The CWD "epidemic" has been overdone since the beginning. As you mentioned, it has been dealt with in Colorado and other western states for years.

Funny, but is did not lead to a decimation of the deer heard in Colorado...or in Wisconsin as we were led to believe, and the incidence has been fairly steady around 3-5% of the population.

I'm not sure if it is the insurance industry driving the CWD mania at the DNR as much as it is bureaucratic growth. Think about it when bureaucracies and government agencies try to get funding. What is the best way to do it: by saying everything is pretty much under control, or by saying that you have a "crisis in deer management"? The "crisis" is either CWD, or "overpopulation", or some other issue that in some way seems to increase the importance of the "deer managers" tasked with taking care of the situation. Look no further than the continued declarations by the DNR that the Wisconsin "faces a deer population crisis". Crisis? In unit 61 where I hunt, the population goal has been decreased three times in the last 14 years, so even though the overwinter population has remained fairly stable, the unit is now considered "over goal", necessitating t-zones, EAB, and other bureaucratic remedies that pass for great excuses for more bureaucratic oversight.

CWD is the newest, more frightening excuse to come up with. "Eradication" is and always has been an impossibility, and given the small levels of infection relative to overall population, unnecessary.

Keep all this in mind when you think about leaving deer management decisions soley in the hands of the so-called "deer management professionals" who have state pensions and cadillac health care plans at stake.