• Help Support TNDeer:

Should we even worry about CWD anymore?

ROB said:
If hunting is to continue, we need to be recruiting more hunters.

I think deer hunting is much more likely to end because old deer hunters like me will die off and young people won't replace us.
Click to expand...

Rob speaks the truth here.
I realize on one one hand, we wish for fewer hunters to share the woods,
but on the other, once we die out, what happens to the sport of deer hunting?

Will the former sport just be replaced with government contracted sharp-shooters and deer depredation permits? That is the way we're heading without replacing the dying hunters with more youthful hunters.

CWD is just one of the reasons fewer youth are wanting to deer hunt, and one of the reasons fewer older hunters are wanting to kill deer to eat.

While we know it's safe to eat venison with CWD, non-hunters in particular, many to whom we were giving surplus venison from the higher doe kill we used to kill (in part justify by having friends/people wanting some venison) . . . . . . they just don't want venison like they once did.

Add to this the additional, sometimes confusing regulations regarding CWD, and it's another factor contributing to youth being more attracted to something like soccer than deer hunting.

CWD & fears of CWD also contributed greatly to the complete shut-down of many commercial deer processors in the CWD zones. One in particular many can relate is Yoder Brothers in Henry County, TN. Henry County has always been TN's #1 or near #1 deer-harvest county, and Yoder Brothers was the second largest deer processor in TN.

Between the perfect storm of CWD and Covid, Yoder's shut down. While Yoder's was in Henry County, TN, they were close to the KY State Line, and many West KY deer hunters brought their deer to Yoder's for processing. New CWD rules completely stopped transporting an unprocessed harvested deer across state lines. And, CWD rules stopped the transporting of an unprocessed deer across county lines (if the deer was taken in a CWD county).

Just saying, going deer hunting has been progressively becoming a more complicated and costly venture, particularly to "new" and/or youth hunters. The regulations can be almost over-whelming even to an avid lifelong hunter like myself.
 
mike243 said:
Which government agency has stated eating deer with CWD is safe to eat?
Click to expand...
None, but the same agencies were the ones that told us masks worked, 6' distance worked, and shots worked, so, will them saying it's safe or not really give you confidence one way or another? Like the shot, I will take my chances on the fact that it has been here in the US almost as long as I have and have yet to have it cross the species barrier, and test after test has proven that to be true, they just will come short of telling you it's ok because of liability, which we know would be none, but still.
 
This is how the "Truth" gets spread, somebody has their own idea's and start posting and before you know it everybody heard it was safe. 😂 to many Dr's and Lawyers without the education out there imo.
 
mike243 said:
This is how the "Truth" gets spread, somebody has their own idea's and start posting and before you know it everybody heard it was safe. 😂 to many Dr's and Lawyers without the education out there imo.
Click to expand...
No, I clearly tell my friends what is up with CWD when they ask for and I give them venison. I lay it out as simple as I can, and tell them exactly what I said above. I'm no doctor or scientist, and it's been a while since I stayed in a Holiday Inn, so they can take that into account, but I am willing to eat the venison I harvest, especially because I do not hunt horns.
 
mike243 said:
This is how the "Truth" gets spread, somebody has their own idea's and start posting and before you know it everybody heard it was safe.
Click to expand...
Not really sure what you're thinking or trying to say,
but you have more risk to your health by eating a salad from Wendy's
than eating CWD-infected venison.
 
So what I am saying is that anybody who sez it's safe to eat deer with CWD is telling a flat out lie. The government agency's that are doing all of the scientific work have stated that it might be possible for it to jump the barrier, at some point they will probably find out 1 way or another but they don't know right now and that means nobody else does either. Hopefully they will make a determination that will say it's safe but it ain't happened yet.
 
mike243 said:
So what I am saying is that anybody who sez it's safe to eat deer with CWD is telling a flat out lie. The government agency's that are doing all of the scientific work have stated that it might be possible for it to jump the barrier, at some point they will probably find out 1 way or another but they don't know right now and that means nobody else does either. Hopefully they will make a determination that will say it's safe but it ain't happened yet.
Click to expand...
They will never say it is safe because you can't prove a negative.
 
mike243 said:
So what I am saying is that anybody who sez it's safe to eat deer with CWD is telling a flat out lie.
Click to expand...
Is it safe to eat a salad?

By your standards, anyone who says "yes", is a liar?

Just a matter of fact, YOU are more likely to die from eating a salad,
than from eating CWD-infected venison.

The real issue is more about "relatively safe" vs 100% safe.
What can you eat that's guaranteed 100% safe?

People die from eating peanuts.
And salads.
Even beef, pork, & chicken.

Truth is, eating venison is overall "safer" than eating chicken?
 
In full disclosure, I would not knowingly eat venison KNOWN to be CWD-infected.
Just like I wouldn't eat a piece of fish or chicken that smelled bad.

It's all about what's "reasonable" and reasonably safe.
Life has never been without risk.
 
BSK said:
I no longer worry about it.
Click to expand...
Same here.
CWD has been around for decades.
Until they find that it passes to humans, to me it's a non-issue.

There have been a couple of instances where hunters developed Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease after they ate venison at the same hunting lodge.
It looks like they weren't there at the same time, but the area does have identified CWD in the deer population.
The study only made inferences to "possibility", blah blah. To this day no one has shown any relationship to CWD cross-transmission to humans.

 
mike243 said:
This is how the "Truth" gets spread, somebody has their own idea's and start posting and before you know it everybody heard it was safe. 😂 to many Dr's and Lawyers without the education out there imo.
Click to expand...
Can you name a person that got CJD from eating CWD-infected venison? And people have certainly eaten hundreds of thousands if not millions of infected deer.
 
sgtwebb1 said:
Same here.
CWD has been around for decades.
Until they find that it passes to humans, to me it's a non-issue.

There have been a couple of instances where hunters developed Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease after they ate venison at the same hunting lodge.
It looks like they weren't there at the same time, but the area does have identified CWD in the deer population.
The study only made inferences to "possibility", blah blah. To this day no one has shown any relationship to CWD cross-transmission to humans.

Click to expand...
These two were tested and their CJD did NOT come from eating CWD-infected venison. It was just a fluke coincidence they got it (which occurs naturally at a rate of 1 in 1 million people).
 
ROB said:
...
This proposal isn't perfect or a complete answer but would at least be a start. We have over 1 million deer in KY. The entire 1st District is overpopulated. I get calls from farmers who tell me they can often count over 100 deer in their crop fields. Some use depredation permits & let the deer go to waste. On top of that, hunters in the CWD Surveillance Zone took 26% fewer deer than the average of the 5 previous the first year after CWD was found in Henry Co. In all of those counties, there is currently no limit on antlerless deer. A lot of hunters still won't shoot a does until they get a buck. After Modern Firearm season, in mid-November, when most deer & an even bigger percentage of bucks are harvested, a big share of hunters switch over to waterfowl, so little deer hunting occurs. And, in many states, the sale of hunting & fishing licenses & permits funds the lion's share of conservation. I don't worry that CWD will kill deer hunting. I think deer hunting is much more likely to end because old deer hunters like me will die off and young people won't replace us.
Click to expand...

I don't know the variance on number of deer taken each season but 26% lower than average seems like a lot. What have the thoughts been on why there were 26% fewer taken that season?
 
Last edited:
DayDay said:
What have the thoughts been on why there were 26% fewer taken that season?
Click to expand...
IMO, the main reason for this decrease was the unreasonable fear-mongering of CWD
which was done by TWRA, mainstream media, hunters themselves, and non-hunters.
This decreased the demand for consuming venison.

I've even run into hunters who were so afraid to even touch a deer, that they quit deer hunting. Just ridiculous how the entire issue was fear-mongered.

Keep in mind most deer hunters eat what they kill.
Once they're were made, even somewhat, afraid to eat venison,
they simply began not only hunting less, but killing less when they hunted.

Add to this the closure of so many deer processing facilities, such as Yoder's.

Another thing:

Among those still open deer processors, due to the closure of so many others,
on any weekend, particularly muzzleloader & the 1st 3 weekends of rifle season in TN,
you may find all existing processors "full" and NOT TAKING ANY MORE DEER.
Once you experience this, you will be much less likely to shoot the next deer you could or normally would.

Of course, an alternative to using deer processors is to process those deer yourself. A growing number of deer hunters have been doing just that, but this has not made up for the deer processing closures. Lastly, having to process your own deer, i.e. what to do with one should you kill one, is yet another reason some youth might just prefer sticking with soccer.
 
On a personal level, I grew up processing my own deer.
So unlike someone just thinking about starting to deer hunt, I do know how.

However, seemed like every time I killed a deer, I was then wanting to spend the next many hours or day doing more deer hunting than processing a deer myself.

Sometime in the late 80's I discovered Yoder Brother's Processing in Henry County. From then on, I would lose less hunting time simply by running my harvested deer to Yoder's, even when I killed those deer in West KY, Middle KY, West TN or Western Middle TN. Plus, I simply able or wasn't willing to make all the specialty items they would provide (such as jerky, deer salami, sausage, etc.)

Twice in the last two deer seasons, I've wasted hours just searching for a processor to take a deer. I'm talking about getting on the phone & calling, then going to one before daylight then next morning, just to "get in line" and hope the processor could make room for the deer killed the day before.

I've since decided to go back to processing my own deer, but that also means I will be killing fewer deer, as I remain more interested in deer hunting than deer processing for people who don't deer hunt.
 
And when you can't find a processor, finding a deer cooler (that isn't full) can be even harder.

My solution for this has become a large marine cooler, where I can just ice down the entire field-dressed deer, until I can get it to a processor, or process it myself.

Unfortunately, even my marine cooler doesn't work when a deer is killed in KY but I prefer to go home & process it in TN. No longer legal, because of covid, I mean CWD.
 
Last edited:
Bottom Line:

Much like the government covid edicts, I believe the CWD "edicts" have been overall worse than the disease itself, at least to the future of deer hunting.

In the eyes of many, deer hunting has just become too much trouble, too costly, too many constantly changing rules & regulations, too easy to make an honest mistake, so why bother?

The situation is even worse for trying to "manage" the deer herds where you hunt under TN's CWD regs. You can just forget trying to "manage" for "trophy" bucks, as if the CWD doesn't get them, another hunter will. This can be the case even when you have thousands of private acres you control due to rutting bucks often traveling 3 to 5 linear miles daily. Even the 18,000-acre Ames Plantation went to hell in a hand-basket due to CWD & CWD related edicts.
 
I've killed hundreds of deer and never taken a one to a processor. For me, processing them yourself is part of the over-all experience. It also keeps me from killing a lot of deer! Processing 4 or 5 a year is all I can put up with!
 
BSK said:
I've killed hundreds of deer and never taken a one to a processor. For me, processing them yourself is part of the over-all experience. It also keeps me from killing a lot of deer! Processing 4 or 5 a year is all I can put up with!
Click to expand...
To a perhaps surprising extent, I agree with you.

However, your situation (and mine) may be very, very different than the average youth's situation of pondering whether to go deer hunting. Our situation is also very, very different from the average TN deer hunter's.

You are set up with your own walk-in cooler & processing facility at your actual hunting "camp". While I don't have that, I do have experience in processing my own deer, and can do so more easily than most hunters. I just at some point found it more attractive to drop my deer off at a quality processor I trusted, which is no longer conveniently available for me.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top