Misunderstood Truths about captive deer.

[charlieinthebush]

CWD is more of conspiracy than anything. Govt-state research facilities seem to be the origins. Their careless studies, infecting scrapie into animals, then turning them loose victimized our wild herd, our crops and also our captive herds. Deer farmers test the animals for the safety of the herd. It's funny how you people who don't test the wild herd. Point fingers at those who do. That's as hypocritical as can be. At least we try. Why are wild deer, elk and moose always wanting to get into our pens and preserves? How do you know the ones that were in there from the beginning, didnt infect them? The CWD monitored deer are the victims of the untested, uncontrolled, govt CWD infected wild herd. Has it ever occurred to anyone that when a herd has been monitored for 10+ years and been negative all that time, that the cause is from an outside source? How can you say a negative herd for 10+ years spread CWD? Lmao! Was the wild herd on the other side of the fence 10+ yrs CWD negative? Just because there was a positive on a farm in 2010 and they found a wild pos in 12 doesn't hold any facts. Actually if you were smart you would think the opposite, for the effect of the 10+ yr negative herd all the sudden having a positive and the wild untested herd is on the other side of the fence. Suggests that its highly likely that the UNTESTED herd is the source. Its ignorant to argue something that isnt tested to be proven! Therefore you cant rightly conclude the farm spread the disease. Deer farmers test our deer by the most accurate CWD test known which requires the brain stem of the deer. Any time there is a CWD positive case in a preserve or on a farm the herd is eradicated for testing. Deer farmers follow usda protocol. There are currently no usda approved live CWD tests for deer farmers. All of our deer over a year old are tested,if there is a fatality. Deer farmers have what's called "cwd status". This means every deer that has commingled with our deer from other farms and the brothers, sisters, parents, grand sires and grand dams that have ever died. Were tested negative for CWD. However, numerous times. Government and state agencies have either not tested for CWD or used a live rectal test that is only 60% accurate. Is our wildlife and environment worth risking anything that is 60%? The live rectal live test is NOT usda approved. Everyone is so quick to blame deer farmers for the spread of disease. When we are the victims. Not to mention they are finding CWD prions in alfalfa stems and corn. Jeopardizing our foreign grain trade market. Why not buy cwd monitored elk from farmers for their reintroduction programs? It would be a lot cheaper, without the risk. This is a perfect example of how disease is spread incase you wanted to know. Oh! I forgot! The elk are going to Wisconsin where the Govt-state owned Charmany Farms Facility introduced cwd into the wild from infecting deer within the facility with CWD, then left their gates open!!!!
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
ELK CAPTURE IN KY COMPLETE
The 2015 capture phase of Wisconsin's elk reintroduction effort is now complete, with 28 elk awaiting transport to a new home in Jackson County, WI. DNR staff spent roughly four weeks working cooperatively with Kentucky Dept. of Fish and Wildlife Resources and other key partners to capture elk in eastern KY. In this first year of elk trapping, Wisconsin staff has laid a solid foundation for future capture efforts. Collaboration between WI and KY created a great opportunity to learn from one another regarding elk management and trapping techniques. Staff from both states were very aware that this project is funded as a result of support from partner organizations, and made every effort to run a cost-efficient program. Captured elk are currently being held in a four-acre pen in KY, where they will be closely monitored and receive daily care. They will undergo a stringent 120-day quarantine and health testing period, which will include an acclimation period in WI, before being released in and around the Black River State Forest in Jackson County. Barring any unforeseen problems or health testing issues, release should occur in early June. This is a multi-year effort, with an overall goal of bringing as many as to 150 elk from KY. As many as 75 elk will help start a new elk herd in Jackson County, while remaining elk will help bolster the current elk herd near Clam Lake. For more information, visit dnr.wi.gov and search keyword "elk." Then we have Colorado.
With CWD being a hot topic amongst the deer industry. We should educate the uneducated about its origin and what the govt and state agencies think about it. So, we will start off by taking a brief look at govt and state agencies and what they have done for all of our deer herds. There seems to be a lot of evidence that govt and state research facilities are the sources (plural) of CWD and for the spread of it. Here's an explanation for Colorado and wyoming's high CWD infection rate. There are no deer farms in Wyoming. Evidently the govt and state agencies don't think the CWD excuse is a big deal. Their actions sure look that way. It must not be as big of deal as people make it to be.
Origins of CWD: The first case of CWD was seen in 1967 in a captive mule deer at the Foothills Wildlife Research Station (operated by the Colorado Dept. of Wildlife) in Ft. Collins and was attributed then by station employees [10] to close confinement of deer to former (scrapie) sheep pasture or to horizontal transmission from sheep allowed [9] into the pens. The shortest known incubation time in deer is 17 months, dating the exposure back to 1965-66 or earlier. Surplus does were released back into the wild after fawning in the facility; the first case in free-ranging wild deer was seen in 1981. Other infected animals were shipped to zoos (Denver, Toronto, Laramie), game farms (see below), and similar research facilities in Colorado and Wyoming.
Example: Colorado fish and game officials held a news conference in 1998 stating they would continue to enjoy eating venison from untested deer and elk from epidemic strongholds because it had not been proven to transmit to human [10], a vacuous reassurance as no study has ever been conducted.

[charlieinthebush]

This is a powerful message I will share from one of the top, most credited gentleman in the deer industry: I will talk of Africa hunting and compare it to what is gong in the USA today. Well, understand, it was cattle ranchers who pioneered the Game Industry in Zimbabwe, Africa. They determined that game ranching made a viable land use alternative. You can even go back in our history and see a pamphlet from USDA promoting deer farming in 1908, What is happening now? In Zimbabwe, A bill was passed in their legislature that transferred wildlife authority [ownership] from the state, to the land. Critics, criticized this, it would be the end of game, it would ruin wildlife. Most of wildlife groups are against our preserve industry here, saying commercialization will destroy wildlife. In Africa, the opposite happened, wildlife flourished. Sport hunting proved profitable. This put a value on wildlife, and a reason to save it. Quoting from the General Manager of the Conservancy, “ if there is no value on wildlife, there is no need to protect it.” Again, ranchers saved wildlife in Africa. They will here also. Many of these so called sportsmen seem to be a large patrons of preserve hunting in Africa, yet they criticize it here. They criticize our feeding of deer in our pens, yet in their own business, don’t they promote tower feeders and food plots on free-range deer? Look at QDMA and their advertisers. They may have had the same feed our deer get!! I have seen more tower feeders in Texas on low fenced land than I have seen on preserves. Texas is the largest producer and consumer of deer feeders. Aren’t they also feeding these deer for better performance, thus growing larger racks?? Isn’t that against everything they are preaching to us? Are they certifying the low-fenced land they hunt, that it has the proper cover to hunt, to allow fair chase? Why do they want rules on one side of the fence, and not the other?? These guys dump feed on the roads, and the deer are trained to come up to feed. How is this fair-chase, and ours is not? They call us canned, but with their deer trained and dependant to come to feeders, how is that fair-chase? These animals are trained to come up when they hear a vehicle. It’s a free meal. They have basically built an invisible fence around that herd. Are they really free-range?? They are not going to leave their food source!!! What makes wildlife important is the thrill the hunter gets when he gets his trophy, period!!! Whether behind high or low fence. The hunter needs to determine what his goals and values are. Are they trying to form an “ethics police”, to tell hunters if they were on a real hunt?? Aldo Leopold wrote, “A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter ordinarily has no gallery to applaud or disapprove of his conduct. Whatever his acts, they are dictated by his own conscience, rather than a mob of onlookers. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this fact.” In his book, Beyond Fair Chase, Jim Posewitz noted, “The most important measure of hunting success is how you feel about yourself…” Why is it now that we have groups of hunters that criticize other hunters? With PETA and HSUS looming in the shadows, are we are own worst enemy?

[charlieinthebush]

Small Loop in Human Prion Protein Prevents Chronic Wasting Disease
February 25, 2015
Source: HealthCanal.com

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) — an infectious disease caused by prions — affects North American elk and deer, but has not been observed in humans. Using a mouse model that expresses an altered form of the normal human prion protein, researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have determined why the human proteins aren’t corrupted when exposed to the elk prions. Their study, published Feb. 23 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, identifies a small loop in the human prion protein that confers resistance to chronic wasting disease.

“Since the loop has been found to be a key segment in prion protein aggregation, this site could be targeted for the development of new therapeutics designed to block prion conversion,” said Christina Sigurdson, DVM, PhD, associate professor at UC San Diego and UC Davis and senior author of the study.

Prions aren’t microorganisms like bacteria or viruses; they’re simply protein aggregates. Some prion diseases are caused by an inherited genetic mutation, while others are caused by exposure to infectious prions in food. Acquired prion diseases are triggered when a foreign, misfolded prion protein causes the body’s own natural prion proteins to misfold and aggregate. In addition to chronic wasting disease, examples include scrapie and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (or "mad cow disease") in animals and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. In humans, prion diseases can cause a variety of rapidly progressive neurological symptoms, such as difficulty walking and speaking, and dementia. These diseases are 100 percent fatal and there is currently no effective treatment.

“We suspected that a loop in the human prion protein structure may block the elk prions from binding, as the sequences did not appear to be compatible,” Sigurdson said.

To test this hypothesis, Sigurdson and her team developed a transgenic mouse that expresses a prion protein that’s identical to the human version — except for a small loop, which they swapped out for the elk prion sequence. When these mice were exposed to the elk prions, they developed chronic wasting disease.

In contrast, control mice expressing the normal human prion sequence resisted infection when exposed to same materials — just as humans seem to, even those who consume venison meat.

“This finding suggests that the loop structure is crucial to prion conversion and that sequence compatibility with the host prion protein at this site is required for the transmission of certain prion diseases,” Sigurdson said.

Co-authors of this study include Timothy D. Kurt, Cyrus Bett, Jun Liu, Tom Yang, UC San Diego; Lin Jiang, David Eisenberg, UC Los Angeles and Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Natalia Fernández-Borges, CIC bioGUNE, Spain; Terry R. Spraker, Colorado State University, Fort Collins; Joaquín Castilla, CIC bioGUNE and Basque Foundation for Science, Spain; and Qingzhong Kong, Case Western Reserve University.

This research was funded, in part, by the National Institutes of Health (grants NS055116, NS069566, U54AI0359 and AG029430), national grants from Spain and the Morris Animal Foundation.

[charlieinthebush]

It's funny how people who don't know the history of deer bash us. In 1908 the usda handed out handbooks encouraging folks to farm deer. In many states there were more farm deer then wild. In 1920 Iowa only had an estimated herd of 500. In 1930 Ohio had declared Whitetails extinct. Now, 100 yrs later we have uneducated folks bashing us for the herd they now call "wild" or "nature". It was because of deer farmers you have a herd that you benefit from. We helped rebuild a failed managed herd.

[firstwd]

Farms. Like cattle are farmed. Not hand fed pets getting shot behind a fence. Deer farms are great, pen shoots are not.

By the way, this is not an outdoors related legislation thread. It sounds more like a pleading his case to promote his hookers.