Welcome to the Eradication Zone
#1
Thread Starter
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: CWD Central, WI.
Posts: 2,062
Welcome to the Eradication Zone
Grant Co.
Channel 3 news this morning is announcing CWD has been found well outside the current zone in Grant co.<img src=icon_smile_dissapprove.gif border=0 align=middle><img src=icon_smile_sad.gif border=0 align=middle>
Just found this report on another site. Note the positive result came from an independant testing facillity. <BLOCKQUOTE id=quote<font size=1 face='Verdana, Arial, Helvetica' id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote> Deer outside zone diseased, lab says
Buck shot in Grant County tests positive for chronic wasting
By LEE BERGQUIST and MEG JONES
[email protected]
Last Updated: Dec. 3, 2002
Chronic wasting disease has been discovered for the first time in a wild deer outside a 411-square-mile zone west of Madison, preliminary tests show.
A 3-year-old buck shot in Grant County in southwestern Wisconsin during the nine-day gun hunting season tested positive for the fatal deer disease, according to Wisconsin Viral Research Group in Wauwatosa.
The private diagnostic lab, which reported the results Tuesday, is conducting the lab work for test kits that were marketed to hunters through sporting goods stores.
If further testing corroborates the results, the finding is significant because the state Department of Natural Resources would likely have to expand its efforts to control the disease by wiping out deer in a new area.
After the disease was first discovered on Feb. 28 in three deer that were shot during the 2001 season, the DNR decided on a strategy to kill all of the deer in the zone that covers parts of Dane, Iowa and Sauk counties. So far, 41 wild deer tested positive within that region.
A DNR official said he was not surprised by the new discovery.
"If there is an expectation that there is more CWD out there, I wouldn't be surprised to find it in that part of the state," said Tom Hauge, director of the DNR's Bureau of Wildlife Management.
However, the positive result in Grant County is clouded because the testing technology used by the private lab is not approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Testing on all other deer this season relies on government-approved tests.
Firm says test is accurate
Konstance Knox, a founder of Wisconsin Viral Research, defended the accuracy of the company's testing technology, noting that it is patented by a U.S. Agriculture Department researcher and is currently under review by the agency.
Knox is in the process of double-checking the results with a different, approved procedure that is being used on thousands of deer tissues samples taken by the DNR.
Knox's lab is under contract with Wildlife Support Services of Hayward, which sold about 10,000 kits to sporting goods stores in Wisconsin.
So far, Knox's lab has tested about 300 specimens out of about 600 returned so far, and turned up the one positive result. Two other specimens were suspicious but negative, and are also being rechecked.
State officials will have to analyze the results of the tests from Grant County deer and any others that may be found.
"Where we are right now is that we need to sit back and let all of the test results get in," Hauge said. "We are not going to charge out and start killing deer in other places."
But if results show that chronic wasting disease is not widespread and found only in pockets, the DNR would initiate new plans to wipe out local deer populations, he said.
In addition to the 411-square-mile area, positive cases of chronic wasting disease have been found on game farms in Walworth and Portage counties.
Hunt shoots 10.5% fewer deer On a separate front Tuesday, the DNR reported that hunters killed 10.5% fewer deer during the nine-day 2002 gun season than last year.
Hunters killed 261,093 deer, compared with 291,563 last year, the DNR reported in a preliminary count on Tuesday.
While the tally was better than many people had expected, the kill was down 20% when compared with the average over the past 10 years. A record 442,581 deer were shot during the nine-day gun season in 2000.
The nine-day gun season - a frenetic period when most of Wisconsin's deer killing takes place - ended on Sunday.
DNR Secretary Darrell Bazzell said he was pleased with the results.
"I think that given the unusual nature of this year's hunt, with the early lag in license sales, the fear and uncertainty caused by the discovery of CWD in Wisconsin, and the extraordinary effort to collect CWD samples, hunters and staff can be proud of the effort they've made," Bazzell said in a statement.
But in its aftermath, Wisconsin is still teeming with whitetail - and that will force wildlife officials to find ways to keep the deer population from growing out of control in 2003.
The odds were certainly stacked against a heavy deer harvest this year, said Peter Gerl, executive director of Whitetails Unlimited, a national organization based in Sturgeon Bay.
Aside from worries about chronic wasting disease, Gerl noted that the late start to the hunting season - which is always the weekend before Thanksgiving - meant the rut was mostly over and animals were not moving around as much.
Other factors that cut into the deer kill: A 10% dip in license sales meant there were 60,000 to 70,000 fewer hunters roaming the woods, a lack of snow cover throughout much of the state made it more difficult to see deer, and hunters in tree stands were hampered by high winds during opening weekend.
"All that combined, we feel pretty good with the 10% drop in the harvest," Gerl said.
Whitetails Unlimited spent money on billboard space, letters to 550,000 hunters and radio announcements encouraging people to hunt. Gerl said the public relations push probably prompted some fence-sitters to buy licenses.
DNR falls short of goal While more deer will still be killed in other hunts that take place through Jan. 31, the DNR has fallen short of killing the 25,000 to 30,000 deer in the eradication zone west of Madison.
So far, more than 11,000 deer have been killed in that zone - 2,006 during the nine-day season and more than 9,000 deer from a series of hunts since the disease was first discovered.
The DNR did not expect to kill all of the deer this year, Hauge said. The agency is mulling other options to kill more deer over the winter: allowing landowners to kill more deer, bringing in DNR sharpshooters on property where landowners don't want to shoot deer themselves, and using bait to attract groups of deer and then shoot them.
As for Wisconsin's booming deer population, wildlife managers in the coming months will estimate populations and determine which parts of the countryside - or deer management units - should be open to extra hunting to thin the herd.
"This harvest is going to help for a while, but, of course, come next spring we'll have a new set of fawns and we'll be back at a fairly large population again," said Dave Evenson, the DNR's interim deer and bear ecologist.
Although Gerl was happy with the harvest numbers, he said it doesn't take care of the problem.
"The end result is that if our deer population is larger than it has been in the past, it's just going to add to the dilemma of the overpopulation," Gerl said. "If the population increases, it'll force the DNR to be more creative with alternative hunts aside from the traditional nine-day season. What that is, I don't really know."
Tuesday's deer kill figures also revealed that 36,000 deer samples were taken for chronic wasting disease - and the DNR had wanted to test about 50,000 deer.
Laboratory analysis from the nine-day season is just beginning to make its way to the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory in Madison, according to director Robert Shull.
No new positive results have turned up so far at the state lab.
<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face='Verdana, Arial, Helvetica' size=2 id=quote>
Edited by - nub on 12/04/2002 07:54:15
Channel 3 news this morning is announcing CWD has been found well outside the current zone in Grant co.<img src=icon_smile_dissapprove.gif border=0 align=middle><img src=icon_smile_sad.gif border=0 align=middle>
Just found this report on another site. Note the positive result came from an independant testing facillity. <BLOCKQUOTE id=quote<font size=1 face='Verdana, Arial, Helvetica' id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote> Deer outside zone diseased, lab says
Buck shot in Grant County tests positive for chronic wasting
By LEE BERGQUIST and MEG JONES
[email protected]
Last Updated: Dec. 3, 2002
Chronic wasting disease has been discovered for the first time in a wild deer outside a 411-square-mile zone west of Madison, preliminary tests show.
A 3-year-old buck shot in Grant County in southwestern Wisconsin during the nine-day gun hunting season tested positive for the fatal deer disease, according to Wisconsin Viral Research Group in Wauwatosa.
The private diagnostic lab, which reported the results Tuesday, is conducting the lab work for test kits that were marketed to hunters through sporting goods stores.
If further testing corroborates the results, the finding is significant because the state Department of Natural Resources would likely have to expand its efforts to control the disease by wiping out deer in a new area.
After the disease was first discovered on Feb. 28 in three deer that were shot during the 2001 season, the DNR decided on a strategy to kill all of the deer in the zone that covers parts of Dane, Iowa and Sauk counties. So far, 41 wild deer tested positive within that region.
A DNR official said he was not surprised by the new discovery.
"If there is an expectation that there is more CWD out there, I wouldn't be surprised to find it in that part of the state," said Tom Hauge, director of the DNR's Bureau of Wildlife Management.
However, the positive result in Grant County is clouded because the testing technology used by the private lab is not approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Testing on all other deer this season relies on government-approved tests.
Firm says test is accurate
Konstance Knox, a founder of Wisconsin Viral Research, defended the accuracy of the company's testing technology, noting that it is patented by a U.S. Agriculture Department researcher and is currently under review by the agency.
Knox is in the process of double-checking the results with a different, approved procedure that is being used on thousands of deer tissues samples taken by the DNR.
Knox's lab is under contract with Wildlife Support Services of Hayward, which sold about 10,000 kits to sporting goods stores in Wisconsin.
So far, Knox's lab has tested about 300 specimens out of about 600 returned so far, and turned up the one positive result. Two other specimens were suspicious but negative, and are also being rechecked.
State officials will have to analyze the results of the tests from Grant County deer and any others that may be found.
"Where we are right now is that we need to sit back and let all of the test results get in," Hauge said. "We are not going to charge out and start killing deer in other places."
But if results show that chronic wasting disease is not widespread and found only in pockets, the DNR would initiate new plans to wipe out local deer populations, he said.
In addition to the 411-square-mile area, positive cases of chronic wasting disease have been found on game farms in Walworth and Portage counties.
Hunt shoots 10.5% fewer deer On a separate front Tuesday, the DNR reported that hunters killed 10.5% fewer deer during the nine-day 2002 gun season than last year.
Hunters killed 261,093 deer, compared with 291,563 last year, the DNR reported in a preliminary count on Tuesday.
While the tally was better than many people had expected, the kill was down 20% when compared with the average over the past 10 years. A record 442,581 deer were shot during the nine-day gun season in 2000.
The nine-day gun season - a frenetic period when most of Wisconsin's deer killing takes place - ended on Sunday.
DNR Secretary Darrell Bazzell said he was pleased with the results.
"I think that given the unusual nature of this year's hunt, with the early lag in license sales, the fear and uncertainty caused by the discovery of CWD in Wisconsin, and the extraordinary effort to collect CWD samples, hunters and staff can be proud of the effort they've made," Bazzell said in a statement.
But in its aftermath, Wisconsin is still teeming with whitetail - and that will force wildlife officials to find ways to keep the deer population from growing out of control in 2003.
The odds were certainly stacked against a heavy deer harvest this year, said Peter Gerl, executive director of Whitetails Unlimited, a national organization based in Sturgeon Bay.
Aside from worries about chronic wasting disease, Gerl noted that the late start to the hunting season - which is always the weekend before Thanksgiving - meant the rut was mostly over and animals were not moving around as much.
Other factors that cut into the deer kill: A 10% dip in license sales meant there were 60,000 to 70,000 fewer hunters roaming the woods, a lack of snow cover throughout much of the state made it more difficult to see deer, and hunters in tree stands were hampered by high winds during opening weekend.
"All that combined, we feel pretty good with the 10% drop in the harvest," Gerl said.
Whitetails Unlimited spent money on billboard space, letters to 550,000 hunters and radio announcements encouraging people to hunt. Gerl said the public relations push probably prompted some fence-sitters to buy licenses.
DNR falls short of goal While more deer will still be killed in other hunts that take place through Jan. 31, the DNR has fallen short of killing the 25,000 to 30,000 deer in the eradication zone west of Madison.
So far, more than 11,000 deer have been killed in that zone - 2,006 during the nine-day season and more than 9,000 deer from a series of hunts since the disease was first discovered.
The DNR did not expect to kill all of the deer this year, Hauge said. The agency is mulling other options to kill more deer over the winter: allowing landowners to kill more deer, bringing in DNR sharpshooters on property where landowners don't want to shoot deer themselves, and using bait to attract groups of deer and then shoot them.
As for Wisconsin's booming deer population, wildlife managers in the coming months will estimate populations and determine which parts of the countryside - or deer management units - should be open to extra hunting to thin the herd.
"This harvest is going to help for a while, but, of course, come next spring we'll have a new set of fawns and we'll be back at a fairly large population again," said Dave Evenson, the DNR's interim deer and bear ecologist.
Although Gerl was happy with the harvest numbers, he said it doesn't take care of the problem.
"The end result is that if our deer population is larger than it has been in the past, it's just going to add to the dilemma of the overpopulation," Gerl said. "If the population increases, it'll force the DNR to be more creative with alternative hunts aside from the traditional nine-day season. What that is, I don't really know."
Tuesday's deer kill figures also revealed that 36,000 deer samples were taken for chronic wasting disease - and the DNR had wanted to test about 50,000 deer.
Laboratory analysis from the nine-day season is just beginning to make its way to the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory in Madison, according to director Robert Shull.
No new positive results have turned up so far at the state lab.
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Edited by - nub on 12/04/2002 07:54:15
#3
RE: Welcome to the Eradication Zone
<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote<font size=1 face='Verdana, Arial, Helvetica' id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>If further testing corroborates the results, the finding is significant because the state Department of Natural Resources would likely have to expand its efforts to control the disease by wiping out deer in a new area. <hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face='Verdana, Arial, Helvetica' size=2 id=quote>
I just have to sit back and chuckle because I've always said that CWD is statewide !!! I really hope this turns out to be false, but.....
Boy, am I gonna love eating those backstraps this weekend !!!!!!
"If it sounds and looks too good to be true, it probably is !"
.
I just have to sit back and chuckle because I've always said that CWD is statewide !!! I really hope this turns out to be false, but.....
Boy, am I gonna love eating those backstraps this weekend !!!!!!
"If it sounds and looks too good to be true, it probably is !"
.
#4
Thread Starter
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: CWD Central, WI.
Posts: 2,062
RE: Welcome to the Eradication Zone
priz: You mean to tell me you got to keep the back straps? Or are you heading over to your dads for strap supper?<img src=icon_smile_approve.gif border=0 align=middle>
#5
Spike
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Stevens Point WI USA
Posts: 75
RE: Welcome to the Eradication Zone
A questionable test result has raised the possibility of a deer in Marathon County having CWD. The test was from a kit using the ELISA system. A rating of 6 indicates the deer probably has CWD. This particular deer rated between a 4 and 5 supposedly indicating it was in the early stages of CWD or possibly had some other disease. A test sample from this deer is going to be examined by the state vets in Madison. News of those results will be released next week.
#6
RE: Welcome to the Eradication Zone
Nub, I cleaned it, I dragged it from the woods, I skinned it, I butchered it, I am going to pay to get the sausage made......you bet I am going to keep the meat, LOL.....anyway, my mother doesn't want it at her house, LOL !!!!!! I just didn't get to shoot it !!!
"If it sounds and looks too good to be true, it probably is !"
.
[img]http://www.hunting-pictures.com/members/Sswpriz/Jeepsig.jpg">
Edited by - sswpriz on 12/06/2002 11:12:23
"If it sounds and looks too good to be true, it probably is !"
.
[img]http://www.hunting-pictures.com/members/Sswpriz/Jeepsig.jpg">
Edited by - sswpriz on 12/06/2002 11:12:23
#7
Thread Starter
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: CWD Central, WI.
Posts: 2,062
RE: Welcome to the Eradication Zone
g&b: Is the deer from up by Wausaw they were talking about on the news Fri. night? Seems the lab that did the test on the Wausaw deer dosen't want to give the DNR a sample of the deer. They want the DNR to give them some positive tissue for comparison.
#8
Spike
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Stevens Point WI USA
Posts: 75
RE: Welcome to the Eradication Zone
I didn't hear about them not wanting to give the DNR a sample, but I've been busy and not been up to date on the latest news. I would imagine it is the same deer in question.
I hope these two agencies will work together and not get into a tug of war over who is better, more accurate, etc...
I hope these two agencies will work together and not get into a tug of war over who is better, more accurate, etc...
#9
Thread Starter
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: CWD Central, WI.
Posts: 2,062
RE: Welcome to the Eradication Zone
I think we will soon hear about additional positves from around the state. So many in fact, the DNR will drop the eradication effort. Get ready to learn how to live with CWD. Those 50 dollar test kits that were sold by Gander Mt. and dropped to 10 bucks, will level out at about 25 bucks. I can't see the DNR or the state picking up the tab after this season. Also expect lots of bonus tags, I'd think they'll want deer numbers to drop lower than ever.
#10
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: waukesha wi USA
Posts: 45
RE: Welcome to the Eradication Zone
The whole idea of eradication is nonsense. It will not exterminate the disease. Just another blunder in a series of blunders by you know who. They refused to listen to anyone as they always do. They think they are the "answer". When will they realize that earn-a-buck drove so many hunters out of the woods. Also, all the bonus tags on earth won't help reduce the herd size that really doesn't exist. They need to admit their formula doesn't work anymore.