Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting No More Rolling the Dice

While perusing the Colorado PWD big game proclamation this year I noticed that, in the unit in which I hunt elk, PWD requires that all animals harvested be tested for CWD. Guess that I will wait and see (a) if I get one this year, and (b) if so, whether it tests positive. Gonna be tough to discard an entire carcass.

If it tests positive, do they issue a new tag?

From the website:

What Happens if my Animal Tests Positive?

Hunters whose deer, elk or moose test positive for CWD are eligible for a license fee refund or an antlerless license.

If antlerless hunting isn't offered in that unit, CPW can designate a substitute unit.

If the hunting season has ended or there's not a reasonable amount of time left in the current season, CPW may issue an antlerless license for the next year's season in the same unit where the animal was killed.

Here is an update on the science that I posted on another site a little while ago:

Several years ago, research in mice with genetically altered blood/brain barriers that mimic those in humans suggested that the prions were not able to penetrate the human blood/brain barrier. However, a recent attempt to infect various primates did result in three out of five macaques contracting CWD after being fed venison from a CWD-infected white-tailed deer. However, the CWD prions were detected in the livers and the report did not comment on whether there was any effect observed on the brains of these animals. Macaques in which the prions were injected into their brains did contract CWD. Macaques who were subjected to CWD contaminated flesh rubbed on their bare skin, similar to what a hunter might experience when cleaning an infected animal, did not become infected.

http://www.jsonline....-cwd/430046001/

CWD has been pretty common in deer and elk populations for about 40 years now and, so far, there have been no confirmed cases in humans. However, each year the disease spreads into new populations of deer and elk and some currently infected populations are approaching saturation, so it's worth keeping an eye on it.

So far it hasn't been found in Idaho but has in surrounding states. That's not saying it's not here, it just hasn't been found.

At least Colorado takes a more direct approach to CWD. Wyoming, which is the epicenter of CWD in mule deer and elk, has more of a head-in-the-sand approach. The two sections in their regs dealing with CWD really downplays the whole issue unless the animal is obviously sick. Granted, elk and deer carrying CWD have probably been eaten by the thousands for years but things change and why take the chance? I cannot understand why testing is not mandatory in the SE part of the state.

That's the opposite of my experience. Wyoming had mandatory roadside checkpoints where all our animals were tested and we got the results online. We never saw anything or anyone in Colorado looking for CWD.

Nobody knows if CWD in wild ungulates has always existed or if its a "new" disease in the southern Rockies. As one oldtimer I know said "We used to call it winterkill". It's important to realize prions were not discovered until the early 60's, and it was a few more years until prions and TSE (transmissible spongiform encephalopathy), also known as CWD in wild ungulates, were associated with each other. CWD could have existed in environment before it was "discovered" by wildlife biologists.

The epicenter of CWD in deer is extreme southeastern Wyoming. Northeastern Colorado is a close second in infection rates. The proportion of deer infected in Northeastern Colorado has decreased--somewhat.

Pretty sure it was first recorded at a CSU research location in Ft Collins CO. A pen used for scrapie research on sheep was later used to hold mule deer and they became infected.

Going off memory here. Give it a Google....

That's interesting. Last year we were on our way home with 5 cows in the back in coolers and while at a mandatory stop in Wyoming not a single word was mentioned of CWD or testing. I had decided I was going to ask this year but no hunter stop for archery season. I've got another tag for rifle season so maybe I'll have the opportunity.

The confusing part is what do we bring? The whole head? Remove the retropharyngeal lymph nodes ourselves? What if there is no G&F stop? We can't be driving around with an elk head that has not been properly cleaned. It's just not clear what they want you to do.

It was first discovered at a the CSU/CPW research center in Fort Collins by Allen Anderson who was a post grad student at the time. I worked for Allen in the 80's when he was a CPW researcher. They don't know how the captive deer bought from a game farm in Wisconsin contracted CWD. I never heard anything about Scrapies and sheep.

The best evidence suggests the captive deer contracted CWD from wild deer on the other side of the fence.

I see the mandatory testing for deer but nothing for elk in the regulation.

of CWD test samples from some hunter- harvested bucks and does during the 2017 archery, muzzleloader and rife seasons, to better evaluate the prevalence of CWD in herds. Any notifed hunter that harvests a deer in the units specified will be required to present their deer for testing at a CPW office. There will be no charge for this mandatory sampling. Find the specific GMUs and hunts on pages 19–28 of this brochure.

Went back and read the fine print more carefully and you are correct! Mandatory testing is only for deer--testing for elk and moose are voluntary.

I apologize for the misinformation.

We've been getting our elk tested for quite a few years now. Thankfully, no positives.

My hunting pard shot a very nice healthy-looking buck last year in CO GMU 3/301 that came back positive for CWD. Kinda like HIV, appearances can be deceiving.

Unfortunately the disease is spreading. Sorry that your deer was infected.

This is my thought as well. ^^^^^ There are many things now considered carcinogenic simply because we now have the ability to detect carcinogens at a much lower level. eg: Coffee...

Coffee is not considered carcinogenic:



That was from another site that I could copy and paste from, here's the link to a press release from the IARC:

IARC coffee classification

In Colorado the national forest have deer, elk, domestic sheep, wild sheep, wild goats, domestic goats, cattle, horses, and lamas all running around on the range. Makes it hard to stop CWD from spreading.

CWD is endemic to the area of southern Wyoming that I have hunted some the last two years. Fish and game told me two years ago that about 10% of elk and 30% of muleys in that area carried CWD. I take the heads of the animals I kill in that area to F&G for testing, so far I'm 0 for 2. If I do get a CWD infected animal, I plan on tossing the meat as allowed by Wyoming game laws. That gets into the part that bothers me, I take my meat to a processor, and by the time CWD test results come back a few weeks later, the animal is processed, Frozen and in my freezer. Obviously even if most people are taking part in the free testing (doubtful), any infected animals will have already been run through the processing machines before they get results. I'm sure plenty of infected animals were processed on the machines that my uninfected animals were precessed on. The infecting agent, prions are just mis-folded proteins, they can't be killed as they aren't alive, and they are very difficult to destroy with cleaning chemicals and even heat. So while I watch out for CWD in my animals, I assume there is some cross contamination in the machines, I don't know if it is enough to matter or not?

On the other hand, there has never been a proven case of CWD transfer to humans, or cows, or mice modified to have a human version of the affected protein and millions of humans would have eaten infected cervids over the last 3 decades and perhaps before. On the other, other hand, there were some papers a few years back suggesting that CJD from mad cow exposure might take as much as 60 years to manifest symptoms in most people... Maybe a lot of us are infected and just don't know it yet...