Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting CWD - I didn't know

My Uncle and I were shed hunting recently and he found a buck carcass. Curious about what may have caused the death of the buck, I called the local DNR wildlife biologist to see if the dried up contents inside of the skull can be tested for CWD.

He said no, the brain stem and lymph nodes need to be fresh no longer than about a week or if the material was frozen within the week window.

1001 ways to die for a deer, could have been anything.

maybe someone poached it, maybe it spent too much time chasin does and wasn't prepared for the winter. who knows.

you think that window for CWD is bad, you should see it for EHD.

We had some cases of that EHD here in Wisconsin in the fall of 2012, which is unusual.

I guess I watch too much TV where they are solving crimes with DNA and other lab tests. Thought they could just put a piece of tissue under a microscope or drop it in a petri dish. Positive or negative...

not much funding out there for forensic wildlife testing labs, with a very few exceptions for specific research.

state game offices get tons of calls from people who find a dead or sick animal.
when dozens show up in a short period of time, in the same area, then they start testing.

lets say the deer could be tested, and it did in fact have CWD. in reality all it would do is satisfy your curiosity. wisconsin already has MANY cases of CWD, so nothing new to learn there.

What? Just satisfy my curiosity? Going forward I would submit every deer killed on the place to the DNR for testing. The county I am in borders the CWD hotspot county to the east and I want to know and I am sure the DNR would what to know if that hotpot is expanding.

I apologize. you're discovery could be huge, pity they couldn't test the dead deer you found.

If you are bordering, then I think you should submit, regardless if the dead one could be tested or not.

We've had to give avian samples for years now... and finally found a case due to the diligence of continued sampling IIRC.

I agree, probably should start submitting deer for analysis. Since they began testing deer in the southern counties back in 2000, I have been taking extra precaution when field dressing deer.

Even though my county borders the hot spot, the encouraging thing is that there is only 11 deer tested positive for CWD out of 4090 deer tested since 2000.

I understood that the prions that spread the disease can "live" in the ground for a long time. Why would there be no sign of them if you had brain/spine material to test? Or is this a simple test and not an analysis?

This is a good question that, perhaps, someone on the fire can answer.

this explains it a little bit. might answer a few more questions for you as well on why the DNR wasn't in a rush to test your animal.

http://www.nwhc.usgs.gov/disease_in.../free_ranging_wisconsin_deer_and_CWD.jsp

CWD is a nasty, nasty disease, and much is not known about it. The current problems in testing result from lack of sensitivity in those procedures, although researchers are gaining ground. Animal material tested must be viable in order to detect the disease, which means it cant be dead for very long. Progress is being made with blood tests for more immediate results, but it may still be a couple of years away.

Environmental contamination is not absolutely confirmed, but many things point to this being the case. It's thought that the prions bind to certain minerals in the soil, which enables the mutated proteins to maintain persistence in the environment, whereby they can be taken in by ungulates via plant material. It's speculated that most contamination spreading is laterally (from deer to deer), and is more prevalent in bucks (thought to be so due to rut activity). A lot of unknowns with this disease, that's for sure...