I killed a deer back during Christmas break and took the head to a processor in northern Lamar Co listed as a collection site for CWD testing. I was told by the processor that "we don't participate in the testing anymore". He said he was not aware that his operation was still listed as a drop off site for deer heads to be tested, on the DCNR website. He said processors would suffer the closure of their business if word ever got out that an infected deer had been processed at their facility and he was not in favor of making the test results known to the public.
He told me if I'd fill out a tag and leave it with him that the guy in the county who still does participate in collecting heads would be buy every Friday to pick up heads for taxidermy. I left the head but I doubt seriously he did anything other than dispose of it. If I don't hear from the area biologist about test results in a week or two, I'll know for certain.
I just can't believe that anyone would rather not know of a diseased deer heard in their area, and take their chances hoping nothing bad ever happened to them.

I don't doubt your info. I probably need to look into the issue more. But I still wonder if Alabama tested 100k deer over the next 3 years if they wouldn't find .0005 positive rate. Which is what I meant in the underlying in the population. Just by my (not too detailed) observations it doesn't seem to be a natural dispersal cause of several newly infected areas.

Informative article, but not the one I referred to.8

Here is something interesting to watch on CWD https://youtu.be/qNcru0XITcM

I hunted in Nebraska this year and the guys I hunted with had killed a mule deer. After hanging in the cooler for 2 days and not getting stiff like all the other bucks, they took it to the biologist and had it tested. It was confirmed to have CWD. I'd never heard of them not setting up rigor mortis until then. Idk much about CWD, does all the cases do this?

never heard of that and I damn sure wouldn't eat it.

talk about an agenda!!!! Absolutely full of half truths and damn lies driven by a self serving agenda by a bunch of deer breeders.

"Wyoming doesn't have any CWD positive tests in any high fence facility"(high fence breeders aren't at fault for CED there)....while that may be true CWD infected deer were shipped from Ft Collins in the late 60S to areas of Wyoming, and southern Wyoming is just north of the release area of infected deer by Ft Collins in the 60s. Infected deer were there before any high fences.....

If you tested 100k deer, one may very well test positive for a prion disease. Prion diseases per se are probably natural to all mammals. In humans, roughly 1 in a million people will develop spontaneous CJD which is caused by just rogue prion in the body that starts replicating itself. It’s not supposed to happen but think along the lines of cancers - eventually with so many healthy cells/ prions you are going to get a rogue one.


CWD is a very specific type of prion disease. At some point in time, CWD arose from one of these “1 in a million” cases.....but unlike any prion disease we know of , THIS ONE, the one we call CWD, is highly HIGHLY communicable. It has even changed into district strains like a virus does.


So your research was half right- prion diseases themselves are natural to mammAls, including deer, but CWD is an entirely new prion disease, one that is rapidly expanding in geographic range and density. It’s a whole new nightmare.

CWD didn't come arise from a "1 in a million" rogue prion....

do yer research, digh real deep...it came from the research pens at the State of Colorados Foothills Wildlife Research Facility at Ft Collins in mid 60s after researchers put healthy mule deer in pens that had held scrappy infected sheep.

They didn't. They were suspicious of it. DNR called him a few days after taking the sample and confirmed what they thought. He showed me the video of it. It was still limp as a noodle 2 days after.

You pick me apart every time I oversimplify to make a point Fred. I didn’t actually say it started with deer though....

I agree, the research facility is almost certainly where a sheep-borne prion disease jumped species to whitetails. Prion diseases have shown the ability to move somewhat fluidly between different mammal species. At some point in that mammal chain there was a prion mutation, that “one in a million” that became highly contagious. It either started with sheep or passed through sheep and then onto whitetails. Though technically you could of had that “one on a billion” arise at the exact same time deer were housed at Fort Collins with sheep carrying scrapies , that is extremely unlikely.

It was first detected there. That’s all anyone really knows...

Swampdrummin, didn't mean to pick at ya

I've been studying CWD since 1980, have read ALL the early literature before it was whitewashed or deleted. And most of the literature since then also. There has been a LOT of whitewashing and downright lying from a bunch of folks about the role Ft Collins played in the start of CWD. Hell, I read a paper from a fella now at Ft Collins that said there were never any scrappie infected sheep at Ft Collins in the 60s. You know, the old democrat tell a lie enough and it becomes fact.

ONE of the grad students at Ft Collins was a woman named Beth Williams, who later earned he PhD and was the person who discovered that the unknown disease in the Mule Deer at the lab was a TSE disease like Mad Cow and , lo and behold, scrappie in sheep. Beth was later killed in an auto wreck which is unfortunate for the loss of someone with her knowledge of CWD. Beth said in one of her early papers that she feared that they, the researchers in the mule deer study, had set the stage for the birth of CWD in deer. She and her study team put healthy mule deer does in a pen that had held scrappie infected sheep, and the deer later showed signs of an unknown disease( later named CWD) . Ft Collins shipped deer to a handful of other states and two Canadian Provinces in the late 60s. They released the original mule deer does after they gave birth to fawns and weaned them...they released those deer just north of Ft Collins. Look at a up to date CWD map and see the concentration of CWD in THAT area. In the 90s one could back trace every known incidence of CWD directly or indirectly back to deer from those research pens. Pretty damning evidence.

NOBODY in the game and fish or biology business wants to admit that the scientific community at Ft Collins is responsible for CWD....

It's coming, don't think really matters in my opinion who to blame or how it gets here, never stop it from coming with open borders. I love deer meat ,going to miss it. I believe any money or energy spent on anything other than the ability for hunters to have their harvest tested quickly, and convienantly is money and energy thrown up a bulls ass

Since CWD's discovery in 1967 there has never been a case of a human being infected from a deer either by handling or consuming. Based on statistics, thousands of CWD positive deer have been handled and eaten since then. I hunt in the CWD counties in TN. We process our own, debone and freeze the meat until we get the test results back. All 5 deer we killed were negative. If they were positive, I wouldn't have consumed the meat, but I'm not scared to death of it.

I wonder how many hunters have died since 1967 falling out of stands, wrecking while driving to hunt, being struck by lightning while hunting? CWD to humans is at this point one of the least dangers to deer hunters....

Then why all the fuss about it....It aint ever hurt nobody.....Right?

Based on what's occurred in WI and Michigan, it will decrease the number of older (trophy) bucks in a herd and decrease the herd numbers somewhat but it's certainly not nor should it be the end of deer hunting.

JMW, CWD has proven to be able to jump the so called "species barrier" way easier than Scrappie or Mad Cow. Mule Deer to Elk toWhitetail Deer to Moose to Reindeer....and beyond in the labs. And some of the human TSEs have 40+ year incubation periods. So yer sure it won't jump to humans???????

So, in the old testament god punishes the greedy, those putting other gods in front of him, and those that worship false idols. Those antlers have sure become worshiped and the Lord only knows how many sabbaths have been unobserved during the rut. Not to mention how greedy hunters can be with land access. It all adds up. Cervids may be the tool of our own destruction. We should just all repent and pray for a long incubation period.

Easy for me to say because the rut has been over for 2 months where I hunt.