Hunting & Fishing Chronic Wasting Disease

Dead Eye Dick

Command Spec 4 (formally known as Wiillk)
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May 18, 2020
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North Louisiana
A doe was identified 6.5 miles from Louisiana’s north central border. It obviously is going to get into Louisiana before too many years, despite the efforts of the LDWF. For you fellows who live in states where this is affecting the herd, how is it affecting your hunting/harvesting.
 
Here in PA we get more doe tags to kill more deer but other than that it hasn’t changed much. There have been a few deer here and there that have gotten it but none directly in our area and I haven’t ever seen a deer displaying any symptoms nor have I found a dead deer with no external wounds.

I talked to the taxidermist and he stated he doesn’t bother to send anything to get checked after his customer sent one and got a non answer of “we tested it and it doesn’t show it but we also can’t confirm that it doesn’t have it” back from the PGC.

The biggest thing has been the deer farms as they are the ones that spread CWD in the first place. Without them it would still be contained out west.
 
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I live and hunt in the middle of the highest concentration of CWD in IL. I’m not concerned, and haven’t had a deer tested in many years now.

If you check out scientific studies on the transmission of prion diseases like CWD, it’s nearly impossible for the prions to cross over to humans through meat consumption.

Population in my area took a dive primarily due to the amount of deer IL DNR was sharpshooting over the last 15 years. Like seriously too much fucking sharpshooting. Well into my teens I saw herds of 20-30 deer at a time in farm fields. Population is only now rebounding. It’s still rare to see more than 5-6 deer together at one time.
 
Between drought and CWD it has completely decimated our deer herd in most of Wyoming.

Hunting deer this year was truly depressing, mature bucks were far and few between. You had to work really hard just to see any deer.

I have access to large ranches in prime habitat that in years past id see 200-300 deer a day to include 10+ mature bucks. This year on the same ground id see 4-5 deer and a fork horn if i was lucky.

I really do question the future of our deer herd.