CWD question...

Am I alone in thinking that the first thing the State should do in order to combat CWD in AL is to make baiting illegal again?
I'm no expert in CWD, but from what I have read about it, it is passed from close contact with an infected animal. Having deer
gathered up around corn feeders seems like a suicidal plan. Now don't get me wrong, outlawing baiting certainly won't
prevent CWD from spreading, but it seems to me that it would slow the progression. I also don't really think that it will ever happen,
because the State likes the "baiting privilege" $$$ too much.

What say U?

It doesn’t matter. A corn feeder is gonna be just as bad as a food plot or even a cluster of oak trees in a creek bottom.

Let nothing surprise you when it come to changes in our hunting laws in the coming year

I wonder if they’ll extend the season statewide with unlimited bag limits to try and remove all the deer. I can see him thinking that would be a good idea.

They could kill every deer on our place with a box of bullets and have a couple left over.

Just in from Washington, sleepy Joe says we are going to require all the deer in Alabama to get 2 shots and in 6 months a booster . If they don’t comply they will lose their jobs and their corn feeder privileges . Makes as much sense as going to kill every deer ! 🤔😡

No doubt deer will congregate around food sources other that corn feeders, however it seems to me that a group of oak trees or a food plot would be a more spread out area than a corn feeder. CWD is spread from the bodily fluids of infected deer (blood, saliva, feces, urine). I would think a deer would be more likely to come in contact with those bodily fluids in the small area around a feeder than they would in a more spread out area. Especially if you have a trough-style feeder. One infected deer slobbers on the trough while eating corn, then infects a bunch of others that feed there shortly afterward. Again, don't get me wrong, I am not under any illusion that it would prevent CWD from spreading, but I can't think of a logical reason that it wouldn't help slow the progression, and it would be something that would be fairly easy to do.

Outlawing the baiting rule would be dumb, but look for it and other stupidity coming from this.

That was one of the provisions of the baiting permit, that it could and probably would be revoked if CWD showed up. I do not know enough about how it spreads to say if it a good idea or not. From an uninformed standpoint it certainly makes since that it could be spread that way.

Now from a political standpoint, good luck with that, now that hunters have had a taste of the legal corn. And good luck enforcing it.

It stays on the soil for a long time. I don’t think it’s like a respiratory disease/cough where the disease dies shortly after leaving the body.

“ Scientists believe CWD proteins (prions) likely spread between animals through body fluids like feces, saliva, blood, or urine, either through direct contact or indirectly through environmental contamination of soil, food or water. Once introduced into an area or farm, the CWD protein is contagious within deer and elk populations and can spread quickly. Experts believe CWD prions can remain in the environment for a long time, so other animals can contract CWD from the environment even after an infected deer or elk has died.”

Does all states have CWD?
Are other states tested or testing?

If the feeder is a ? The live Tiffany deer feeder should be loaded with plenty of germs.

I did some research on CWD and putting that with what I heard from state biologist the prions only die at like 900 degrees for an hour. So barring an air blast from a nuclear bomb nothing can be done to kill the prions. Prions are the same thing that causes Mad Cow in cows and Jacob-Krutchfeld disease humans. I had a relative pass on it about 20 years ago in his 50s. He had been on expiremental anti viral drugs for 20 years to stay alive and the doctors speculated it triggered it. It started with a numbness in his hand and just kept getting worse until he was dead in six months. Brain turned to mush. The only thing I can compare it to is ALS (Lou Gerighs) but extremely accelerated.

Anyways, one thing I read speculates many humans are ticking time bombs with the prions already in them
The speculate many die of other natural causes before it turns into Jacob-Krutchfeld. Scarier than anything I have ever heard of.

I heard some high fence ranches tried scraping all top soil and nothing has removed the prions even once all the game is removed. I got no idea what answer is but that is what little I have learned about it

I think the truth is a lot of us are probably walking around with prions and if we are lucky we will never know
Same with the beef we eat. I think the key is being smart when processing and being careful to avoid brain matter and spinal fluid.

A prion is a protein that is misfolded. There are different proteins, so yes a prion causes the disease, but some are not active across species, and some they just don't know. CJD has not been demonstrated to be transmissible in humans. The theory is that is a spontaneous misfolding of a protein that may or may not have a heritable component. There has been speculation of CWD and it's relation to CJD, but there is no evidence that eating infected CWD meat causes anything. There have been studies that showed transmissibility to macaque monkey (very closely related to humans genotypically) when eating infected meat. So in theory, it's possible, just not able to confirm. Most people aren't going to willingly eat CWD infected meat for an experiment. I'm afraid only time will tell as to what we're up against in regards to its zoonotic potential.

Send one of those CWD deer to China and I guarantee it will become transmittable to humans and probably become airborne as well.