar symptoms. Something they did allowed it to mutate into CWD

If you do a search for know cases going back to the 60s, you can pretty much trace it back to CSU. It made jumps due to trailering deer and elk from that general vicinity.
 

Expanding Distribution of Chronic Wasting Disease | U.S. Geological Survey

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) has been detected in 30 US states and four Canadian provinces in free-ranging cervids and/or commercial captive cervid facilities. CWD has been detected in free-ranging cervids in 29 states and three provinces and in captive cervid facilities in 18 states and three...
www.usgs.gov www.usgs.gov

Notice the area that says “prior to 2000”
 
txhunter58 you are spot on, it was developed at CSU they injected it into deer they had captured and those deer or at least one escaped into the wild and presto there is the problem. I agree if they are as sick as they want you to believe , then the winter should have got em all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
That is a plausible explanation for the origin of CWD. I do however also think it is plausible that CWD could have always been here.
Before I am willing to jump all in on the lab leak origin I have a few questions.
Why does CWD not effect bighorns? If CWD originated in old world sheep, logically you would think bighorns would be hit the hardest as they are more closely related to old world sheep than deer. Could be a logical and scientific expiation, I just have not heard it.
Can old world sheep be infected with CWD. Logically if CWD can go from sheep to deer, it should go from deer to sheep. Maybe it does, I really don't know. I do know there is nothing about this in any of the agricultural publications. Maybe I missed it. If an elk or bison with brucellosis gets even close to a domestic cow, the sky is falling, CWD infected deer mingling with domestic sheep, crickets.
Lastly, and it is sad that this even has to be considered, but in light of recent developments involving infectious diseases it does. If it is proven that CWD is naturally occurring and not from the lab at CSU, CWD funding money dries up to a trickle over night. Lots of people have a lot riding on the lab leak being the source. I can just about guarantee some will lie to keep the money coming.
Again I don't know, but I am not all in on the lab leak or that CWD is natural.
 
As txhunter58 mentioned you could kill every deer and CWD prions will still be in the soil for years and years. Even though a bunch of CWD positive deer may have died this winter CWD will still be picked up by healthy deer from the prions in the soil.

There has never been an epidemic die-off of deer anywhere across the US since the 1980's when it was first discovered in Colorado. If the prions in the soil continue to build to higher levels each year,, why are there still healthy deer? The longer this CWD deal drags on the more I believe there are resistant deer with resistant alleles to CWD.
 
Couple of reasons your sheep analogy is not science based. Here are a couple of examples

Canine Influenza: originally mutated from horse influenza. No evidence it can go from dogs back to horses

Canine Parvovirus: most likely originated from a mutation of the feline panleucopenia virus. The disease absolutely did not exist prior to around 1978. It hasn’t crossed back into cats.

As far as the theory: “CWD has been here all along”. That is a myth put out by deer breeders. Texas has tested thousands of deer not from endemic areas and has not come up with any positives that can’t be traced back to natural migration from New Mexico or those cases in captive deer farms. It doesn’t exist in Texas otherwise.

FYI: I am a veterinarian. Have deer clients and do testing for CWD.
 
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jims said:
As txhunter58 mentioned you could kill every deer and CWD prions will still be in the soil for years and years. Even though a bunch of CWD positive deer may have died this winter CWD will still be picked up by healthy deer from the prions in the soil.

There has never been an epidemic die-off of deer anywhere across the US since the 1980's when it was first discovered in Colorado. If the prions in the soil continue to build to higher levels each year,, why are there still healthy deer? The longer this CWD deal drags on the more I believe there are resistant deer with resistant alleles to CWD.
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Survival of the fittest, and development of resistance is the only hope I see. Nature is very resilient. Hope it can overcome this. That is why any massive kill off is ridiculous. Let nature sort it out. We may be killing off the resistant deer! This war that Colorado has on mature bucks is absolutely ridiculous.
 
I left my house at 3am on Tuesday as I had to drive to Provo Utah. I took US 40 from Steamboat to Vernal. I was back in Vernal around 5pm and drove back to Steamboat. During this drive I seen 1 live cow elk in Hayden, about 30 antelope between Craig and Elk Springs and ZERO deer. There is probably 500+ dead elk/antelope/deer from Hayden to Dinosaur laying on the side of the road or stuck in the fence.

In a normal year between 3am-6am on the 1st part of the drive you would dodging deer/elk and see hundreds on the return trip.

The deer/elk/antelope loss is fair worse than most think. I live North of Steamboat and have beautiful green pastures right now and have not seen 1 big game animal this year so far - NOT ONE. These animals should already be all over my area and property by now. If the animals don't show in the next week or two, I doubt they exist anymore.

The dead animals are even worse from Craig to Rifle.

I am just venting right now - but it so ugly right this is going to take years to recover with or without CWD.
 
txhunter58 said:
Survival of the fittest, and development of resistance is the only hope I see. Nature is very resilient. Hope it can overcome this. That is why any massive kill off is ridiculous. Let nature sort it out. We may be killing off the resistant deer! This war that Colorado has on mature bucks is absolutely ridiculous.
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Wyoming wants to do the same...
 
I've lived in the hotbed of CWD since it was "discovered." The person who first noted CWD told me personally that it was indeed a mutation of the scrapie research at CSU. But there'll never be a public admission of that due to liability concerns.

The deer in our area are developing genetic resistance to CWD (after about 40 years of exposure). We try to kill mature deer on our hunts. The two deer killed in 2021 were both 7.5 years old and neither had CWD. The two old bucks we killed last year were both of that same age class and tested negative for CWD. But G&F somehow lost their teeth so we don't have the actual ages. The Wyo G&F have lost teeth from our deer for the last two years. Matsons from now on.

I contend those older age class bucks that do not have the disease are resistant. We need them to live to an old age so they can pass on their genetic resistance.

So what ifs G&F doing? They are going to follow the idiotic Colorado model and have November seasons in the Laramie Range in SE Wyo in an effort to kill all of the older age class bucks. With the objective, as identified by G&F to reduce CWD in the herd.

That is absolutely the most stupid move in game management I have seen in my life. Dumb, dumb, dumb. We need to all try to fight this as it is proposed for the 2024 seasons.

There is good research on the matter that contradicts the G&F proposal, but they never present the unbiased information. G&F only shares the slanted Colorado work that they claim shows the benefits of killing all bucks over the age of 3. Every single person I have talked with outside fo G&F agencies, from hunters to landowners to outfitters says the Colorado strategy has been a dismal failure. That's from Alberta to Wisconsin and all over Colorado, plus Iowa and others.

But all of the biologists at WY G&F in SE Wyoming have drunk the Kool-Aid and they are charging forward with the November seasons. Ugh........

I did build a Power Point about CWD and research/issues associated with it. I'd share it if anyone is interested in learning about a viewpoint that's different than the Wyo G&F mantra of "kill all the mature bucks."
 
I should also add there's a good test that can be done to determined genetic resistance for CWD. It is used extensively on game farms. It can even be used on live deer. There was a good study on it completed on the deer in Nebraska. It even had some data from Wyoming deer. G&F is net gunning and putting collars on hundreds of deer in Wyoming each year, and much of the associated research is about CWD. But they steadfastly refuse to test for the genetic resistance. Amazing.

I pleaded with them to test the deer in the telemetry study in the Laramie Range they collared this year. The answer was "We don't have the funds." It would be so simple to add that to the study. I asked again at last month's meeting. The new answer as to why it can't be done it is too complicated and a graduate student is required. And they don't have a graduate student.

Heck, I can take that data and easily look it over and compile statistical validity if needed. But honestly, you won't need an advanced degree to see if there's genetic resistance. Anybody will be able to look at the data and see what's there.

This saga goes on and on. But G&F always "circles their wagons" and I have never seen them seriously take any public comments to heart. They only listen to their own employees or other Game and Fish folks, primarily from Colorado.

We are mired in a sad state of management for mule deer in our area.
 

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