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CWD now confirmed in North Carolina

Pretty sure Va has had it for a number of years, they have been checking in the Claiborne county for a number of years, they might double down there now
 
VA has had CWD for many years. It was originally found in the far northern counties. 2 years ago, they had a positive case in SW VA county. They put 3 counties along I-81 just east of I-77 (Radford / Blacksburg / Christiansburg area) as a CWD zone. It's just a matter of time that it will be spread out across every county in the whitetail range.
 
Ski said:
I would deduce that if it's in NC, then it's entirely through TN.
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Just hasn't had a high enough incidence to be "documented" yet.
Suspect very few CWD-killed deer are even discovered, much less killed by a human hunter.
But the rate of CWD infection is slowly rising, the testing more rapidly expanding, as are the areas containing CWD prions deposited by scavengers and deer waste by-products from human hunters.

Deer die year round, quickly eaten by predators & scavengers, which then poop the prions over an ever widening area. And major rivers are not a boundary for buzzards.

Via current game agency protocols, "documenting" CWD in your county can be a death sentence to biologically sound deer management, even worse for "trophy" buck management. You can forget being a "hunter-manager". It's like Dr. Fauci is suddenly in charge of the deer regs when CWD is found. If you're greatly interested in managing for mature bucks, once your county is declared a CWD county, your best option may be going to hunt-manage in a different county, or an entirely different state.

I see a lot of deer hunters becoming hunters of other game in the coming years (or just giving up hunting entirely). And not just giving up deer hunting, but giving up the consumption of venison as human food. Not sure how deer populations will get "managed" once there may not be enough deer hunters to do it, and few people want to eat venison. New role for government "trappers" or "sharpshooters"?

Change is the only constant.
Still a lot of good hunting opportunities available,
just not for deer.
Who knows, maybe quail will make a come-back.
Maybe most of us will just do more fishing.

I'm fully expecting all the Western Middle TN counties either side the TN River to get "documented" in the coming year. This will be a "game changer" from every perspective. Just to be clear, my perspective, it's the regulatory "treatment" that will do more harm than the disease. Not saying it's all unnecessary either, but it is what it is, and it bodes badly for the future of deer hunting.

On the bright side, many of us can use the money we once spent on deer leases to take an annual "vacation" hunt in some other state. You may even find better odds on the public lands in many states than you ever had on large private leases in TN pre-covid (or pre-cwd). Never mind some of those western states, now with great opportunities, "documented" CWD decades before we did in TN.

Sad times for deer "hunter-managers" coming in TN (already happened in the southwestern TN counties).

Too many people are now afraid to eat venison, too many hunters are unwilling to adhere to burdensome cwd regs, and hunter-managers may face near insurmountable odds for anything close to "trophy" buck management. The simple solution for many is just to quit deer hunting.

Put another way:
If the Ames Plantation now cannot successfully achieve high-level trophy buck management with @ 20,000 acres, how can the average group of deer hunters do it on a large farm or deer lease?
 
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Doskil said:
I thought that has been outlawed?
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It has.
I don't think this is much issue going forward.
What will spread CWD now is most likely hunter transported dead deer, along with predator, scavenger and raptor (mainly buzzard) feces.

Yes, the transportation of hunters' dead deer across county lines is also illegal, but greatly ignored, and hard to enforce.

Combine the inability to conveniently legally transport deer home (or to the processor) with so many people not even wanting to consume venison:
Many TN hunters are simply "done" deer hunting in TN, as a high percentage of them deer hunt in some other county other than the one they reside. The majority I run into have been driving an average of 4 hours one way.

Even without your county being declared a CWD one, the long drives, the expensive gas, and the unreasonably high lease prices were already causing many TN hunters to instead just go hunt deer on public lands in other states rather than their home state.

Many resident TN hunters have already been finding public lands to hunt in Southern Illinois, Kentucky, Southern Indiana & Ohio, even closer to their homes than where they had been doing deer hunting in TN. Much of the public land deer hunting in these states actually can provide more opportunity for higher scoring bucks than even intensely "managed" private land in TN.

I don't expect that pilgrimage to other states to last more than a few years. Those states will also be facing many the same type CWD issues we have just seen sooner in TN. But then, if they do relatively less testing, they may go longer before "documenting" in most counties? Or maybe, they will just decide to let Mother Nature work it out, and not destroy the future of deer hunting in their states? Or maybe more people will decide there's actually no more risk in consuming cwd-infected deer than consuming store-bought chicken?

Also, it's not just the continuous CWD geographical spreading, like coming from Henry County to Stewart County, but the rate of CWD (incidence per 100 deer or per square mile, county, etc.). The incident rate has been so low we've been unlikely to "document" it with the limited testing being done (at least in counties where it's not been documented yet).

Most deer have not been tested.
Deer die year round, many if not most dead deer are never seen by humans,
much less tested.

But as the rate of testing, and the CWD incident rate rises, along with continued CWD expansion, we can expect a lot more CWD counties to be added in the coming year.

Buzzards have no boundaries,
and neither does CWD.
 
TheLBLman said:
Deer die year round, quickly eaten by predators & scavengers, which then poop the prions over an ever widening area. And major rivers are not a boundary for buzzards.
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Don't forget eagles and hawks. They for sure will eat from a gutpile and cover a large area.
 
CWD in Tennessee has already had a profound effect on me. This summer, a CWD infected deer was found in Cottage Grove, in Henry County, about 8 miles from the TN/KY state line. Then, a few months later, another was found near Dresden, in Weakley County. After the first CWD positive deer was found, the KY Dept of Fish & Wildlife activated their CWD Response Plan, with the objective being to try to delay CWD from entering KY for as long as it's possible. Many farmers, landowners, & outfitters in western KY stand to lose millions if/when it gets here. The KDFWR set up a 5 county Surveillance Zone consisting of the counties in closest proximity to where the CWD positive deer were found. The 5 counties are Calloway, Fulton, Hickman, Graves, & Marshall. I live in Murray, KY, in Calloway County, was born in Fulton Co, was raised in Hickman Co, own a farm in Calloway Co, & work in Marshall Co,

I also hold the seat on the Ky Dept of Fish & Wildlife Commission for the 1st Congressional District, which includes these counties. The first steps we elected to take in our Plan were in the areas of testing and education. Testing, to see if we could detect CWD in KY & education to let everyone know what we're all dealing with. KY had already performed about 32,000 CWD tests over the last 20 years, all negative. This fall, we asked everyone who harvested a deer to bring physically bring them to a check station to be tested. Multiple check stations were set up in surveillance zone, for hunter convenience. (In Graves, where I hunt, there were 7 or 8). We had near 100% compliance, with most of those not checking their deer being Amish who hadn't heard of the mandatory testing as they have no TV, internet, or cell phones. A little over 4,300 deer were tested, again all negative.

Our challenge is how to appropriately respond to this threat going forward. The biggest problem we have is that the time between when a deer is infected and when that deer starts to show symptoms can be as long as 2 years. So, a deer can look & act healthy but be terminally ill! We have stressed that there has been no known case of CWD being transmitted to humans by them consuming venison and that, in all probability, thousands of CWD infected deer have been consumed by people because those deer looked healthy. Compounding our problem is the fact that some of the areas in the surveillance zone have some of the highest deer densities in the state & , as Wes correctly stated, many hunters were concerned & far fewer hunted, so the harvest in these surveillance zone counties was down 26% from the average of the previous 5 years.

Not only do I deer hunt myself, but both of my daughters do, and I have a very strong interest in seeing that the best interest of deer hunters are taken into account. I don't want to see KY do like some states that have employed snipers to indiscriminately cull deer. And I don't want to do nothing , like Wisconsin has done for the past several years, where many outfitters have gone under, land prices have fallen, & approximately half the deer are now infected with CWD. I would much prefer excess deer be harvested by legal hunters who want the deer and aren't afraid to eat them, even if we have to take steps to liberalize harvest limits to make that happen.

Please don't hesitate to message me with any ideas. KDFWR is breaking new ground here in that we are the first state DNR attempting to manage CWD before we have a positive case.

Best regards,

Robin Floyd
 
It's a bad disease without a cure, it will affect every deer hunter at some point in the next 20 years, my days of hunting are getting closer to the end and I won't be affected as much as my grand children, I wont take a chance of knowingly eating a deer with it, never liked the idea of Russian roulette even with high odds of not catching something. Folks can stick their head in the sand if they want to , I've never been much on trophy hunting and have enjoyed eating them more than the horns, I suspect I will be done when it hits close to home, wife will be happy though, may have to fish more to keep out of her reach/honeydo list lol.
 
mike243 said:
It's a bad disease without a cure, it will affect every deer hunter at some point in the next 20 years, my days of hunting are getting closer to the end and I won't be affected as much as my grand children, I wont take a chance of knowingly eating a deer with it, never liked the idea of Russian roulette even with high odds of not catching something. Folks can stick their head in the sand if they want to , I've never been much on trophy hunting and have enjoyed eating them more than the horns, I suspect I will be done when it hits close to home, wife will be happy though, may have to fish more to keep out of her reach/honeydo list lol.
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I was in NM when CWD first broke really hard, although it had been known decades prior. We hunters freaked out in panic, genuinely worried that hunting was going to be a thing of the past. We all just knew the end was nigh. Then......nothing happened. Year after year, season after season, nothing happened. The hunting in all of the western CWD states is every bit as strong today as it was when CWD was discovered, and not one hunter yet has turned into a zombie from eating the meat. No head in sand here. My eyes are wide open and have been since the CWD scare first broke hard. I'm well aware of how dangerous & serious the disease is, as well as aware of how grossly hyperbolized the topic has become. If CWD is transmissible to humans then I'll be patient zero. I won't stop eating venison.
 

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