Sharpshooters begin destroying elk herd

This is a farm in Minn. not ND.  Looks like the authorities have the problem well in hand.  Does this out of state article have anything to do with the elk farms in ND?
Oh yea,it could,it might, or maybe happen in ND,or any where else.     

mauser,
Your last sentence sums the situation up quite nicely, thank you. Problem is, some get it, some don't. Easy to see what side of the fence you're on and that's also understandable.

The fact remains CWD has been found in numerous pet elk herds and sportsmen should be concerned, as most are. Well, those that consider the outdoors more than a playground up for the highest bidder anyways.

PatsPlace,
I was thinking the same thing, must be a huge undertaking. Sounds almost like an act of desperation in an attempt to correct a problem someone else created.
 
Sad deal, thanks for posting Bob.

Pat's Place.  You have a good point, but they tried a bunch of methods to sterilize the ground over in Colorado where the whole boondoggle started or at least where it was discovered.  Put tons of lye and other things in those pens even, and plowed it in, etc. and left it for years, etc. They had lots of pens so tried different techniques in every pen to see what might work.   When they reintroduced elk and deer back in those pens, they came down with it again, years later even.   Nothing so far has been developed that works.
The trouble with prions is that they are not bacteria or viruses that you can kill with conventional methods or even long term isolation with "tincture of time!"    They are little bits of genetic protein that can last ??? who knows??   Can't cook em, freeze em, or anything else to death.  
I agree, removing topsoil that presumably is infected would logically be bound to leave billions of prions here and there.   Its a tough problem for everyone concerned.
 
Then to build a housing development there is questionable.  I wouldn't invest in it, anyway, even if I had the money!     Can you imagine the legal quagmire that would result if even ONE person developed Crutzfield-Jaeger disease or a variant of it even 30 years later,even if it had NOTHING to do with the previous elk.   If I were the developer I'd want to have some kind of liability "tail" insurance coverage, though with the present state of knowledge I doubt they could get coverage for such a scenario!   Maybe develop it, collect your money, then move to the Cayman Islands! LOL 
 Not paranoid, but if I lived there and had kids, I'd be a bit reluctant to let them play out in the dirt.  At least not with our current state of prion knowledge.   

Not to worry Bowhuntin the HUSU and thier look alike organizations {FC} are working hard to end the problems with hunting by ending it.  One piece at a time.

bobcat if what you say is true it is not safe to walk on the ground in Co. hunting then as there has be wild animals with CWD in the wild. 

Yes I know there'll be some posts saying that it hasn't been proven to be passed to humans!  (yet)  No, but the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming.  Researchers can't get any willing volunteers (you'd need hundreds if not thousands because of its presumed low infectability) to eat meat from infected animals, wait 20 - 30 years and see what happens!    Any volunteers out there???   There is some kinds of definitive  experimentation you just CAN'T do with humans!   Hitler and his goons notwithstanding......

Sounds a lot like lead poisioning from deer meat.

Did this elk herd get CWD from old soil?  Or did they get it from the wild deer?  Or did they get it from a new animal introduced to the raised animals?

All I know is every single fall thousands of hunters shoot deer in this state, Minnesota and everywhere else throughout the country.  We could be killing an animal that has CWD.  We then could ultimately be eating an animal that has CWD.  So I'm not sure what the problem is with developing the land??  I mean, if we go out in the field and shoot a deer that potentially has CWD every single year what is the fuss about?  When it catches CWD it doesn't instantly become a zombie and we can notice it is sick.  If CWD was such a scare to humans we wouldn't even be allowed to hunt.  Although, maybe I should be quiet, PETA might take up that option to inflict fear upon us all.  Sounds similar to the lead scare (and I give the lead scare a tad more credibility than this CWD concern as far as humans go).

Without the smoke and mirrors,no facts just could be,might be or maybe how are the HSUS,Petas, and FC groups going to get the non-hunting public help get rid of hunting of all forms?

Yea some just don't get it!!

National News : Prions Found in Feces of Deer Asymptomatic for Chronic Wasting Disease


Date: September 09, 2009
Source: University of California, San Francisco


Contacts:
Jennifer O’Brien
jobrien@pubaff.ucsf.edu
415-476-2557San


Scientists have discovered that deer asymptomatic for a fatal brain condition known as chronic wasting disease excrete the infectious prions that cause the disease in their feces. The finding, they say, suggests a plausible explanation for transmission of the disease among deer and, possibly, elk and moose in the environment.

The study is reported as an advance online paper on September 9, 2009 in the journal “Nature.”

While the study reveals that prions are shed in feces of symptomatic deer as well, the discovery that the infected deer shed prions (PREE-ons) in their feces many months before they show clinical symptoms has particularly provocative implications, according to the research team, at University of California, San Francisco and the Colorado Division of Wildlife’s Wildlife Research Center.

Deer, elk and moose inadvertently consume feces and soil in the course of their daily grazing. Given this, the team set out to determine whether the animals could develop chronic wasting disease through long-term consumption of contaminated feces. They did so by measuring the amount of prions contained in the feces of orally infected deer up until the time they became symptomatic and then calculated whether prolonged exposure to the concentrations of prions in these feces would be enough to cause the disease.

“Prion levels in feces samples of asymptomatic deer were very low compared to those in the brains of the same deer at the time of death,” says the lead author of the study, Erdem Tamguney, PhD, an assistant professor at the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, based at UCSF. “However, the total number of prions excreted over time was sufficiently high enough to cause disease in other deer.”

The susceptibility of animals to infection, he says, might be increased by the simultaneous ingestion of clay soil, which is thought to enhance the infectivity of prions, possibly by slowing their clearance from the gastrointestinal tract.

“Our findings suggest that prolonged fecal prion excretion by infected deer provides a plausible explanation for the high level of transmission of chronic wasting disease within deer herds, as well as prion transmission among deer and other cervid species. Our work may also explain transmission of scrapie prions among sheep and goats,” says senior author and Nobel laureate Stanley B. Prusiner, MD, UCSF professor of neurology and director of the UCSF Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases.

The study did not examine whether chronic wasting disease could be transmitted to humans via exposure to deer feces. To date, transgenic mouse studies have indicated that chronic wasting disease does not transmit to humans, but scientists remain open to the possibility that it could.

“We can only say that prions of chronic wasting disease have not transmitted to mice genetically engineered to carry the normal, healthy form of human prion protein in earlier studies,” says Prusiner. “That said, we do not know for sure that deer or elk prions cannot be transmitted to humans.”

The prion is an infectious form of the normal prion protein, which has been found in all mammals examined, including humans. The lethal, infectious form induces the normal protein to twist into a malconformation, initiating a disease process that ravages the brain. Prion diseases, seen in cervids, sheep, cows and humans, are also referred to as spongiform encephalopathies. Prusiner won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1997 for the discovery of prions as a new biological principle of infection.

The new study sheds light on a question that has puzzled scientists for a number of years: how chronic wasting disease spreads so widely through herds and species in contrast to bovine spongiform encephalopathy in cattle, in which horizontal transmission between animals is rare.

First detected in a research facility in Colorado in 1967, chronic wasting disease has since been detected in fourteen states in the U.S. and in two Canadian provinces, predominantly in the West, both in the wild and on commercial farms. In wild herds, it can sometimes be found in up to 30 percent of animals; in captivity nearly entire herds can be affected.

Studies have shown that the disease can be transmitted orally – deer experimentally fed infected brain tissue become sick – but the animals are not carnivores, nor cannibalistic. And while prions have been reported in the saliva, blood, muscle, urine and antler velvet of symptomatic animals with late-stage disease, there is little evidence that these sources are responsible for high incidence of the disease within herds.

Epidemiological findings argue that chronic wasting disease spreads efficiently across populations. When healthy deer grazed on pastureland previously used by deer with chronic wasting disease, the healthy deer eventually develop the disease. But there has been no clear mechanism of transmission of prions in this way.

The UCSF scientists teamed up with co-investigators led by Michael Miller, DVM, PhD, of the Colorado Division of Wildlife’s Wildlife Research Center, to investigate the issue. Five deer were orally infected with one gram of brain tissue from a deer that had died of chronic wasting disease. Then fecal samples from the animals were collected at five time points – once before they were infected (as a control group), and then post infection at 3-4 months, 9-10 months, 13-14 months and 16-20 months (when animals show symptoms of the disease). Symptoms include inability to hold the head erect, excessive salivation, unsteady gait and poor grooming skills.

The UCSF scientists irradiated the deer feces to kill all bacteria and viruses, and inoculated the fecal material into the brains of mice genetically engineered to over-express the normal, healthy version of the elk prion protein.

An analysis showed that feces collected before infection and at 3-4 months post infection did not transmit the disease to the mice. At all subsequent time points, however, many fecal samples did transmit the disease. Prion infectivity was found in 14 of the 15 samples collected from the five deer as early as 7-11 months before neurological symptoms developed.

To measure the prions in feces, the team conducted a separate experiment in which they correlated the time required for mice to become ill from various prion concentrations in infected elk brain tissue (brain samples were diluted with varying amounts of water). Then they compared this data to the incubation times of the mice inoculated with contaminated feces, determining the amount of infectivity of the samples at different time points. While the number of prions in individual samples was low, the amount that accumulated over a 10-month period was similar to that in brain at the end-stage of the disease.

The findings offer strong evidence, says Prusiner, that prion contamination of forest, shrub-steppe and grassland habitats may be largely responsible for the high incidence of the disease both within and between cervid species and account for geographic spread as deer move between seasonal ranges.

Other co-authors of the study are Lisa L. Wolfe, MS, DVM, and Tracey M. Sirochman, BA, of the Colorado Division of Wildlife, Wildlife Research Center; David V. Glidden, PhD, professor of epidemiology and biostatistics, Christina Palmer, MS, Azucena Lemus, BS, of pathology, and Stephen J. DeArmond, MD, PhD, professor of pathology, all of UCSF.

The study was funded by the Larry L. Hillblom Foundation, the Colorado Division of Wildlife, grants from the U.S. Department of Defense National Prion Research Program and the National Institutes of Health.

UCSF is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care.

If the agreement was reached that the delvoper has to remove the top 2 inches of soil,to remove the infected feces,what happens if a deer is shot on a lndowners field and has CWD?   This must mean the landowner has to remove his soil?  What are the resonablities of the landowner?  Why would a landowner even take the chance of a CWD animal beibg shot on his place?    Maybe,might be,or could be the HSUS,Peta,and FC are right,end this hunting one piece at a time.

mauserG33-40 Said:
If the agreement was reached that the delvoper has to remove the top 2 inches of soil,to remove the infected feces,what happens if a deer is shot on a lndowners field and has CWD?   This must mean the landowner has to remove his soil?  What are the resonablities of the landowner?  Why would a landowner even take the chance of a CWD animal beibg shot on his place?    Maybe,might be,or could be the HSUS,Peta,and FC are right,end this hunting one piece at a time.

What is your solution to dealing with CWD?  You run your yap a lot regarding why this won't work, or that solution is bad but you never offer any solutions.  I belong to 2 "clubs" or organizations.  The NRA and Forks Rifle Club, and that's it, so don't start your BS about me belonging to or aiding HSUS or any other groups, just answer the question below.

So, how would you deal with CWD?

Horsager,

The solution is to let the proper authorities, such as USDA, board of Animal Health do their job. That is what we pay them for. They have it under control. The N.D. Board of Animal Health has done an excellant job of not allowing any animals to be moved from any states or locations where CWD exists in the wild or had the potential to exist on a game farm. Wyoming doen't have any game farms yet has one of the highest incident rates of CWD.

We have all heard the saying, "It seems like one hand of government doesn't know what the other is doing." There is always going to be finger pointing, and some group trying to get as much mileage out of this or that thing as possible. So my question is why did Bob Kellam post this? For the same reasons Dick Monson posts that.

http://www.fishingbuddy.com/crp_meeting_youor_input

It is a very short threat. Two posts. If you wonder where these guys are coming from you have to attend the same meetings and read the same material.

http://www.steadystate.org/files/SSE.pdf

It is a very long read, however, it is a window into some peoples psyche. Please read it. Bowhuntin, bobkat, I would like your opinion.

A woman asked Benjamin Franklin, "Well what sort of government have you givin' us?" He replied, "A republic, if you can keep it."                                                                                   

Dewey

I didn't know where to post it as there was no topic heading for Elk Hunting in MN

Dwight
 
I posted it because I thought it was interesting and I thought it might be interesting to others. The subject is not going away any time soon and may never be resolved.

Wow!  Excellent research summary Tim!  Thanks, except that it took me 3/4 of an hour to read it twice and try to digest it.  Not like the deer digesting prion infected brains, though!  
As Bob said, there's so much simply not known, but fortunately new research is coming out every day.  Prions are one of the the hot topics in infectious disease these days.   
As far as having a kid play and eat dirt in a heavily prion contaminated area even though the topsoil might have been removed, each to his own, but in the light of current research I'd be pretty nervous letting MY kid do that, or my grandkids, or my friend's kids.  Future research may sort it out clearer, but for now I'll rest my case.    
Fortunately the infectivity of it is very low, even to other deer, and prions in C-J disease in humans have been shown to have extremely long incubation and development  times.  And yes, how its spread to/between humans (other humans somehow? food? infected meat?spontaneous?) no one (except Mauser and Fritz ) know the answers.  Hopefully in the future science might find more answers.   I suspect that our knowlege of prions is somewhere about where our knowlege of bacteria and viruses were about 150 - 200 years ago. 
It'll be an interesting thing to follow.  Another disease process that didn't even exist when I was a kid student!  Way back then.....
Would I knowingly eat a CWD infected animal?  Might or might not be safe but Nope, unless I was starving, and from the looks of my belly I'm not close to that yet!  LOL

There has been extensive research done on spongiform ensepholopothy and it's transference to humans in the UK in response to the BSE outbreak that happened in the cattle herd over there a few years back, as well as scrappies in the sheep. What was found after years of research involving hundreds of thousands of people was not one documented case of transference to humans thru the consumption of muscle tisses(meat). There are theories that are unproven that are looking at the possibility that consumption of brain tissues or spinal column tissues may increase risk, but once again no credible scientific proof to this effect. One other thing that was determined from these studies was that in the UK over a twenty year period more people died from falling down strairs than did from the human form CJD.

There are many species of animals that have some form of these prion diseases that have been around since the beginning of time. And while Bobkat is correct that scientific research sorting out these diseases is in it's beginings, it must be kept in perspective as to it's "effects" . Perhaps he could share the rareity of contracting the human form of this, CJD, and it's relatively unknown cause. There are also a number of diseases that are soil incubated that hang around for unlimited time frames that are a "risk" to humans that also must be kept in perspective.  So if one is worried about a one in however many million chances yet unproven of contracting something from consuming meat from animals I suppose you could have any deer you shoot tested for CWD, lead levels, TB,anthrax, ect.................

Those of us involved in animal ag, know firsthand how groups such as HSUS, PETA and others use the misrepresentation of facts to further their agenda. In the BSE issue, we all saw the videos of a stumbling milk cow, then cut to the gal lying in a hospital bed shaking uncontrolably. No scientific link or proof, just a visual lie of perception. They are already using the "risk" of CWD as a reason to "stop hunting and protect yourself" in their agendas. I once had a gal tell me that because of some literature she had recieved from PETA, she would never again eat beef because of the "risk" of BSE, all the while puffing on a cigarrette.

As mentioned earlier, most state Ag Depts.. as well as the State Boards of Animal Health along with USDA, have done exceptional jobs in their part of controling what is simply one of many diseases that affect captive animals. However, this becomes more difficult when it involves "wild" animals and the agencies involved in their management are not as willing to work together to address the primary cause of outbreak of these diseases, overpopulation. Perhaps the demand to have "plentiful" numbers of these animals avaliable for the hunting experience has contributed to increased instances of these diseases more than some might admit.

Of course more people die falling down stairs than CJ disease.  That has to be one of the silliest comments I've seen!  LOL    Its an uncommon disease  but  just because its uncommon doesn't make it unimportant, especially with its incidence and prevelance increasing.   Odds of any of us getting it are low, BUT if you do get it, the incidence is 100%!   Remember, it wasn't even described or recognized till the 70's.  
  
Not to get into a voiding contest, but you are quoting old, dated, highly selected, well spun research, some of which is true, some outdated and not true.   We all realize you are using it to bad mouth HSUS as usual and of course indirectly use the specter of these humaniac groups to bolster the high fence industry, but you are preaching to the choir on the Humaniac  topic and it doesn't warrent regurging it all up agian - same old, same old.  Up to your post the topic was CWD and its transmission in animals and new research along that line. 
NOT high fence hunting, HSUS, and all that old tired worn out crap topic! 
Last post from me.    I'm going lion hunting....

Yep, its the same old agenda Bobkat. It never ends. LMAO.

Bobkat, Point out if you will any reference in my post to HF. If you are open minded enough to read what was wrote, you would realize it was all in relation to these prion diseases and issues that come along with them. Here I stayed on topic of these diseases involving CWD.BSE.CJD, and you bring the HF topic into it. Seems you just can't leave it alone!!!!   The factual refference to more people being killed falling down stairs was to show the incredibily low risk of contracting CJD let alone it happening from eating meat from animals. The refence to HSUS and PETA was to show how these groups use these mistruths of this "scientific data" on these very diseases CWD, BSE to further their agendas of ending  animal ag as well as hunting.  If you would please specifically point out the "research" I mention that is not true.

Bobkat you were the one that alluded to the risk of contracting a disease such as CJD by consuming meat from these animals in your post much like certain groups did during the BSE issue, until science proved this "circumstantial evidence" unfounded. So if you can please provide scientific data that consuming meat from animals that no one knows wether they have CWD or not causes any degree of elavated risk that a sane person would become alarmed over.  Not consuming deer meat because of the existance of CWD is about as reasonable as not consuming deer meat because people shoot lead bullets. If a person knows an animal has any disease it is unlikely they will risk eating it even without a medial professionals advise.