First two were killed on same 1000 acre hunt lease...November 2024 (in season - 2.5 year old buck) & February 2025 (by permit - 4.5 year old buck).

Third one (2.5 year old buck) was killed 5 miles southeast of original location. Info I've received was this one appeared sick and was dispatched by landowner. Figured it was EHD...but DNR had it checked for CWD and it was positive.

Location?

That sucks

1 in Berrien County....2 in Lanier County.

The latest is Lanier County.

How did it get all the way down there when the nearest is going to be the northwest corner of Alabama?

High fence operation?

That is the mystery.....

But the actual closes is a 4.5 year old I-10 road-killed doe in the Florida panhandle 40 miles for the SW corner of Georgia 4 years ago.

How does it make the jump over those distances without human movement? Are the prions mobile in movement soil being moved around on or in boots,vehicles or shipping?

Yes. They would be. Could also be someone shot a deer in that area and brought it back. Dumped the bones and other deer got infected.

Or it’s been there for a while and just got detected.

You heard it here first, but prions and CWD has been in the environment forever. This is my theory and I'm sorta in the middle of this.

Consider, if you start looking for something that you've never looked for you'll find it eventually....because its out there. CWD is not spreading across the country......CWD testing is spreading across the country.

It didn't make a jump...it was always there....just no deer were ever tested for it in that area.

It takes repeated exposure to the prions before a deer ingests enough for the lymph nodes to test positive in a lab.

It takes nearly an ounce of infected saliva to be ingested for the disease to be transmitted that way (ie, deer to deer contact.)

I could go on and on, there are a lot of unknowns...but there is a lot of misinformation out there too...even from DNR agencies. Georgia has had many decades to prepare for this by watching other state's responses. This is why you're seeing a different approach here in Georgia.

More to come.

Yup

I believe you are on to something. I also think that for much of our lifetimes, those of us old enough to remember, there really weren't a whole heck of alot of deer to test over most of the country. So if it were there no one would've ever known.

For example, the first positive deer found in Georgia was a 2.5 year old 8pt killed last November. Perfectly healthy looking deer. I know because Im the one that sampled the buck's lymph nodes working as a contractor for the state. That particular buck was one of less than 10 deer that had ever been sampled from that county to my knowledge. How do I know that? Because Im the one that sampled all of those deer in the past two years for the state. DNR established a quota to be sampled based on county size and distance from Florida line. There has since been many more as sampling in that area has increased as expected....and now two more have already been discovered.

EXACTLY!

Perfect observation and statement!

An eagle, raven, coyote, wolf etc. can eat on a carcass and travel a long way to take a crap. It's easy to always blame people if that is your agenda.

Simply not possible for a deer to graze over, around, or near a pile of infected scat and contract CWD. The amount of prions that the deer would have to ingest to gain a positive infection is unlikely in that scenario.

Some additional info: cat species have an enzyme in their gut that is destroying the prions as they are passed thru in the scat.

Interesting, I wasn't aware that prions could be destroyed like that. I was under the impression that they were pretty much a permanent part of the environment like an inert mineral.

Its been determined, so far that the cat's digestive enzyme neutralizes it.....and bleach has an effect on the prions too,, but not sure about complete neutralization.

What has been learned is that it takes repeated exposure to the prions in the environment to reach a positive and ultimately detrimental level in a deer. Grazing on vegetation a few times where an infected carcass was dumped won't do it. Feeding at a feeder a few times won't do it. More info is coming out slowly.

Unrelated, just adding...

I don't know anything, but for my own perspective, I keep thinking about this regarding humans, from New York State:

"There is currently no evidence that CWD can infect humans, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends no one knowingly consume a CWD-infected animal."

"There is no current evidence that CWD can infect humans, but precautions are advised when handling, processing, and eating big game meat from areas known to have CWD."


Source: https://dec.ny.gov/nature/animals-f.../animal-diseases/chronic-wasting-disease

What happens when anything over populates. 10 rich guys lease a million acres and no one is allowed to hunt it and they only shoot 1 or 2 bucks a year off it since they only hunt a few times a year. Herd gets all out of whack. Everyone sits waiting on the new state record instead of just shooting a deer for food like we use to. I can't even drive around here at night anymore for fear of the stupid things jumping around in the roads. Need half the herd killed off to get back to normal! I guess since so called 'hunters' that sit in tree's a few times a year playing on a phone won't do it disease will.

Swamp Wolf has it correct. DNR's getting lots of funding and jobs over CWD. Think Covid!

This^^^^ is what a lot of the country has evolved into...^^^^^

My cuz and I were just talking last night about this same thing. When we started hunting in the 80s (down here in southern Ga) there were few deer in most of the area. Seeing tracks on a dirt road or seeing an actual deer standing in field was cause for excitement. Seeing a deer in town or ran over on the highway never happened. When we hunted, we shot the first one we saw.....if we saw or killed one with antlers, we thought we had really accomplished something.

On into the early 90s, we began travelling to other parts of Georgia (public land) that we heard had lots of deer. We hunted middle Ga (Piedmont NWR - lots of bigger deer and bucks), Georgia's coastal islands (Sapelo, Ossabaw, Cumberland, and Harris Neck NWR - populations of 80 to 100 deer per sq mile)....we couldn't believe the numbers we were seeing. During all this time our local populations were steadily increasing. We began hearing about something called crop deer damage and farmers wanting to kill em.

In the early 2000s, our local deer were approaching 40 or more deer per sq mile in most areas and deer were being seen or ran over everywhere...even in places in the middle of towns. Killing a deer had became very easy of you spent any time in the stand. Selective antler harvest crept in as seeing a buck was also easy. Many folks here started passing small bucks and it gradually took ahold over a large area here. But, as passing bucks became common....not killing enough does increased too.

We have reached the point in deer management time (in this area) that now we have high populations. Deer are everywhere...every half acre block of cover has 1 or 2 deer in it right now. Hunters run cameras and hold out for the bigger bucks they pics of and pass many antlered buck. They see that they have a high doe population and know its needs to be managed, but getting some deer meat is too easy and they just dont want to shoot does as needed. Im as guilty as the rest. Crop damage is everywhere and permit shooting is not doing much on a broad scale. The cycle continues and the deer numbers are still increasing slightly towards a high level literally everywhere...no voids left.

Also, factor in that my age group (I'm 60 years old) is the largest deer hunter age group in Georgia. As we age out, less deer hunters are coming along. And those that are care little about deer management. They have not experienced a time without deer and have good numbers of deer doesn't really excite them as us old Coons. Getting deer meat has been easy for the younger crew. They surely care not about shooting a bunch of does.

Now...Mother Nature seems to be intervening. Everything in our world cycles....and during our lifetime we usually only see part of those cycles. It is sure different now that it used to be in the southern Georgia deer woods.

Ah yes! Factor in the money!

The Ft McPherson site now Tyler Perry Studios that I trap just had WS in to remove deer. They removed 40 off a 300 acre site. The property is inside the Atlanta perimeter.

Plus last time i half way looked id have to hire a lawyer now if i wanted to hunt a deer. More restriction's, less place's to hunt UNLESS YOUR RICH and it doesn't surprise number of hunters is going down every year! Least we won't starve during the next depression.

I have been tooting this horn for years.
We have been doing a terrible job at managing the deer herd.
Hunters look at me when I say there are too many deer, they say, how can you have too many deer?
Ignorant they be.

I can remember when I first started hunting deer in the early '70's. the harvest state wide was less than 100,000. It peaked around 2000 at around 600,000, in the last 2 decades its been around the 300,000-400,000 mark. 4-5x what it was back in the '70's.
In 1970 approx 500,000 licenses sold, 2024, just under 800,000.
So more hunters, more opportunities to shoot a deer, and more deer.
Yet there are too many deer.
DNR estimates approx 25 deer/sq mile.
Biologist say healthy herd size relative to habitat is around 6/sq mile.
You can't plant a White Oak seedling without the deer killing it.
A white Oak sapling is indeed a rare thing to behold around here.

With this density its just a matter of time till diseases run thru the herd. I'll not shed a tear when it happens, a serious thinning is long over due.