#1154 - Doug Duren & Bryan Richards

August 8, 2018

Doug Duren is a passionate hunter, farmer, land manager and conservationist. Bryan Richards is the CWD project leader for the U.S. Geological Survey's National Wildlife Health Center.

Episode Sponsors

Help improve this transcript!

Hello friends I got a lot of comedy tour dates if you go to Joe Rogan. Com and get all those this weekend Friday night I'm at I'm in Kansas City with the ginger assassin Andrew Santino should be a good time Joe Rogan. Com for all that stuff is brought you by the cash app cash out the simplest way to instantly send money to friends and it's also the number one app in finance but it's got a lot more possibilities in that the cash app actually has features that you can only get from a bank and more than a few that you can't like the cash card boosts and you can buy and sell Bitcoin the cash card is a free customizable debit card that you can use at stores or ATMs it's linked to your cash at bounce as if it were checking account and even lets you direct deposit your paycheck right into the app and if you're looking for an alternative to traditional banking you're not alone

Native Americans have already started using the cash card for that very reason and has never been a Rewards program like boosts booze for the cash card when you use it you get instant discount every time you swipe your cash card at coffee shops Chipotle Shake Shack & Beyond just tap a boost in the app and pay with your Cash Card Cash app is also the most convenient and inexpensive way to buy sell and withdraw Bitcoin 20 years ago so I would have been hard to imagine now it's hard to imagine anything else you can download the cash app for free in the app store or Google Play Marketplace in or Market just Market Google Play Market and don't forget when you download the cash app inventor of the reward code Joe Rogan all one word you received $5 and $5 will go to Justin Brands fight for the Forgotten charity to build Wells for the pygmies in the Congo were also brought you by LegalZoom LegalZoom

he's a fact most Americans don't about will 20 years ago that that wasn't shocking statement to find a trustworthy attorney got to pay them by the hour draft you suck all that right you put it off well today there's no excuse LegalZoom has made it very easy to create your own well that's why the more than a million there's more than a million people use LegalZoom for the estate planning needs right now is National make a will month at legalzoom.com now it's your turn to take control of your family and assets with an estate plan it starts with a will or living trust and if you don't know which one is right for you no problem legal zooms network of independent attorneys would advise you on what's best for you and your family plus LegalZoom is not a law firm so you'll never pay hourly rates make things a lot easier on your family when you're gone check out LegalZoom last will and living trust

State plans now during National make will month at legalzoom.com and for special savings be sure to enter the the code Rogan in the referral box at checkout that's code Rogan for special savings only at legalzoom.com where life meets legal and we're also brought to you by quip quip is a subscription toothbrush that's the tooth brush that I use it's an electric toothbrush that's a fraction of the cost of bulk your brushes while still packing the right amount of vibrations to help clean your teeth the truth is most people brushing your teeth wrong with brushing teeth for two short amount of time and you forget to change your brush on time that's because most brands focus on selling flashy gimmicks rather than better brushing but not quip quip built-in timer

let's you clean your teeth for a dentist recommended two minutes with guiding pulses that remind you when to switch sides and the squip has a subscription plan and a subscription plan I can I see quicker subscription plan there better for their setup for your health not just for convenience they deliver new brush heads on a dentist recommended schedule every 3 months for just $5 including free shipping worldwide they also come with a mount that suctions writes your mirror and unsticks for use as a cover for hygienic travel wherever you take your teeth and finally everyone loves quip there on the Oprah's old list they were named one of Time magazine's best inventions and it is the first subscription electric toothbrush accepted by the American Dental Association Girls Back by a network of over 20,000 dentist and hygienist and hundreds of thousands of happy brushes used quip everyday like me whip starts just $25

if you go to get quip.com Rogan now you get your first refill pack for free with a quip electric toothbrush that's get your first refill pack free at getquip.com/Rogan spell getquip.com/Rogan alright ladies now today is this podcast is one of those podcast where if you hear the subject you might go this isn't sound like it's from a man sounds like some bullshit if you're not into the wild life if you're not into conservation if you think this doesn't affect you

it does it's terrifying this is a podcast about a disease that spreading through Wildlife particularly deer across America it's called chronic wasting disease or CWD and is very similar to mad cow disease and it has not made the jump yet to human beings but there's a real fear that it could and the spread of this stuff is terrifying it's 100% fatal in Deer and it's moving across the country my good friend Doug Durand who owns a farm in Wisconsin came here and he brought wildlife biologist Brian Richards to talk about

what is going on with this disease what happened how they can slow it down cuz currently there is no cure is no vaccine is nothing they can do and the possibility that spreading to human being someday although right now and hasn't is absolutely terrifying it was an interesting podcast to scare the shit out of me and it's very very informative and I hope you enjoy it so please welcome Brian Richards and Doug Duren

The Joe Rogan Experience

Joe Rogan podcast

all day

geha and revive my good friend Doug Duren hello Douglas hello Joe Rogan and Wildlife and things I want to talk about is this scary disease that well when Ted Nugent was on the podcast he downplayed the consequences and effects of something called CWD or chronic wasting disease which is made it onto your farm and you live in Wisconsin and you have this beautiful place that we visited when we did the immediate your television show and this is a new thing that this chronic wasting disease which is just decimates the deers health and and kills them and the suspicion is that some of this at least comes from these high fence operations were people grow dear and treat them like instead of a wild animal that treat them like

domesticated animal and have them all feeding off of the same

pile of food and they share this disease is this all correct and accurate Bryan National Wildlife Health Center u.s. Geological Survey up in Madison Wisconsin and snow things that I spend a lot of time is chronic wasting disease that makes me necessarily an expert but I've gotten to know a lot of people that I would call experts over the years so I've gained a little bit of knowledge so number different yeah this disease it essentially disposable dish describe what it does to use animals and why it's such a major concern hasn't jumped to humans that were aware of that were aware of but it is a possibility of a very real possibility we can't rule it out at this point in time

we care about this thing called chronic wasting disease and I would argue in and some other scientists argue there's two major reasons number one is the impacts of this disease on members of deer family themselves and the other is that we cannot rule out the possibility that CWD could become a human health issue at some point down the road cuz you kind of nail those two with regard to Deer or members of the deer family whitetail deer and mule deer elk moose and most recent leaves picked up in in reindeer in Norway of all places we could articulate some reason some rationale why would the others disease might be thought of as being important first we look at it would be Geographic spread so we will see the video 20 years ago was thought to be this really novel thing in a very restricted Geographic range in Southeastern Wyoming adjacent North Eastern Colorado and maybe a little spill over into Nebraska

wildlife biologist Wildlife disease specialist looked at this disease it was interesting we didn't know much about it that point in time but it seem to be very isolated their what does it do to the deer kill steer of a family of disease is called transmissible spongiform encephalopathies RTS he's transmittable means it can go from Animal Aid of animal be spongiform means looks like a sponge and encephalopathy means disease of the brain she put it together and so this disease results in holes in the brain resulting in Progressive neurological degeneration followed by death so you can capture the deer and give them some sort of medication no cure for these diseases diseases

humans most familiar is is one called creutzfeldt-jakob disease so it's very similar to mad cow disease I don't know how to say I just read it received in his work on this disease is caused by prion prion especially if some from across the pond say it's got to be prying and the main reason that he has some of my talk to you about that is it a text and poison when he hears it called Brian from suicide prion prion from this disease which people know is mad cow disease obviously is transmissible to humans and that's

one of the reasons why people are very scared that this could potentially jump from Deer into humans and correct me if I'm wrong but it also is making its way into the actual plants that these animals eat you're correct on both accounts show with BSE mad cow disease that was an interesting disease where it resulted from in essence turning cows into can we were like we started when one individual develop creutzfeldt-jakob disease that individual died and as is the practice was the practice in the fur a tribe in Papua New Guinea they practice ritualize cannibalism to honor the dead and to help release the spirits from a deceased family members so they would feed app on the app on the corpse and porting of the bodies of their deceased

chilling one individual died of probably some variant of creutzfeldt-jakob disease then that the causative agent of prion protein which is concentrated in the central nervous system and lymphatic systems of of disease patients this was fed back to other members of the family and extended family and see when they got sick and died so we saw that was in in the 1900s in 1960 or around there it was realize that this cannibalistic Behavior was likely the result you now or is likely the cause of disease transmission cannibalism was outlawed and at that point in time you broke completely the disease transmission cycle so no more new cases of Kuru but they had lingering cases with an extended incubation period up to 40 years later before Kuru finally burned out of that population

ESC or mad cow disease exactly that's the same thing not exactly the same thing but in essence to maximize production and reduce the amount of waste when they butchered cattle we would take all the awful Offaly the bones of the parts that are inedible and we would render them the high temperature in typically high pressure as well and it turns into a slurry high protein slurry you skim the fat off the top of that and then dehydrate the rest of it and you have any kind of meat and bone meal a high protein supplement realizing that kind of grow faster and produce better when they went on a high protein diet it seems reasonable to use waste material from cows to feedback cast so at some point

developed a t i c a prion disease whether it came from scraping the TSC of sheep or a rose on its own is on knowing but that cow died it was rendered into meat and bone meal in this high protein feed was in fat out to hundreds to thousands and correct me if I'm wrong please prions if they could survive up to more than a thousand degree temperature yes it's kind of a strange how they can persist they cannot be inactivated took these prions are not necessarily a living thing like a disease or a virus or a bacteria disease causing agent but they are incredibly unique they said they're eating logic agent like a virus and bacteria or parasite could be causing disease but all these other things have genetic material there alive which allows them to change rapidly to evolve

the whole concept that you have high protein high protein that all mammals produce in a normal for can be converted after production into a disease Associated form that has these radically different characteristics that you mentioned was a resistance to heat treatment a normal prion protein and we have billions of circulating in our bodies right now have a specific purposes cellular purpose we don't know exactly what it is when it's likely involved in some sort of intercellular communication it's a string of around 250 amino acids so relatively short protein and then the body recycles breaks down into its component parts and recycles it turns out that normal cellular plan protein likely has a half-life of maybe 4 to 6 hours so you're producing them relatively constantly

and there's a disease Associated for and all disease Associated prions start as the normal cellular so they're converted from one three-dimensional form to a different form and this different form has his radically different characteristics one is heat resistance and other is UV light resistance I mentioned if a normal cell protein has a half-life of maybe 4 to 6 hours the disease Associated ones can persist in the environment for years and potentially have two decades when you say persist in the environment you mean in like on the ground on leaves on like how how would they protest

who sheds infectious agent is prion protein on show in from the time of deers infected it's probably around 2 years before it develops clinical signs of disease goes downhill loses its fear of humans with dramatic weight loss all of those things that incubation period you know it's probably shedding infectious agent for the vast majority of that time. So it looks healthy but it's able of transmitting disease be call that POA Typhoid Mary syndrome two-and-a-half-year-old bucks where we had him tested as you know where for the last several years we've been getting initially we got our only bucks tested and then the last 3 or 4 years we've gotten all the deer tested they were two and a half year old box Perfect Look perfectly healthy as of the first ones you tested that that test positive

in excess of $35 over the last month more than during the incubation period would they still test positive at some point they will at some point so they had to be spreading infectious agents without testing positive yes I'm sorry when we can test an animal test positive but it's at least it lower quantities prior to that point in time for it looks clinically ill that's one of the real chat which is with this disease from a management standpoint they look perfectly healthy they act perfectly healthy but they're starting to have that Progressive neurological degeneration that we can only see very near death and disease so correct me if I'm wrong but this seems like we could potentially be facing a ticking time bomb

of many many many deer that are wandering around out there right now that looked totally normal to spreading this stuff all over the place and they're acting normally look perfectly healthy and then obviously with the multi-year incubation. This could just Cascade and I think we've seen evidence of that now and we talked about being isolated disease it was picked up in Wisconsin at the end of 2001 as of today she picked up in 25 States in captive and or free-ranging populations in whitetail deer and mule deer elk or moose to Canadian provinces in addition it was picked up in South Korea still had Canadian ear tags in them so we pretty much know how she WD those Elkton swim across the Pacific pond

most recently it was picked up on a 2 years ago and free-ranging reindeer in Norway and subsequent to that it was picked up in a small handful like three or four moose in Red Deer in Norway in a single moose in Finland concern over in Norway with reindeer reindeer very gregarious and whitetail deer Caribou reindeer animals so very very different than we see with whitetail deer and mule deer elk or moose we don't do it take Transmission in reindeer so when it was picked up in reindeer

experience with scraping and sheep and so they have a long history with a scraping scraping is the same as what's the same family diseases and she is actually the first one that was described straight be leaving no one about since the early 1700 disease a domestic sheep it's called Scrapy because of the behavior these animals 100 a clinical phase of disease the lights and then they seem like they itch bad and so they will go up the fence posts and other objects and they will literally rub their high off of their body that's the name Scrappy and it's the same Progressive neurological disorder followed by death I think about it so

who asked this disease creates vacuoles in the brain it's killing off neurons and so without those neurons firing you fall into that Progressive degeneration and you at some point your body can no longer survive that's what we spoke about how this thing kills go back to Norway when they can't hear myself I know it's that was promised recordings on the researchers over there had witnessed what we are our lack of success on this side of the pond over the course of the last 20 years they took it very very seriously so they took kind of some harsh medicine are they announced their plans that they were going to eliminate a herd unit they're going to kill every reindeer in an entire herd unit in Norway the idea is to

the host populations called stamping out and it works in a pan this is the first time it's been done realistically in a free ranging population oideas we don't have effective tools for management is this is a fearful what would happen if the spread throughout that reindeer population and throughout the other reindeer hurts and like Alaska they have multiple hurts like last year I hunted Caribou with with Steve up in the 40 mile River area and but there were in so they're very localized is probably not but at least they have a range that they moved through so and then in Norway they have two or three different hurts many more than that before it gets any farther let's take it out

show the adder hunting season they allowed to take as many as I could which was a little over a thousand reindeer then they came in with government agents that the hunters could something with CWD and then catch it that's always a concern but we can talk about him to let me finish this by the horns they decided to do what was very unpopular what we have not been able to do in North America and so after the hunting seasons government agent Sharpshooters took an additional 1400 Randy sick of every reindeer in this urgent and they're going to keep at fowl alone no reindeer in there for a minimum of 5 years so she says every bit of Promise of being the first large-scale success with dealing with this disease in her free-ranging hurt pretty different than what we've been able to accomplish over here 5 years

dirt and from what I was reading wood and everything else is at so at some point there becomes the prions diminution population or they die out or whatever the proper word a man and not living so they don't die but let me come Bible anymore is probably a pretty good it's a guesstimate okay as well with regard to how long does prions remain viable in the in the environment and in the substrate so it's a it's a good first guess and what what they'll do then is slowly allowed reindeer to repopulate and they'll be harvested periodically and every one of those will be tested so I mean it'll be a long-term experiment into your successful management and it will also learned quite a bit about whether how far along environment was contaminated disease very early so after killing off to your 2400 reindeer I think they had to run 20 positive so very low prevalence

guessing the disease was very very new in the system if you're going to be successful with a disease where animals are shedding infectious agent out into the environment it persist for years the decades do it early if you're going to get on it get detected early get on it fast get on a car why the decision live human beings consume them at this point in time evidence that humans can get CWD that potentially they'll be an incubation period issue just like it is with deer maybe extended with Youmans cuz you were talking about how did it was the correct pronunciation of browsing it wrong so yeah and Mancow same thing extended incubation period some of the cases it looks like we're up maybe even 2:40 maybe even 50-year incubation

every time I talk to this guy I mean I've learned a lot from him about all kinds of things and diseases but yesterday we were talking about Kuru and it was interesting to me about it is that these tribes the women and children

contracted it and the women and children ate the internal organs internal organs and it's concentrated took off was one of the features as the researchers in the 50s 1950s were looking at the population of very few adult males head Kuru and it was more focused in the females and and the children and so it came back to that ritualistic you cannibalism and you hit it right on the head of the women and children got the internal organs including the brain that have highest concentration of the of the prion protein the man if they consumed anything consumed the finer cuts of meat which have a lower concentration but not now

tell her I just one of those social things that just kind of stuck with me you know it is very very angry after Ted Nugent was on the podcast and I don't know how CWD got brought up I don't I don't know what the the the contacts was I don't remember but I remember him saying that winter kills more animals than CWD does and many people are very angry that this was a gross simplification of what could be a ticking time-bomb I guess I would yeah I'd have to agree with that

what other disease out there called happened to out of hemorrhagic disease EHD and periodical you'll have significant outbreaks of this disease and Inn in Northern latitudes where are the diseases not been present that's often you can see dramatic mortality 90% of a hurricane be killed in a single field event but a very distinction between these diseases EHD is spread by midges a little black noseeums okay bug actually transmitted transmitted disease a virus from Animal Aid animal beer from the environment to animal hit either one so why you have these pretty dramatic die offs as soon as the weather changes after the first Frost the first hard Frost kills off The Midgets and within about 2 weeks that disease cycle is broken completely

Joe has a significant impact on a localized level periodically but the disease cycle there's a definite into the disease cycle and then it's no longer present for that. Of time hurt for a period of time anyway right for cyst in the environment but once the transmission cycle is broken the mortality stop and isn't there some genetically engineered food plots that they're putting together now or at a different different types of seed that inhibits Midge growth and inhibit CHD that upholsters the animals immune system their their supplementing some of the food with I don't know what they're using but it bolsters the animals immune system makes them less susceptible to it and population should have been hizpo Discounters exposed to PhD in overtime definitely develop a herd immunity to it it is EHD transferable to humans

we don't not that we've ever see there's no evidence that is this is a disease a deer and it also can get into livestock so even if people get bitten by these messages they're still no concerned that we could potentially get United HD no no it's a contrast at this disease EHD with a very definite into the transmission cycle first Frost kills off the midgets with CWD there's no no neck illogical factor which signals the end of the transmission cycle so that's why we see prevalence of the proportion of animals that are positive an individual meal locations in individual hurt it just keeps going up up up in captive facilities at the hall Farm in Wisconsin where CWD was first detected in 2002 the place was depopulating 2006 prevalence was nearly 80% of 4 out of 5 deer in that cap and serve it to silly had it wow we recently we had a farm a deer

I'm in Iowa where in a disease had gone undetected for some. Of time and when the heard was depopulated again about 80% problems but this was a big hurts there were over 200 positives in the single high fenced enclosure and so when is not going to change that it's gross so no stop there's no known feature which stops the transmission cycle and so when you say that something like EHD kills a lot of deer yes it does but the disease transmission cycle stops with CWD we don't know anything that slaps it it's PhD is more like the flu but not that I'm aware of and so when I learned about ADHD and you know comparative diseases

like none other it it as it develops within the heard as it develops within the animal it just continues to grow so it'll start out as a very small problem there's some maps of how it developed in her how it spread in the southwest Wisconsin and we're on the front and it's all correct me if I'm wrong Brian but it's like it's almost like the way it develops within the deer taking it. Of time before it becomes clinical in the deer dies it's almost as if that's reflective of how it moves through the Landscaping moves very slowly but once it's there it's there now I have read about hunters eating meat from some sort of disease deer and getting sick and dying

what would that be

misreporting would have been possibly I mean I don't know where I'd the prion disease likely develop to creutzfeldt-jakob disease okay I'm so

was it the deer that gave it to them well there's no epidemiological evidence that this occurs at this point in time about some of that the human health issues so we can look at in areas where CWD is known to exist do we see higher mortality rates from Crutchfield Yakov is the answer is no cell from an epidemiological standpoint there's no evidence that CWD has crossed over that species barrier in the human now we can take a look at a number of of science experiments that have been conducted and at least in in some of these studies in experimental models we have evidence that the CWD prion protein can cause human normal prions to convert to a disease Associated form but now these are models

it's not quite the same as pumping CWD into the brain of of human patient and seeing what's what developed so the science suggests that there is a small non-zero chance that CWD could become a human health issue there's also some of the more recent science that's been conducted suggest that this barrier we caught the species barrier and it and it really is a very robust barrier one would think that keeps eat a very WDC WD from Crossing into human host that barrier may not be as tough as we think it is and that barrier may be changing over time is that because one of the things we talked about before they discovered different strains of CWD. Cheese's show yesterday

it scared the shit out of me already and it's still all that identical strand of amino acids and its shape that tertiary for must be slightly different and it manifest slightly differently and sheep so now it's TWD there's at least two recognize strains that have been published in your peer reviewed literature there's probably more strange out there that it's it's kind of interesting there was a there was a paper done a couple years ago which looked at the actual architecture of this disease Associated prion protein and there's a there's a portion of it that's referred to as a loop structure and it's just kind of meal if you take a rubber band and or a piece of yarn or something and follow it up into a three-dimensional shape there's a little Loop hanging off the side of this disease Associated prion protein

and in Deer in CWD that Luke is very very rigid okay it's very inflexible shall we say humans it is more of a flexible loop as opposed to the rigid Loop and it's thought that this difference in that architecture his part is partially Yale controls that species barrier experimental laboratory mice their prion protein has the same structure as the healing freon does it say oh you cannot give CWD to a normal laboratory Mouse they just don't get it and it's likely this different some of this difference in their prion structure this one cannot convert that one to a different form so some researchers in

Alberta identified a strain of CWD which came from Wild deers it's not something they engineered in the laboratory they have a strain from Wild deer that does give my CWD know so most of the strains out there mice can you give it they discovered one that mice to get so researchers from a few years ago in and lately I've seen it in them in the popular media that hey this difference in this Loop structure is going to keep people from getting CWD

well the all the all the assumptions that people can't get CWD are based that on this idea that CWD is CWD and it will always be exactly the same thing but our experience with Scrapy strongly suggest that even though there's no there's no DNA in these things that they do change over time they morph overtime into slightly different disease characteristics and eating a large cage it's now in The Hunting Community is there skepticism about this is Ted Nugent's ideas are these unique or is this a common thought that

or is it a convenient thought for them because they don't want it to be real

it's it's a challenge of Education yeah I will be asleep and take it to the

you almost want to stick your head in the sand and just forget about it you know besides of the sort of things that you know your friend that we were talking about before that like I was doing on the farm you know managing deer in a particular way for particular kind of deer which might be contrary to the to the spread of disease what is nobody wants to hear that I can't do what I wanted. My friend John Dudley Farm in Iowa is that he only shoots the big mature males and he lets all the other deal grow to a very large size so he has a really healthy population of big deer on his farm now what are you doing in your place I understand you're just on a mask all

well

I feel like I'm on the front edge well I don't feel like it I am on the front ends of the spread of this disease and there's some in Wisconsin and Wisconsin Southwest Wisconsin so 15 years ago when are 16 years ago when CWD was discovered there a lot of changes in in hunting structured and there was an effort by the Department of Natural Resources to eradicate the disease in in the core areas south of the Wisconsin River about 70 miles from us in 15 years the disease has moved 70 miles an hour that effort that the DNR started was became political and you know it and quite honestly that many years ago I would have likely been a little skeptical I know I would have been skeptical you want me to do what they wanted to kill all the deer in a particular area you know that many years ago had they come to my farm and said we're going to kill all the deer here

the neighboring dear I would have had some real hard questions I have no idea how it would react to it I continue to do like Buck management and you know you were there when we were still doing that and we can talk about you know how how box contribute to the spread of the disease and and that sort of thing uniquely versus dough

we see different prevalence were curves depending on the demographic faction of deer adult males the ones with the big antlers the gears on a wall over there tend to have higher prevalence sometimes maybe two three four times as high as other segments of the population so highest prevalence in adult males followed by adult females and then by Juvenile animals well soon it's likely behavioral reasons why we see that in adult males so what don't male deer during the rut breeding season they greatly expand their home range that contact multiple female for family groups of females earlier in the fall especially with white tail deer adult males tend to gather in these Bachelor groups so there's a lot of social contact grooming things like that so because of their behavior they contact more animals at different times of the year

and this number of contacts it's believed is likely responsible for them becoming infected at a higher rate than other members are in her so now if you are an adult male then you're in the in this group you also have a higher likelihood of being able to transmit disease to other animals because you're out there during breeding season is there any evidence of that any of these deer have transferred this to livestock or that it's gone into agriculture the food sources corn and what have you that could could be consumed by people even that are vegetarians interesting questions show with regard to transmission into cattle it's basically the same situation as with humans no evidence that it has but an experiment since we can push it over that species barrier plants because we have shown research that we've done at the National Wildlife Health Center

I shown it if you grow some plant types in a slurry a concentrate of prion protein that those prions can be up taken through the roots and deposited into stems and leaves and so that's one possible mechanism a second is that cyprian some cells that disease Associated prions tend to form very tight chemical bonds with various surfaces I showed him a paper on the way out here yesterday where they find just about anything they find a plant as well so that dear that's out there with CWD deer shedding infectious agent out into the environment through its urine through its saliva through its feces so if a deer urinates is deer CWD urinates on Plants the prions have a tendency to bind to those plants form a chemical bond it's not just drying on it forms a chemical bond to the plants and literally become part of the plan

show a deer could eat those plants and that could be one of the possible transmission mechanisms so that's the second one the third one has speculated about and some folks have looked at in and it has potential impacts for agricultural Commodities years ago was really really rare probably couldn't happen but now it's in 25 States vast Geographic areas we just south of where he lives in adult male nearly 50% prevalence so when you kill that big buck take a client out of your pocket flip in the air and that's odds of that deer CWD he says just self-adjust 15 miles so now let's go out west so let's go out

let's go up to into the the big agricultural areas in Saskatchewan her off West so you got a mule deer herd out there with CWD I don't say maybe 20% over all of that her to see that you've been out and some of those big league fields in Hayfield how many meal deer standing out there before Sunset shitload okay so take that amount times 20% for that amount whatever presidents have CWD figure out how many times has the deer defecate or urinate on a daily basis and that's a bunch and now think about the possibility that when you harvest those agricultural foodstuffs enroll into big fails that you might have fecal material rolled up into this big best not just might right I mean most likely we did a graduate student that we could have filled Pick-A-Part large bales of hay to really prove that but I mean it's almost certainly

equipment trailers and moving across borders and are those could is there a possibility that these agricultural Commodities then dear could come up to them and be infected by contact we don't know that

brands of scientist is studying other scientists and they don't

you know it's evidence and it suggested they get a tag for that bite people don't want it to be true I'm speaking in absolutes is a real hard thing to do you know it's so you'll hear him say the evidence suggests the information it's just me I just think that's a real important distinction to draw here when you're you're having those kind of discussions either people want absolute proof proof is hard in the biological world because there's so many factors out there we can't control for him but there's certain tactics that have been used quite successful it goes all the way back to smoking you know when you have an idea as to sow the seeds of Doubt merchants of doubt

hey cwt it's not so bad what about one or two what about you HD

so instead of focusing on that saying don't look here look at this one this one is worse why aren't you doing something about this one so it's a simple diversion another tactic witches and that means there's a body snatcher approach this because he's an unrelated issues like EHD does kill animals winterkill Mozart and kills animals for not talking about the same Circle right we're trying to divert the conversation another saying that it's very easy to do it is is cherry picking the literature that have to ditch out there we saw a great example of this about a year ago, there's a lot of letters to the editor being sent into newspapers in areas where cwds used citations from peer reviewed literature and one of the ones they used was they found that in

researchers in Wisconsin found that CWD was not having a significant effect on mortality rates when they study the disease so this is a true statement directly from peer reviewed science what they didn't identify was that when they started that disease was between 2003 and 2007 10-12 11 years ago the next the next study can use as a baseline for comparison at a later point in time she mentioned that exponential growth curve and how early on back in 2003 to 2007 this area disease prevalence was probably lower than 5% now it shot up in that curve and it's probably in that are 25 30 30 plus percentage range so your cherry picking literature to make your argument

it's not having a big effect when they studied they're just not saying when they study it so as a non-scientist but I'm looking at here is everyone's always terrified of the next pandemic disease in this is one of the reasons why I felt it was so important to discuss this because you know people would say they look at it casually good don't eat animals don't eat deer this is this is not that this is something that has the potential to reach large-scale agriculture this isn't made a few one of the things about your farm and we talked about this when we were there is like these animals are farm animals almost because they're they're absolutely free range they're absolutely wild and talk about the deer on your place you don't you don't have them controlled anyway but they're feeding off of your corn there eating all this stuff that people eat their eating that's what they eat they that's one of the reasons why the deer populations are so enormous in Farmland is because it's a massive

get out there so you know nutritionally balanced diet but did the real what would terrifies me is this potential for a pandemic disease also comes with an incubation period and that we are looking potentially at like if you would just objectively look with no estarea and no hyperbole you look at the history of diseases diseases mutate and in many of them come from animals this is why swine flu and avian flu and all these different things have actually come from either farm animals or wild animals that have somehow or another manager transmitted diseases that have more commutated to become dangerous and deadly to humans being this to me seems like a ticking time-bomb as a potential one switch one way or the other like you've observed where they've observed rather with mice

and this could potentially infection and beings and spread across the entire country like wildfire

but we're seeing that spread right now in Deer you soon dear we're seeing now clear Geographic spread for seeing clear increases in prevalence and in areas where the disease has been present the longest we are seeing population level impact Sears locations in Wyoming where we've demonstrated where we proven that CWD is driving population Decline and dryer sets of incapsulate why we should be concerned about deer and is this a mule deer hunting mule deer and whitetail deer and mule deer have an extended range in terms of like their migration that the meeting that's one thing that we realized I believe over the last decade right is that mule deer travel Farmall far longer and fart longer distances for whitening skin there's an interesting research tidbit the state of Minnesota appears to be a fairly recent CW the outbreak in the Southeastern part of the state so

the research is really trying to get ahead of this and figure out what could move this around so they went in and captured deer in the Jason area but radio telemetry collars on these to see just how far do they go on this was a nap in an article just about a week ago top popular media articles it's not published yet but they had a doe single dokkan

pretty long distance circular or 80 miles is as a crow flies from One Direction so in that 80 miles could potentially be spreading CWD if it was an infected throughout crops throughout I mean in this is and then there's that exponential growth so it's there sure takes a long time for it to become a problem in Racine that in Richland County across the river testing is surveillance testing this been going on across the river and it just keeps moving up and it could be in again all these different plants all these different berries people could be eating these berries eating these plants fruits vegetables all these different things and they could potentially consuming these prions

chocolate. Quite a bit about the difference between exposure and disease transmission okay so it is certain that lots of humans are exposed to disease Associated prion protein from CWD and likely from plant materials as well whether that will result in transmission of disease across that species barrier is an open question we absolutely cannot say it will we absolutely cannot say it will not it's an open question and one thing we can though identify very clearly is that the rate of exposure is increasing exponentially as disease has a larger Geographic footprint and prevalence goes up more and more Hunters are just by simple math being exposed to that cause of material so we're rolling the dice and when you do biological experiments I mean there's a certain likelihood that you'll see outcome a or outcome be

you keep rolling the dice enough times you might see an alternative outcome we cannot rule that up when we talked about this when you were on with the with with rinella and I at the farm meat eater podcast number 70 you bring you put it as the chances are very small at this point that it can I mean this is what the CDC in the World Health Organization says well the chances are very small miniscule even but they're not zero

in assuming that we continue to that continues to be the you know the concern and I know you're talking a lot of Joe about about and I get it because after all humans but I've actually begun to focus more on the effect on the on the resource on the on the on the deer tested positive animals properly dispose of meat which is a whole nother you know line of discussion I'm silly venison but I'm not eating you testing the animals every one of them we test every deer killed on the farm

now how long when you raise a cow how long before you kill it like out how long do u l do grass-fed beef and interesting thought you were talking about the deer the whitetail deer on our place eating corn and beans and GMO corn GMO beans Alfalfa whatever they want to eat I control with my grass fed beef other one says hello by the way, but it's so even though my dear they're not organic I can't because it is controlled how ironic farm animals in captivity that are organic pure leading grass as nature intended and you got deer eating Monsanto corn

you know before anybody out there gets the idea that might cattle are confined in the little Barnyard you don't free-ranging with in that pasture you know pasture-raised so short answer grass fed beef I just sent for in fortunately none of it was ready I was going to bring you some but they just went in on Monday I would like to see him go through the security checkpoint 26 so they were two years old and 2 years old in 2 months or 3 months now with the incubation period that you were discussing earlier you talking about a two-year incubation period with deer before they potentially show any effects so these animals would fall into that line between birth and Slaughter that that would be inside that incubation window for deer it could be

actually larger for cow is that correct PSI I think the incubation period is between three and five years on so that's why one of the precautionary measures for BSC in the United States is we don't allow those holder age the cattle into the human food chain what does BSE stand for in spongiform encephalopathy make a mad cow disease so so that's one of the precautionary measure is not allow it cost to get a hold for mad cow disease in their Prime at 26 27 months right and so when they are in an incubation. They're still capable of Distributing the disease though correct well that's what is CWD and was scraping and sheep is well with b a c and a car if I if CWD went into a cow in a in a natural world we don't know exactly what it would look like we know what it looks like when we injected into the brain of a cow but we don't know what it would really

what BAC is quite different in that similarly with with the human prion disease as an individual with Kuru could not give Kuru to another human being consume it so that with her set artificial process involved same thing with VSC is there not shedding that infectious agent out into the environment so when they when they stop feeding the cows the rest D is a different animals on steroids well they're contagious shedding okay that infectious agent cows with b a c or not shedding infectious agent CWD positive deer and Scrappy positive sheep are these two diseases are you now

in the world of TLC's TSE prion diseases are unique among them self but Scrapy and CWD are in a different world of Their Own

okay what if anything can be done

well

I tried to break this stuff down to like the most basic level so guy like me can understand it by time pay for science that sort of one of the things slow this better it's slow the spread of the disease there's a lot of work being done all kinds of studies being done different organizations and the government unfortunately in Wisconsin not as much as we should be doing where you know where a hotbed of it I think that was in Wisconsin quite honestly that we've become an example of how not to handle a disease and a lot of the other states have begun to you know it take that idea that if you don't have it you don't want it so let's do what we can to stop it from coming here that's why you're seeing things like let's not transfer carcasses that you know there's bands on being able to transfer carcasses in Wisconsin and in some cases you can take it to another County you can take the finished meat so you have to bring your meat in it in the air

and then you can take it home in a bit of a problem for you know for some folks we're beginning to stop the movement of of captive deer from one Farm to the other but that's just recent in and they've been hearings on that lately so we as a people resist that right if your economic by to invite Vitality depends on selling and moving live deer you're going to be opposed to restrictions on your economic activity that is one of the primary sources which one of the Infectious sources and the little always correct you to World of Beer

diffusive process of being moved in. On the landscape that's really hard to deal with the other one is anthropogenic or human assisted movement where humans are moving infectious material and that might be how it got from Colorado to Wisconsin in the first place so highly unlikely that a mule deer and whitetail deer got up woke up one morning in Colorado and decided to go 900 miles across the Mississippi River and settle in the western Dane County

elk and mule deer the whole damn thing back just what you did put in the back of the truck if you want processed in the garage and for what do you do with the bones in the non-meat stuff when you're done well back in the day and it still happens we take it out and put it in it with called bone pile coyote pie or something like that dumped on the back 40 if it was positive Ana Wisconsin is going to do everything I can to the southeastern states and some of the Far Western States haven't picked it up if you go to our website you'll see a map there that shows

current known distribution of where the disease is so the other states really don't want they don't want to buy it so it makes sense to look at these anthropogenic factors human identify the possible mechanisms how humans could bring CWD to them to you and stop them either with regulatory framework or with education teaching Connors that it's a risk to move carcasses around is likely much more effective than just putting a rule in place that says you can't do it and there are unscrupulous people who purchased deer from these high fence operations and release them in the wild because they want big racks and animals that like good people don't know there are these high fence operations ocean Newcomb high fence operations cuz some of them wild animals that are contained in a fence these are farms their Farms that grow deer and they grow deer with special protein feed so they have enormous tracks so you have these really

perverse speech examples of a deer and people look at that it it like to to someone who enjoys wild animals you see those me like it's like a stripper with triple F. It's like what the fuck did you just do like these they don't look real they don't like they have like 80 points 8 point buck which is you know very typical or 10 point buck you like wow look at that monster that's a natural animal that lives in the wild they they have these things that they don't even look like deer they look like some some cartoon but it's obvious to all who are in the know I can go over a guy's house and he has one of those over his wall you like that you just walk right at that thing and put a pistol in his head like the Dear Hunter and I like what it what is that that's not even in

wild animal that's some weird science project

well in

genetics play a role in Shawano correct me when I started off the science thing here but but in bigger dear your for your friend John Dudley it say the number for he's doing it the number one way to get big antler deer as it's not that it's Russ light let him get old let him get old and give him plenty of food but several went to in production of antlers it's genetics and nutrition are really the key 3 there but now identify these is genetically Superior when you get back to the definition Fitness genetic fitness there's only one measure of genetic fitness and that's how well represent you are in the Next Generation so let's take an example where we took one of these coat Point whatever and whatsoever

and during breeding season it comes across a Prime 3 and 1/2 or four-and-a-half-year-old 8-pointer you know this physical specimen that you've witnessed on their unbelievable so if you put those up against each other in a moral battle

the end of wild animal absolutely everywhere show every time I answered so so these animals while their bread very much like livestock for very specific characteristics big and these don't necessarily translate into something that would be more fit in the bowl it's also point out that it would the reason why you're bringing this up as these animals actually do fight to the death and happens all the time they kill each other and in combat that's the reason why they have those antlers in the first place they don't have them to protect themselves against wolves like Caribou do they they literally have them to fight with a female caribou have antlers as well and they have these antler so that they could try to fend off animals that are trying to eat them there's a big difference between an elk and deer they have them for combat that's why I want the breeding seasons over the shed them and then they start all over again is interesting example if you live to to History Channel called the Irish elk

fantasize were normal Elkin their antlers were measured in feet instead of inches Cut & Sew during their evolution a time. When they were on the face of the Earth was when animals for larger Predator Square larger these things got gargantuan and they disappeared from the landscape and at least you know they offered author Stephen Jay Gould Stephen Jay Gould has offered up that likely what occurred was a change in the habitat that climate changed over time and that Forest grew up if you're in the plains and you have antlers that are 7 8 feet wide you can walk around but now I'm trees start to grow up how can you survive when the world around you changed and you have to literally walk with your head turns into it and Irish elk went extinct so there's a very real example of a phenotypic characteristics

really in the long-term or not in the best interest of the species a photograph of these Farm deer antlers just right just type in Google ridiculous Farm deer antlers and you get a sense we were talking about for the people to watch this on YouTube because until you see it you don't really you don't understand how gross it's gotten I think one was called the Goliath what I remember well there's some that there was a perfect example that is a perfect example what in the fuck is that cuz that's not a deer like that. Thing is that's crazy what they've done to that dear so product of selective breeding you know cific characteristics that some people will pay a lot of money for ya and there's a certain high fence operations that you can go online and they they know this is what like look at go back to that photo you just had was it like I staying there drawing what was a drawing duh you want to go so quick I thought it was real

look at that thing I mean that is just insane what are the one behind it though very normal looking probably a one-year-old these animals and some people will take these animals and then they import them the purchase them and put them and then release them into the air quote wild and then they'll hunt them and then they'll pretended that's a wild animal if they shot and this is this is a source of CWD CW day in order to be a risk right so it's been shown I mean in the lower 48 were just I think we're at a hundred captive deer and Elk facilities that have been shown to be CWD positive I said we can definitively identify the captive serving industry has been apart of living CWD across the landscape we know that MC to be positive to your haven't moved

heavy Industries even across you International and state lines example can you trace back swear this animal came from it turned out came from Pennsylvania Game Farm in Pennsylvania I know that I doing testing in that source for they found additional positives there so definitively so why let me say that very clearly the CW is a portion of the equation with the first testing of the positive testing of the stuff was first described in 1967 in a research facility in the state of Colorado that's not to say that was the first instance of CW was the first time it was described in soda search deer farms

deer farms have been around for a long time there's if you Google you know how to tame deer you'll find some from the Fiat of the late 1800s when photographs became possible dear following people around we've domesticated animals for a long long time but as an industry probably really came into Vogue in the AL maybe the sixties and seventies and more recently now it's growing hear that industry is growing exponentially I used to work for for Texas Parks and Wildlife before I work for USGS and one of the things I did was administered the the deer breeding program for the state so when I started this I didn't start the program but when I came into that that role in the state of Texas how many states need a permit from the state agency to conduct those activities okay I'm so I was administrating that program I think they're around a hundred and twenty

license to breeding facilities whitetail deer breeding facilities in the state at that point in time you're 10 years later when I left parks and wildlife in Texas there around six or seven hundred so just grew exponentially and now I believe they're there around thousand captive deer facilities in the state of Texas Jesus Pennsylvania there's around a thousand of them Ohio's got several hundred Wisconsin's got a couple hundred so so excite their part of the equation but I don't want to I don't want to place all the blame for cwtf moving it around because there's other possibilities for how this disease moves around dog hit on a lot of them the idea of carcass moving it hasn't been proven that this occurs but it certainly when you look at it from a from a scientific standpoint it's very easy to identify so if you know if I kill a deer

MCW. Butcher my own dear I've got to do something with this stuff okay yeah the meat component in a deer is probably around Thirty 35% something like that so I got a lot of other stuff landfills it turns out are very Lowe's to accept this material and it's almost a bun it might have CWD so we don't want it at our landfill because the effluent might be pumped out onto a farmer's field and I could come back in a few if they see it as a liability so I've got my deer bones and and awful the rest of the material and I drive to the door which is 25 miles away I said no we're not taking that will now what am I going to do with the stuff so I could double bag it in a little bit of time put it out in the trash or maybe on the way home I'm driving past the state on the state Parker State Natural Area of Wildlife Management Area and I see the trail go down there and I drive down that trail and there's a plywood deer bones

that's here

looks and I knocked out over sorry about that gym

show show me the microphone that's it and just one of the one of the concerns is how're we getting our what kind of hygiene do we have with the carcasses soon as something that were talking about a lot more in Wisconsin now and it's and it's become an issue in one of the interesting lady I'm going to come to your advisory committee for Richland County and we so citizen group and we have some say in season structure and then how many antlerless permits there are there's a lot of things we don't have any say in which is fine I'd rather leave it to the biologists but because there are Hunters involved be one of one of the things that happened in our in our spring hearings is that we had folks come in and say you know we're concerned about chronic wasting disease and we want to spread it on the landscape phone

foot bones out on the curb they aren't taking it on the Wisconsin DNR CWD website there's a list of haulers who will take it so there are some that will take it there are some who don't but I promise where they taking it well they're taking it to Clay lined landfills and how it's being handled there be another some question but it can be isolated so the effluent isn't being taken out and pumped on the field it's something that you we can do something about it so there's there's clear science to find a very surfaces a bind a clay particles very very tightly and said one of the researchers at UW-Madison same straw Patterson was looking at this issue that you know 10 years ago to try and figure out his can it be safe we done turns out if you put about an 8 inch clay liner underneath yeah one portion of your landfill you can put all the deer and all of prions there that you want to

do all the Crayons will then migrate down the overtime through the soil when they come in contact with a play clay particles that bind and they don't go anywhere so can be completely safely done so there's there's a way to dispose of these materials very very safely but the the the thought of it the risk associated with it the liability some some landfill on her to say we'd rather not and interesting late because we got we were challenged about this what what are we supposed to do and I can't read it right because they'll well it ends up being a budget issue Wisconsin everything's a budget issue in the DNR is having issues than it is something I like to talk about a little bit but they weren't went when this all first happened in 17 years ago they were incinerating Dear Abby came up no problem but there are

landfills that are taking it there are haulers who will take it they have dumpsters that they use specifically for it they're lined with you know heavy mil plastic they fits their very specific to your bones but some hollers aren't doing it so I contacted the head of a solid waste for the state of Wisconsin and asked will how is this I go on your website and I see some taken some don't and her response was we have no legislative authority to require them to take this

so some are doing it voluntarily and actually one solid waste holler said to me geez were putting the hell. We're stuck in the landfills then you know some deer bones but it's in a simple hygiene so one of the efforts that were working on in in Southwest Wisconsin right now is to into funding issue is to put Place dumpsters in areas where about 500 bucks for a 20 yard dumpster but so that then be able to come by earlier but there bones in that dumpster and then they'll be properly disposed of because we have a holler near us who said we're willing to bring them there to bring the dumpster there and then dispose of the bones properly like they do with one of the butcher shops

processes do they have the setup which is actually when I saw his friends doing that in various places so that people aren't talking to me in the ditch

otherwise you're holding on to the damn bones until you find out whether things if you're if you're being completely careful about the hygiene which we I've been trying to do by the bones in the old milk house down here until you find out whether it's positive or not and I'm literally keeping it the deer bones separate so that when I find out that DeRay was non positive okay I can put those out or something like that so that's one of the things there's a difference between what we can we can there's a natural spreading of the disease and then there's human-like put them on trucks and and moving around it's there or taking the bones around doing hanging fruit in it see it

it's easy it seems easy to me is just a matter of Will and money and then education obviously that we're providing opportunity for this I've been working with the DNR little been on time this morning some discussions about two things one is self-service kiosks to make getting getting a deer test it easier for you essentially cut the head off the deer and leave it in a kiosk with some information about where it was and it's the other fairly simple have been doing this for a couple years on experimental basis but again it becomes up a budget issue so we're hoping that we're going to be able to do is start something called adopt a kiosk essentially that hunters and and people hurt Sportsman's group soul

gather those heads and then take him into the testing facility and therefore cannot keep the budget money targeted at doing the actual testing right next to that

that a self-service kiosk really should be a dumpster that you can throw your bones into why don't you know whether is positive or not otherwise you are holding it the other thing that the DNR suggest that we do is if you kill the deer on your farm leave the bones on your farm

makes sense to me if it is positive

diseases already there and so you're not taking his great a chance of moving it that's not an optimal solution to leave that stuff on the on the ground surface of an optimal solution is dig a hole but yeah it's pretty hard to take sometimes in December in Wisconsin well if I end up working out with me there will be a whole I mean last year we fight just got the phone separate and the ones that we actually took the the from the one dear was it went into the the dumpster at the locker this all seems to me sorry to interrupt but this all seems to me like Band-Aids on the mass of gunshot wounds go back to the not there's nothing we can do about it or the other one that it's always been here which I think the guitar player talked about is there any consideration whatsoever that there could potentially be a cure

absolutely absolutely about some very generic disease management practices human disease livestock disease prevention if you do is do everything you can to keep from moving it artificially that's why we don't want to move the carcasses around that's why you know we don't want to move captive deer me that's why we went when we had an ebola outbreak in 2015 in Liberia and Ivory Coast we stopped commercial airline flights we didn't want people inadvertently moving it up so prevent don't move it around connect surveillance around areas where it is to see what's going on in and states are doing that very well largely the next one is a tough one do something about this he's managed to seize.

and get rid of the disease so that's challenging but two other things number one is support research because if we don't have a cheer today we won't have on it tomorrow either how is resource funded right now

either by States or by the federal government and there's not a ton of money the last one is being transparent with your stakeholders being open and communicative with so is with many diseases we have good Therapeutics okay we can treat some diseases COPD and other prion diseases we have no Therapeutics we have no treatments right now but people are certainly working towards a not too likely it's going to be very challenging to create a therapeutic something that treats a prion disease Because treatment with then me and you would have to get past the blood-brain barrier and once you start this cascading interaction of normal prions to disease associated prions in the central nervous system going to be really really challenging to stop that I mean it's a it's a rollercoaster gone awry by the time it gets up into the brain so then you're looking at preventive measures the idea of vaccines number one and number two is looking at animals that through

their genetic profile are resistant to disease and there's some advances on each front so we can talk about vaccines for a moment so people of individual scientists research outfits have been trying to develop vaccines for chia seeds for prion diseases for a long time none have been successful there's no there's no human prion disease vaccines there's nothing for Via see there's nothing for scrapie but there's research on going and there have been some advances there's a Canadian research group that had a vaccine candidate for CWD they thought it looked very promising so I went to a field of production stage and they actually tried to climb this back seeing in a captive facility in Wyoming good research facility it turned out that this vaccine was not ready for Primetime and actually after after giving this vaccine to some elk giving a placebo Placebo to other out and then leaving him

consider being contaminated facility actually the vaccinated animal Scott cwp faster and it higher rate than the non-vaccinated animals so turned out to be almost didn't work so I said there was some sort of active CWD in the vaccine is that what it is. It was a massive failure but even from fail used you learn can I said that they're working now and paste you know they learned a lot in that experiment there's another research group centered out of the University of New York who published author of paper that had 2015 was their most recent work and they've got a vaccine candidate that provide some degree of protection code for protection from disease all but one of the animals that they gave this vaccine to and then challenge with CWD got CWD so that's not good news

incubation time was extended something like 300 days okay so they're on the right track they have a mechanism that is somehow interfering with the conversion from normal post pre and protein to the disease Associated for the very valuable now will they get there we don't know created vaccine that works that prevents CWD and prevent as opposed to slowing there's a very big distinction so if you have a vaccine that makes the average courses as he's 3 years instead of 2 years or 4 years instead of two years they still have cwt are there any good deer farms that have 100% negative CWD deer in them like none of them test positive The Mask majority of deer farms have never had there is a potential that you could

isolate these populations of completely CWD free deer and if there's some sort of a mass die-off you can reintroduce these deer into the wild book at so you're you're looking at the difference you're looking at the difference there between her that is CW free which means it likely hasn't been exposed CWD versus animals that are CWD resisted through genetics pletely resistant there are different genotypes of the prion protein Gene out there that do impact the length of disease and also seem to have some impact on how often the frequency that these animals get disease but even the genetically resistant deer do get CWD

okay I get it at a lower right they likely transmitted there likely shedding infectious agent so instead of that that kind of garden-variety two-year incubation. It might be closer to a five-year incubation period so now front of one hand you're gone great most deer die before they're 5 years old anyway so this should be a good thing you're talking about a population of animals that have CWD with all these other side effects of shedding infectious agent out into the environment this sat in the other and yo cause a potential risk of human another other health impacts on the landscape so I'm not so certain that this is a success story just like a vaccine that results in a longer corset disease where your deer can get CWD but they die from something else a population of resist animals that have high prevalence of CW

I guess I don't see that it's a desirable endpoint because of the other consequences and potential repercussions is preferable yeah because then you have the means almost like engineering deer to survive longer gives him more potential to spread it absolutely is claims that and there's research going on in some of the servant Farms that deer farms that they've identify genetic markers ones that are not published in the literature yet that are affording a higher degree of protection from disease but until it's published in the peer-reviewed literature and really tested it it's it's a speaking point until that point in time so we don't know if it'll get there we got to put a fence around Wisconsin Doug

giant 130 feet high is 30 feet down and 1/2 an Alaska doesn't does Alaska and Hawaii so lower 48 25 it's more than 50% then more than 50% of states have it wow 25 and 48 units is something that you just can't be dismissed this is not this is not something that's a hoax this is not so the reason why people are upset it was Ted said on the podcast there's a very good reason well look if I earn some kickass Detroit guitar riffs I'm a listen to Ted Nugent if I want to learn about CWD I'm a listing of nitrogen guys like it

and or under-informed but not this

try and put this in perspective okay so you have a disease which is contagious to always fail of Fun close clinical always impatient humans don't survive prion diseases when it enters to the central nervous system it's a death sentence okay so it's contagious it's fatal your the generative disorder it's got to be a horrible way to die okay so that's a pretty significant set of clinical signs or symptoms in an individual Ambler now let's look at the geographic spread rampant Geographic spread so it has a ever-expanding geographic footprint in areas where it has been known the longest we now have prevalence in a cohort of animals adult male so around 50% and in adult females around 30% can you name any other disease of humans fish domestic livestock dogs Wildlife anything else

that has that set of characteristics and that degree of penetrance into the population and you go that's no big deal

obviously very very significant of 24 CWD deer or elk I think it had some photos of the ones that are incubation period in the last six to eight weeks are clinical killed this dear and tested positive tested positive and that's not at the one before it's got some other tumors that grow on the surface of the skin pretty grotesque looking boys

send those fibromas on your eyes and they block your vision it would be but otherwise it's about it's a stressor on animals and you can actually eat them they're fine but I don't think I would that James got a bear the larger image scroll down it what it is Adam that's likely CWD yes absolutely pick the one that's underneath the second one from the left

that one that said the buck there that's that's that's a photograph Hopper is its name with an in the state of Kansas and he has a pretty decent footprint in Kansas that's Game Warden and gets calls about deer acting funny and so he's taking a number good pictures if you can zoom in on that photo I don't know if you can look at what's coming out of that deer's mouth see that stream of saliva that's all filled with infectious material so that's one of the clinical signs is its hypersalivation this disease is trying to spread itself

too pretty fishing yeah but but by doing that by forcing these animals to have all the saliva excretion this is a very effective means of transmitting this disease throughout the characteristics of this whole disease where the protracted incubation period shedding infectious agent through bodily fluids for the majority of that incubation period the Infectious agent persist in the environment for years out two decades I mean if you wanted to stack the deck for disease you couldn't come up with a better set of characteristics plus they look perfectly healthy so we have no idea yeah that they're there their disease until later on in in in the disease progression now is there a prevalence in or is there a higher prevalence in Deer vs. moose vs. elk or anything else we tend to see higher prevalence in Deer species whitetail deer mule deer in isolated areas then we do any either

elk moose there's only been in World War II there maybe only been 10 positiveness okay to date and it's likely in it and it doesn't seem that they're less susceptible it's just that they're likely haven't been exposed because they're not in the same systems and their are most end of the solitary solitary Zakia periodically a single a yearling will will wander down from northeastern part of Minnesota but very very rare what's an interesting story show today there's no evidence that any chain at any member of the dog family has ever developed any TSC they never got BS he is far as we know I know I haven't answered any kannada's gotten CWD now that could be a real observation it could also be that we haven't done enough science on it okay

exposure as opposed to cats in the BSC situation both great cats and domestic cats got a TLC plate who was referred to as feline spongiform encephalopathy and it was from consuming BSE contaminated meat very similar to how she Lion Inn in with CWD in North America we have no evidence that any mountain lion or any great cat or small cat has contracted CWD in Wyoming that I was part of it turned out that the highest source of mortality for CWD positive deer was mountain lion predation and so she doesn't always killdeer well but it predisposes to think about that Progressive neurological degeneration and think about how mountain lions hunt their Ambush Hunters

dear you're not quite right you know I mean this disease is developing your brain you're progressing Progressive dementia it's not at the point where we are human eyes which really are very very poor we can't see disease yet but disease is progressing and an ambush Predator can leverage that and take advantage of that and that weakness in the sea the same thing in Colorado from Studies have identified that CWD positive deer tend to get hit by cars more often than CW negative dear it it's very logical so now let's extend that to two wolves and ask the question could wolves be a management tool for CWD are present in northern Wisconsin heal a lot of other side other locations and at some point wolves and CWD will meet

should have been mathematical models developed which are there's a lot of assumptions built in those models but it leaves it as an open question could a large coursing Predator whose vision and senses are much more cute than ours could they take advantage of this disease in earlier stages and so when disease meets geographically wolves could wolves slow or maybe stop the progression of disease because there because they're taking the week in the Pacific in the bodily fluids could they could they slow the spread or stop the spread maybe could they reverse disease you could likely take all the Predators you could find wolves and mountain lions and dump them into Iowa County just south of where Doug lives and they likely would not be able to eliminate disease but at that has disease spread

geographically at the interface could Predators Be an Effective tool to slow or stop disease from spreading interesting question especially when states are contemplating more aggressive control measures opening up hunting and trapping seasons to reduce population density so close so we don't have good tools and I'll leave it open question do we want to take that potential tool and take it out of the toolbox what about what about okay so we'll put us in our Woods you know from we found a dead One Last Time Steve was there and I was very suspicious of it being a CW cuz was a two-and-a-half-year-old bucket was laying there and turned out it was probably hit by a car but it was fairly well consumed by Coyotes by then and I cut the head off of it and send it in came back now I'm positive what

happens when that Kyle which is going to travel traveling huge distances but say he's eating out of CWD positive deer on the Durham farm and he's running over to Bunker Hill 70 miles away because they do that and he takes us down pull together the coyote it comes out the back end of a coyote and it's still capable it's still infectious they're still infect tivity and it is capable of transmitting disease I said mice don't get it I eat coyote poop correct so they they they don't cut it though not that we are aware of there's a potentially spread it in their urine cuz they would be carrying it so that the coyote you have to ask you you said you could eat CW deposit materials could poop it out X number of hours later and he might be a mile or two away because that's a fairly local Geographic

phenomenon that could be spreading infectious material I have to ask you a quick selfie you more questions when they they defecate on the landscape is it deer likely to encounter and consume that material well maybe not now but it might be fertilized or two years down the road for plants at the deer could eat so but I think that's quite restricted it's a localized you graphic phenomena not something that we can do a hell of a lot about the same thing with with croach you can put CWD in the front end of a crow we're probably other scavengers in cwe comes out the back in about 4 hours later she could have said Chris off the question how far does a crow fly in 4 hours and it is it is it deer likely to consume Crow poop so these have been shown to be possible in a laboratory environment but how much they really apply out in the field is a quick question so we go back

deer to Deer to Deer to Deer we see that slow diffusive process on the landscape that's the biggy that's going on just south of him and now his past him then we have that answer pechenik yeah humans moving at long distances and the potential for agricultural Commodities to be involved and there's likely other things like crows and coyotes the concept in the laboratory but whether that really happening the field as it is entirely open question and if they are how big are they as compared to these other features

so why not do the some of the detractors will also say well you can't stop deer from doing dear activities right licking branches licking each other

those those those normal deer activities but if we're concentrating them in an area let's say a mineral lick

where every year in that area comes through there and then licks at in there for a feeder or a feeder bait pile and we've seen before I mean I've seen big piles where there's a pile of corn is a pile apples with her all eating off the same pile you got all these deer coming into that that's something we can do something about their all these natural movements that we can't do anything about but if we can slow the spread by stopping these unnatural Gatherings of doing the unnatural spreading the disease why would we do that yeah there's a few things GIF factors and then what can we do where disease is truly is

are the things you're talking about the bathing and feeding artificial congregations of animals in where TV is in in Michigan you can't bait and feed a new Wisconsin some of the other states where cwds you can't bait and feed deer the idea is your artificially congregating them to remember that single deer we saw him up there on the screen of shedding me of copious amounts of saliva is that dear goes up to a pile of corn on the ground he's sharing spreading infectious agent in that corner can persist on that corn for a long long time decades healthy naive susceptible animal comes up a eats at Corner Lakes that mineral lick and it's likely that that animal is ingesting viable infectious agent can transmit disease is daycare if you want to get your kids sick here 3 year old kids sick what's the best place to do it synonym for synonym

daycare in Indiana is the analogy there is that pile of corn on the ground so if every child it ever goes to daycare is perfectly healthy they're not little disease factories but we know that's the case so they're great place in schools are great place to spread disease known as kids come home and share it with you and then you can share it with others right same thing they're so these artificial congregations if all the deer healthy will then they can't be a place to transmit disease but we know that's not the case so it it's an iguana's risk factors we can control but now you hit Doug and we get back to this area where disease is established is there anything we can do and there's certainly things we can try but we haven't we haven't exhausted the tool kit yet Mike Samuel uw's New York now retired he he looked at this from a mathematical perspective and he's trying to leverage the idea that adult males have higher prevalence

there they are sinks for disease their Gathering disease and then their shedders of disease as well so what if in our harvest resine in hunting season we focused on adult males okay we Hammer the Bucks because they're the ones most likely to have disease so we would lower prevalence it we're reducing the proportion of population with the highest prevalence of disease the idea is if you knock that segment down enough that you would interrupt disease transmission cycles and you could actually lower heard prevalence over time based of the persistence in the environment but the deer hunter out there listening to me today listening the show today oh now they want us to go out and kill all the Bucks

so it's not going to be a very desirable from a hunter's perspective tool to all the tools we have we consider these like medicine for Verda they're very bitter it is a bitter pill you know you were there when we were still doing wearing the sombrero if you are in a shot of smaller Buck or whatever and now we had a man's when idea that we wanted to grow some bigger bucks but at the same time we were pretty lenient about it or not doing that anymore. Last year were here that 7/8 years ago I wouldn't even take another look at her first buck I shot the first buck I had an ethical shot at now are they giving you more tags or no

there's resistance resistance in The Hunting Community to that that's unfortunate it is unfortunate I'm not one of those those people we are in perfect, you're busy we can meet again we're giving more doe tags or antlerless tags because the other part of it sure we have a population the box it because they're sinks as he sat in there spreading the disease and traveling more you know what the doe and her family tend to kind of stay in one area little bit more or the Bucks have a bigger range but the other thing isn't is population so one of the things that for a couple different reasons we have on our place in Richland County we have an excessive 75 deer per square mile of habitat and I know there's places in the country that are higher than that but you know it's early

it's a big population and I have issue with it for a few differences one of them Z's the other one is that when I have too many deer my little oak trees are getting because they love those little oak trees and they're getting chewed off and I'm trying to do multiple things I'm not just trying to raise deer on our farm in our woodlands so you know that that's one of the issues so there's this demographic issue that that I'm like Samuel it had been working on for then there's the population issue as well we're giving for when I when I was a kid when you bought a buck license you and for other dudes would get together and then fill out this form and send it in in like August to get a what was called party tag and you can shoot one doe between for people because we had they were trying to manage the hurt that they have more beer cuz again when I was a kid seeing there was a big deal it's exact opposite now so now you buy it you get a butt

can you get four

antlerless Tags whatever you tagged that you buy in our County what change from when you were a kid with the population exploded well management was a big part of it exploded is I mean I'm going to be 60 years old well thank you very much thank you pretty good Jamie on the other hand over that kid that's pretty long. Of time and when you when your controller because you don't have any deer and you're managing to increase the deer herd and you have a mentality out there that well I'm not going to shoot a doe because you know around

and they're having to Fons and this year at least in my area we're seeing a lot of those having three ponds that's you can see how that growth of the the herd would be pretty cool if you wanted her to grow stop shooting those who don't want to take her down you shoot those back if I can grad school in Illinois they gave away these blue pens that Hunters collected and it when you brought a dough into the registration station you got a pin that said eyeshadow so the herd won't grow collected this little mementos Yeah couple counties to the north and west of where the question in the 1960s I mean there weren't a lot of deer around there and watched me I was I grew up we we did the regulations in the state didn't allow you to shoot two arrows by 1980 on opening day I remember I counter a hundred and sixty deer on opening day 15 years before that probably Saw 3

something like that so exponential growth in the deer population over that point in time I'm sure in the end end Tavern culture expanded interesting talk with function in the state of Michigan and they've gotta issue meal prep for Tivoli recent like the issue is CWD and others user groups out there that are trying to advise the state on how to manage CWD one of the groups is she is talking about it's called antler Point restrictions yearling Buck 18 month old has fairly small antlers and then when as they get older

they typically gets excessively larger antlers

so a group is out there right now as an active proponent of implementing antler Point restrictions and promoting antlerless Harvest at the same time as a disease management tool lowering the population is beneficial in it if we have if we ever heard of 500 animals with 10% problems that's 50 positives versus a herd of 20 animals with 5% to be worn and that's a dramatic difference the prevalences the same but we have fewer posites out there right so lowering populations overall does make sense with regard to disease but now the other part of antler Point restrictions is allowing males to get older and they argue that that will keep Hunters engaged in a fundraiser engaged will shoot more dose and keep the pie

tuition town and that'll be a good thing but you know we've already discussed adult males have tend to have the highest prevalence of CWD okay I see now you're talking about promoting pushing the more males into these older age groups in an area where CWD is already known to exist and so from a from a biological perspective from a numerical modeling perspective of disease I fail to see how this can work so will it keep it Hunters engaged that's a sociological question that I can't really address but from a purely biological disease driven process promoting more older age animals older age deer in a population with CWD I cannot figure out how that could be beneficial but seems the opposite I'm hoping that through this podcast this information

becomes more digestible because I think that in order to get with you just laid out over two hours in order for someone to get that by reading it's like they're not going to do it most hunters are just not going to do it sorry I have a feeling that like what Ted Nugent said that this is his perspective is possibly way more prevalent than should be and because this information is not that digestible I think that this you know that I know you talked about it on meat eater episode 70 70 and then out today this is going to reach a lot more people and it's in a very digestible form or they can just sit down and listen to it and hopefully we can get the word out on this in a way that it's not getting out now so people understand the consequences of this this is a real issue and if this is not simply like hey we don't want to do this because this could negatively impact our hunting opportunities you might not have any hunting opportunities in 10 years or 20 years

I just this literally could devastate the entire population of deer this is not is not a simple thing this is an incredibly complex thing with a terrible disease that is 100% fatal and is absolutely spreading no question some of the take-home pay well what do Hunters do they sit at deer camp and they shoot the crap around whatever Libations or whatever they're going to talk about things like cmed and good so let those Converse conversation speed driven by fact and science as opposed to rumor and innuendo ride that's what we're doing here today and that's why I think this public information is is so important for some other things I can do we talked about your dog food on a bunch of them yellow hunting is part of a promoting a healthy deerford keep populations low test your dear

and manage those carcasses don't leave them out on the landscape is another category those things it can be done even deer camp what's the easiest thing to do is blame the DNR for every take the Department of Natural Resources okay is it so it's almost a sport to kick around at night and see who can insult the DNR the worst so is regard to disease though is that really an effective use of your time it might be fun but it's likely not affected because think of these State Management agencies that deal with deer might be the agriculture Department of Natural Resources department they are very very restricted and what they can do there within of Leches they operate within a legislative framework okay so if you really want an impact change in how a government agency goes about its business should you talk to the local biologist what should you talk to the elected leader who establishes the legislative framework that that agency Works underneath it's important to put pressure on

are elected representatives in change management used to be science-based Wildlife biologists making decisions about deer management is politically based now politicians are deciding what the Aloft in here that in Iowa County Wisconsin for this this first effort started will see you then work up there dnr's you know they had this idea and it didn't work to stop the disease it didn't get a chance to work because social and political pressure the DNR to vacate their plants and their aggressive measures any more recent leaders that oppose a court case of the state of Missouri the Missouri Department of Conservation tried to implement some restrictions on the captive serving in the street to stop importation of live deer seeing them is a risk factor on the deer breeders sue the state went through you know the court system

and it was decided by the Supreme Court in the state of Missouri about 3 weeks ago that in fact all deer are represent wild deer and that the Department of Conservation was well within their constitutional and legislative authority to implement measures designed to protect the Integrity of viability of that deer herd for future Generations so the Supreme Court said yes Department of Conservation you do have the right to restrict import of animals in the captive serve at the cilities to protect the Integrity of the hurt and I can't put too fine a point on it lost me changed and there's pressure to do that

lot of burping a lot of reasons I've been apart of changing some legislation had to do with forestry and I know how it's done

and you know one of my favorite quote quotes from Leopold is ethical behavior is doing the right thing

even when no one's watching and the wrong thing is legal so just because it's legal doesn't mean it's the right thing to do and it doesn't mean it's the ethical thing to do is there any potential to changing the the limits time limits or making them more widespread if they understand the issue with this and they understand that one of the main tools of of handling this and in a more effective Manner and slowing the Popular Song the spread of this disease with the population of deer is reducing the population itself I mean even these Hunters would resist this because it would Limit Hunting opportunities this could potentially be a large tool in the tool box of conservation stopping the spread short answer is yes I put them on the counter deer advisory committee we have the opportunity to give out as many texts as we want what about antler tags cuz that's the issue that's it 1 / / legislatively control but even with

disease which that might be the number one tool to slow down the spread we used to have a policy in Wisconsin called her in the buck

it was not particularly popular with a lot of hunters cuz you don't want to shoot my buck and I don't want to have to shoot a buck yet she's dope on the buck tag

that wasn't particularly popular thanks for the a mild way to put it off Hunters just like it again with my experience with working with the legislature a small group of people making a hell of a lot of noise with a certain amount of money can change things it wasn't popular popular with me I said well you again you hunted on my farm we shoot way more antlerless deer then we shoot bucks when when are the buck was placed we'd have a stack of buck tags because we were shooting so many pillows that was because it was politically and socially became a political issue it was rescinded and so now what we found in Richland county is we can give we could drop antlerless tags from helicopter shoot as many as you want and we're still going to kill

about the same number though it's about the same number of those it is a little bit it has been a little bit of an object but when we entered a buckwheat killed a shitload of them three times as many and

it becomes it and I understand especially like casual Hunters like you know the gun Hunters big buck A generally

I don't understand how you go out there for 2 or 3 days and you were there we froze our asses it's like well how long does Vicodin stay out here we are really short season we initially had much longer when the CW Management first started we have much longer season I loved it I invited I got to hunt with Folks at one place to hunt or invited folks from the community to come in and Hans are your friends from different places came down and hunted but again the small noisy group and I don't know small is that then I don't know what the numbers are in that but me. Go away so now we're back down to the 90 season has make any sense to me like who who gave into that the politicians in there doing it from an ignorant person from point of ignorance they don't lose any pressure pressure it something like this podcast gets to them I sure hope so man I mean

terrifying couple so the Wisconsin experience was really important and the data shows that the first couple years of this aggressive management with earn-a-buck was actually forcing the population down but it was very unpopular and so political pressure was applied and that tool was taken out of the toolbox thrown on the ground and mediately when you stop doing the buck and you stop having longer Seasons the population Trends reversed and started going back so it was easy to label hey the DNR failed their effort to eliminate Disease by by having a gressive Seasons failed but Doug said we don't know that because we stopped we pulled the plug on the tool Alberta started really blossoming and Saskatchewan Alberta was like we don't want and I found their first handful of cases right

on the border between Alberta and Saskatchewan they took a little bit they started harvesting deer from an aerial platform call the helicopter that helicopter with government agents sharp shooting deer to try and basically eliminate deer in a buffer zone between Saskatchewan and Alberta knock the disease deer out and create a buffer zone where disease wasn't well that was not very popular all over like a fart in church and landowners and Outfitters went to the ministry and said we can possibly have this program I had every chance of being successful and the rug was pulled out from underneath them years later and the western states Montana Colorado Wyoming has been a long time there Wildlife health professionals I have put together

set of uniform management recommendations for the western states and they're promoting the things that we've been talking about reducing of those artificial Congregation of animals implementing a carbon structure to focus on males okay the mail focused the most of the the social group with highest prevalence and also can what I guess I would refer to as hotspot shooting when you see a new spark of disease out there on the landscape get on it don't allow it to become established your only chance to be successful to eliminate this is very very soon before it gets established in starch and spreading so now we're seeing in Wyoming and Colorado and Montana actively talk in there talking to the media there talking to their commissions when they're talking about implementing these regulatory structures at least honored experimental basis recognizing that doing nothing is no longer an option and that's one of the

that was learned from the Wisconsin experiment for lack of a better word that are or failure I mean it was a pretty decent car is pretty decent model of how we were going to control the disease but go out of the car and I'm worth a shit and actively try to defeat something and then say it doesn't work you really have to let it you know this is course and I hope that was happening and what I can see is that I've learned about CWD is that not only survived being learned about the disease but there's been a lot about how to manage it both on a scientific level but on a social level as well and I can tell you man if you don't have it you don't want it

you know 15 years ago I felt and there's so much more knowing now than there was 15 years ago

and I feel like we it's not too late in Wisconsin and we can keep slowing it down and we can protect the rest of the state but we got a lot of work to do and it takes you well but it really does take the medicine is very bitter Finch actual formation to because I don't think people are really aware of the extent of this disease of the danger of it are all the ramifications of it I'm surprised in my area

intelligent people that I know that are casual Hunters so it's getting to be deer hunting time you know I'll talk to one of my car that they don't really well you know they don't know that they don't know and that really is one of the things so yeah I appreciate so much the opportunity to come on here and talk about it and and Brian and and Mike Samuel are going to come to Richmond Center in September which is the capital of chronic wasting disease and we're advertising it while we have widely and and more of that information has good education is a big part of Joe you exactly right yeah I just don't think there's enough digestible education and I think this sort of form is one of the most digestible Deuces put it on your car drive around you listen to it you put in your headphones you at the gym you'll get this information you

heading out and I'm in a way that you're probably not going to sit down and go through these studies I appreciate it as well I'm pretty not very Savvy on social media and things like that I wasn't sure what a podcast was when when an email Steven rinella you asked me to come on in and do meat eater I'm so we did that and I understand that that's been downloaded books 650000 * which for a scientist make a couple zeroes off of there and that's probably the readership on those things so from an impact being able to get a message out to people this took for him really really is helpful and getting it down to a level that Hunters can understand and digestive I think it's very very important because I know we talked about how misinformation active misinformation to try and yeah I guess not so bye

or look over here don't look at this look over there any of these diversionary tactics are very very successful how they were very successful with his tobacco there successful with other scientific invest in Denver and also the simplistic perspective that hey look how many deer get killed by winter you know it's way more than CWD stop stop crying wolf about that I killed some big deer

and I

I get it guys wanted people wanted Hunters want to do the show I want to kill them what they look forward to it they look forward to hunting season it's only one time of year do that we're not just for conservationist what we do is going to affect the future and we have an obligation to do what's best for the resource and what's best for the future and I'll tell you this last year I shot a two-and-a-half-year-old buck opening day and I was a nice little 8-pointer and I celebrated that dear I enjoyed that dear I remember that moment just as much as the 200 inch box that I killed

it's it's different

but it concerns me that at times we get so wrapped up and I was one of a man I feel like a recovered alcoholic sometimes about the whole antler thing you know that I am Doug and I used to be anyway

and the the the the reason for it and how important it is to

make sure that that continues into the future there have been some folks who really you know sounded huge alarms about this and you know you talked about a little bit but it really could become that I want to be able to eat the meat and I want to know that in future Generations you know hundred years now and that farm still there and it's still in the Durham name it's been in my family for a hundred fifteen years I want to know that a hundred years from now that my descendants and their friends and their family are going to be able to come there and still enjoy that and in order for that to happen just like when I'm managing my oak trees so that a hundred years now there's going to be those big oak trees there again a hundred years from now

we have to do what we need to do now in order for this

opportunity be there for the future are hunting Heritage huge not to mention that the thousand people that hunt deer they pump in excess of 1 billion dollars every year into the economy in the state of Wisconsin surrounded by hunting if we put that on a national basis there's millions of hunters and more billions of dollars spent so it's not a small thing when you think about an economics of hunting but the heritage of hunting is very very important I mean I've been hunting my whole life and now I am sitting in my treestand three years ago and she wasn the next County over

2 years ago the first CWD positive deer in Crawford County Wisconsin was detected less than 2 miles to the southwest of the tree that I'm sitting in last year CWD had been detected and another in the second earring Crawford County this time 1 mile to the northeast of where my treestand is I find myself looking at Deer differently I'm looking for those subtle cues and is he isn't it is if it's changing the experience was pretty regular from from Hunters who really is a coin flip out there I'm not so sure I want to hunt there anymore I know because I bought Land South of us you know that significant

portion and they're doing they were they bought it to manage it for a bigger box in population and in all that they came into the County deer advisory committee and talk to us about

what they're doing they shot 43 deer on that property last year all of the Box tested all the other bucks tested positive for CWD

about 25% of the doze and some of the Fonz so it don't want who has CW who has CWD and she's going to be clinical and die in 2 years on the population issue guys are listening

what I planned it about them is what they've done is really worked with bringing in other people not going to do the same on our place bringing in more people to hunt to to take more deer and to do what they can manage because they saw it well they know what they're not seeing Bagel Box anymore because their dad but we've seen that in Wyoming MN what we look at the long-term impacts of disease I talked a little bit about population impacts driving populations down the other saying we would identify these changes in that demographic structure so you feel when you were hunting for the big antler deer you're looking for animals that are for 5 years old mature over mature animals

in an area where CWD is established in high prevalence levels those animals are not going to exist or over the extremely extremely rare there rare now she example of a very large Ranch out in Wyoming is 500000 Acres a date managed historically exclusively for these over mature mule deer in other ones by the antlers and I like that monstrous meal there even in the good times they probably killed maybe three of them a year something like that on that basti courage because there's a lot of sources mortality

good they're not anymore because of those deer are living that long I think about it a math question math quiz for for for Darren here so in this population was Super Hyper so let's say at 18 at 18 months of age yearling deer what say they have 20% traveling so we have that we switch demonstrated that got two and a half probably 30% prepped lunch at three and a half and four and a half and above it it's close to 4045 50% prevalence this is a two-year disease right so half your prevalence dies every year

if you have 20% prevalence

half of those deer going to be dead the next year half the year after that okay so over time you would expect these cohorts to diminish the math question is in that population how many five-year-old box are there because disease penetrance grows over time

dancers not man it's not my alarm

you know again that's why I wanted to bring Brian long because he's going to provide the science and I'm going to try to break it down to you know Doug's level and and and hopefully that you know folks can understand and I know I get emotional about it but you know part of it is even care to go and I

he grew up with that farm you know what's my grandfather's Farm again in that area in the driftless area you've heard me talk about the driftless area before and how important that areas to me this is a big part of that area it is an emotional thing for me

which is why I then look at the science and what can we do about this and I think about you know I think about Aldo Leopold what do right now give me what would he be thinking about this you know everything about this you know I know what my dad to be saying he always thought my my antler thing was bullshiting every time you see a bucket on the trail camera shooter he was just an old school Buck Hunter man you didn't answer on that you shot it and where can I get the emotion part from all of these these these folks and I understand that someone want to kill big bucks and you know maybe because I have killed a couple of big ones that's and it's not as important maybe it has something to do with being 60 years old and maybe also you understand the consequences of killing a big buck or desire to achieve something it's more difficult than shoot

young want this more at stake here if you come out you started the first program of wildlife ecology at University of Wisconsin in the 1940s populations of deer in the northern part of Wisconsin work growing by leaps and bounce and they were traumatically changing the landscape Landscaping eating Eastern White Cedar and deer in Northern latitudes are together in the winter time I'm so Leopold knew that this was deleterious to the long-term viability that ecosystems he took people out and owners at Hunter's out into the Stereo Hearts in the spring to show them from there was nothing to eat within reach of a deer on its hind feet and there were bodies of dead deer that it's starve to the winter time

demonstrate to them the consequences of mismanagement of deer hurts so he was a real proponent of showing people the results of doing things the wrong way education it comes back if it's what we're trying to do not saying that yeah we're Leopold in or anything like that

education getting information of getting accurate information out if maybe one of the biggest things we can do I think you guys are done here today so thank you thank you for being here Brian thank you Doug for organizing a shake from the new together of the really happy we got a chance to talk and scare the shit out of me thanks for my pleasure thank you to the cash app you can download the cash app for free in the app store or Google Play Market and don't forget when you download the cash app enter the reward code Joe Rogan all one word you'll receive $5 in the cash app will send $5 to Justin wrens fight for the Forgotten charity thank you also to LegalZoom go to legalzoom.com right now get yourself a will motherfucker it's legal zooms National make a will month so go to legalzoom.com and make sure you enter the reward code Rogan in the referral

box and check out for more savings that's code Rogan for special savings only at legalzoom.com where life needs legal and we're also brought to you by my favorite toothbrush quip the only subscription toothbrush that's approved by the American Dental Association and they make an excellent toothbrush it's very slim and sleek and well-designed and starts just $25 if you go to get quit.com broken right now you get your first refill pack free with a quip electric toothbrush that's get your first refill pack free at getquip.com Rogan spell getquip. Com Rogan alright thank you thanks for TuneIn folks appreciate the fuck out of you tomorrow Henry Rollins going to be here good times and and then this weekend Kansas City and st. Louis

so see you soon thanks for tuning in I hope you enjoy the show by

Help improve this transcript!

Episode Sponsors