Follow the money trail guys. Do some research

CWD is real and will affect the deer herd but not decimate it.
Been living with CWD for years, have seen elk and deer die from it.
It is real.
The human form is variant Creutzfeldt Jakob disease and it is nasty to see in people.

Ive been "behind the curtain". Had access there for 27 years. I know what's back there. It aint what many of yall think. DNR agencies' wildlife management activities operate off money based mostly from hunting and fishing license sales. If that's greatly reduced/gone...so are the agencies. Think about that.

I sure hope that ya'll nay-sayers are right about CWD. That it's all just a hoax. That it's only about the money. That it'll never jump to humans.

If ya'll are correct...then we have no worries. If ya'll are wrong...your grandchildren might be only small game hunters or just fishermen.

This^^ is also mostly correct. But, the western US has a different population dynamic (elk and mule deer populations on huge mostly public land holdings) than the eastern US whitetail populations that are much higher in numbers and more complex to manage due to numerous landowners and limited access.

If that picture Swamp posted is an indication of CWD then it’s been around since I started deer hunting in 1978 because I see at least one deer like that every year.
And I stand by my statement if it takes 18-24 months to show symptoms, then we’ve All potentially eaten a deer with CWD. Any deer within the last 2 years could’ve had it and no one knows unless every deer shot/processed in the US was tested.
I’m also with the agreement if it’s been around since the 60’s then we shouldn’t have a deer left on this planet.

I think you’re mixing up a hoax with something that the risk has been vastly over calculated. It is a real disease, you don’t see mass die offs because it takes 4-5 years to finally kill the host of the prion. EHD kills fast and causes animals to gravitate to water before death so the carcasses are more concentrated where CWD they’d be more scattered.

The real question is if all these attempts at controlling are a waste of time. They believe CWD originated in Wyoming well before people were there. Certainly it hasn’t wiped the animals nor jumped ship to humans. So what are we afraid of happening? Running its course and we still keep deer hunting since it won’t kill off the entire herd? Sit there and continue the same tactics of control that haven’t worked?

CWD is much like climate change, vastly overstated. Climate change is happening, it’s been happening for eons, just not anywhere close to the speed that people want you to believe. The climate change cheerleaders want to make it the new apocalypse, that is happening rapidly. Name one thing that happened that Al Gore predicted in his documentary from 2 decades ago. New York City and Florida were supposed to be under water by 2016….. Cwd is supposed to decimate the world by when ?

CWD is just another topic for people to argue about.

There is some knowledge of genetic "resistance" or maybe genetic "susceptibility." But, there is not a way to know which deer those are if they are showing no physical signs

Some very knowledgeable deer researchers are saying the only option is to let it run its course. I tend to agree as there has never been a wildlife disease that humans stopped/cured/controlled.

What we are witnessing (in 36 US states & in Canada that have positives as of today) are our wildlife agencies scrambling/guessing/trying whatever to control this. Most dont even know how widespread it is yet in their state/province. Hence the continued testing....especially east of the Mississippi River.

I see a few cases around my place and have for a few years. Just have seen some cases in the last few weeks in a young doe and yearling. It is real, however our deer herd is still increasing every year.

Most likely due to reduced hunter pressure and fewer hunters overall. Some of these diseases are most likely natures way of culling the population on purpose or introduced disease.

CWD has likely been here for decades....or longer. Yes...we've probably all eaten a positive deer. Many deer in our lifetime could've had it and we've ate them. We've all seen deer like the one pictured above from Berrien County, Ga.

A lot of factors come into play here.

1) how long has it been here? Since Georgia restocked in the 50s & 60s? Has it always been in the environment?
2) takes repeated exposure for deer to contract it so how about humans? The meat has less prions, but..?
3) some deer show symptoms sooner than others....maybe others have not had enough exposure yet? Maybe a genetic resistance? Is that deer that has it but not showing symptoms spreading it longer...yep!
4) other ailments have similar physical symptoms to CWD. What's ailing that deer? Must test to know for sure.
5) CWD hasn't spread much in our lifetime.....testing for CWD has expanded greatly.
6) due to other mortality factors, in addition to hunting, prevalence may inadvertently have been kept low in any given area.
7) where prevalence is high...these are the areas where infected deer(showing symptoms) will more than likely be observed.
8) low prevalence areas = less likely to see a "CWD sick" deer.

This is a complex mess guys! You cant look at this with a simple mind, thinking of a simple fix or denying there is a problem. The problem might not be affecting us today, but think and look into the future. Your grandkids or great-grandkids gonna have quality deer hunting like we've had?

Shouldn't be in denial just because you aint seeing any problem with this today. There are yet a lot of unknowns and you're witnessing agencies scrambling with these unknowns.

If you're OK with what you see today....then so be it. It likely won't always be like this

WannaBe,
Have ya'll had those mature bucks and all those does tested this season?

Swamp, Oklahoma plans on releasing capture deer into wild herds to build immunity. The frame work for combating cwd has already been done with scrapies in sheep imo, let the ones without immunity die. Mass shooting removes deer that would have immunity prolonging the time it's going to take to over come this imo.
https://www.outdoorlife.com/conservation/oklahoma-cwd-genetic-improvement-law/

No a simple google search. I don’t use AI

Thank you !! Supports my opening post

Most of you are old enough to have lived through some of the world ending hoaxes. Remember acid rain? Eat the paint off your car. Kids could not play in rain. Cattle would be bald. EPA pulls few samples of high ph and world ends. Global warming. Cost tax payers hundreds of billions of dollars. How is that looking now

Ehd

CWD prions are in the soil. It's never going to stopped. Deal with the reality or quit hunting period. If you see a sickly deer shoot it but I wouldn't eat it. Maybe it has CWD maybe it doesn't. It may have an infection or an old wound of some sort. I wouldn't knowingly eat an infected deer but I'm assuming I may (probably) have eaten one with CWD unknowingly.

It's not going to stop me from eating venison. I also have no plans on getting a deer tested either. If it's obviously sick then maybe, however be prepared to have the DNR bugging the crap out of you if it is positive, yeah no thanks. I'm in the group that thinks it's a money grab more than anything else. CWD has given a lot of people well paying jobs and a lot of money for programs and yet here we are decades later with nothing to show for it.
Maybe they should get Fauci on the case he's pretty credible. In ways it does remind a lot of the Covid scamdemic.

I also remember the acid rain scare from the 80's boy that went far. What happened there? Also, shouldn't we have a hole big enough in the ozone layer to vaporize everything by now?

Question for Swamp.Is their a deer farm near where these sick deer started showing up ?

Ive done a little reading about this. I hope it works as this mess appears to be here to stay.

There is a pen with exotics within 10 miles that has been there since the 80s. There is a rumor of an un-permitted whitetail enclosure that was within 5 miles of the southernmost positives. Rumor is the past few hurricanes destroyed the fences.....

There that is.