The best post I have seen in quite some time OT. You hit it out of the park on multiple fronts. This is an important subject that all deer hunters should fully understand.

I've understood for a long time what Oldtimr stated and usually we agree right up and down the line on almost everything discussed on this site. I agree that ungulate propagation should never have started on these "farms" and it's unfortunate that politics now enters into this discussion more than science and many states allow them and more Legislatures are now looking at allowing it based on property owner rights and appeals to them, rather than allowing the G&F biologists to do their job. We see time after time where money talks and what is best for the whole doesn't necessarily rule. I can understand the mutation thesis of CWD and that it is something to think about, but IMHO there are a lot more things to worry about in life than dying from a mutation of CWD seeing as how it has been shown how to avoid CWD prions by not handling the brain and spinal cord of an animal that is susceptible to the disease. I hunt in Wyoming every year where CWD has been found in the wild for many years and don't give it a second thought. It's also now been found here in MI in both captive cervids, as well as wild deer. I'll be careful, but I'm certainly not going to curtail hunting anywhere because of CWD since hunting is my passion and if I die because of that passion I will have gone down doing what I love to do!

I hear you TG and can say I agree. The area I hunt in Colorado isnt considered a CWD area. I am careful about the animals I kill but am always looking for something that appears odd. I know sometime in the future sportsmen will have to be more careful.

Everything OT stated is on point and correct. And therein lies the rub so to speak. Pandora's box has already been opened and the disease has already got out, jumped the fence, and runs wild now. The deer farmers through their sheer stupidity and greed helped it along, hastening what nature intended probably around 50 years ahead of it's time. While I agree that the deer farms need to be shut down, it's just a tad bit too late being as the damage has already been done and the deer species are the ones paying for it. Shutting them down now will only slow the bleed so to speak. Keeping a few open for strictly research would be the way to go. Re-enforced fencing as well as electronic monitoring (GPS collar) of all animals while researching gene therapies (probably the only solution to a prion based disease) would be the way to go. I don't give a rats pitute if the deer farmers go bankrupt. It was their greed and short sidedness that allowed this mess in the first place. I personally think all canned hunt operators should be rounded up, caged, and shot once a day right in the nads with a 50k volt stun gun just for good measure :D