How hard is the testing procedure to determine if a deer is positive?
If not that difficult, why doesn’t someone develop a quick field test kit?
If this is possible, you could get instant test results and then “they” and you would know.
May not be a realistic test procedure that can be done that quick?
I’m bored at work tonight and was letting my mind drift.

That is all ...

It’s pretty difficult. I think someone in a lab has to look at them. All mammals haveprions but the prion diseases are just prions gone wrong. The instant tests would have to be able to chemically distinguish between a good protein and a bad protein. The bad ones don’t break down to enzymes like the regular prions at the end of their usueful life so you’d think there would be an avenue for testing there.

Also, the other difficulty is that because of the way prions replicate there have to be enough of them present to actually find them. It takes 3-6 months for the disease to replicate in deer to the point where current tests pick them up. I.e a deer with 1000 CWD prions may come back “not detected” while a deer with 100,000 CWD prions comes back positive.

I figured it couldn’t be a simple test or it would have already been marketed to make $$