Most deer breeder operations are not big ranches. They are usually relatively small acreages in comparison.

And therein lies the problem. Deer aren't mean to be crammed into feed lots like cattle.

Gunny456 said:

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I have attended many workshops, seminars, conferences on CWD. I have asked the question many times to "experts" of…if the prions are in the soils to such an extent then why is it not spread by mud on tires of trucks, trailers, shoes etc. I always get crickets and never an explanation.
In my opinion, which means little, is we know as much about CWD now as we did about Covid. There is still a lot to figure out and learn. But we do know it's spread the most from breeder facilities.
If you have a sewage leak into your drinking water the best way to fix it is to fix that leak…not to filter the drinking water.

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I still wonder how many of the breeders use the same transport trailers to ship their deer to buyers. Seems like an easy vector to expose deer who might have tested negative to leave the property but pop positive a year or two later at the new place. Without a giant autoclave, "disinfection" of the trapping gear and trailers against CWD prions really isn't possible.

Yes sir. But it seems they still have no data or info one way or the other that it can actually be spread that way. Seems that if it could, then the soil, etc would as well….and you would think that would be a known.

This is like Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and sterilization of equipment used on a patient with this has some pretty in depth methods or several steps to sterilize. Many hospitals may just quarantine and get rid of the items by proper means by a facility that can handle it better without the risk of using the same instruments again at a hospital.

Pretty sure i know who the Breeder is in Washington County but I am not going to say as not absolutely certain.

But this person has plenty of money, did not need to even breed bucks. Several people I know in that county got into the breeding long ago in the middle to late 90's. It was a side hobby for a little cash and then it just got out of hand on how much they could make off it in my opinion and not worry about side effects coming from it and still ignoring it.

Just curious. What places received negative test live tested deer that then showed a positive deer later? I was understanding that the couple of places that that happened on had also previously purchased non tested deer and they really couldn't determine it was brought in by the live tested deer or the non tested deer before.

Not an expert, but seems deer un-naturally congregating around feeder eating corn out of the dirt has to have some impact with spreading a disease that comes from the dirt. As far as political pressure, folks that buy the deer likely can exert pressure, but TPWD doesn't like deer breeders. They make them test and will kill every animal on the place with a single non-negative. I've heard live testing is un-reliable, but could be wrong. Seems like a slippery slope with govt overreach. Do they ban exotics, do you ban pen raised birds?

As I said above there has been no real evidence that is the case. Again, if it's in the dirt then if that dirt is moved, as in mud on tires etc it would also spread it and there is no evidence that happens.

txags92 said:

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Gunny456 said:

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I have attended many workshops, seminars, conferences on CWD. I have asked the question many times to "experts" of…if the prions are in the soils to such an extent then why is it not spread by mud on tires of trucks, trailers, shoes etc. I always get crickets and never an explanation.
In my opinion, which means little, is we know as much about CWD now as we did about Covid. There is still a lot to figure out and learn. But we do know it's spread the most from breeder facilities.
If you have a sewage leak into your drinking water the best way to fix it is to fix that leak…not to filter the drinking water.

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I still wonder how many of the breeders use the same transport trailers to ship their deer to buyers. Seems like an easy vector to expose deer who might have tested negative to leave the property but pop positive a year or two later at the new place. Without a giant autoclave, "disinfection" of the trapping gear and trailers against CWD prions really isn't possible.

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Strange coincidence that a few years back there was a case of CWD in Hollywood Park here in San Antonio. And that the owner of a breeder operation lives in Hollywood Park. My guess would be trailer or trailer tires. Apparently TPWD looked into it but couldn't find anything conclusive.

I thought that was later confirmed as false? The guy was not a breeder but owned a ranch that had purchased deer years before from a breeder in South Texas that was rumored to have CWD detected. Later retesting proved it to be a false positive which was very commonplace when they first developed the procedure for testing.

Gunny456 said:

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If you have a sewage leak into your drinking water the best way to fix it is to fix that leak…not to filter the drinking water.

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Poetic....

It doesn't come from the dirt, it can be vectored/"stored" in the dirt for years though.

It has to come through/from the animal host.

CWD most likely started as sheep scabies I believe and has morphed into what it is in the cervid population now.


Sort of like parvo can live outside the host for a long time in dirt/soil, then be ingested by a dog and boom, pup's got parvo.

slammerag said:

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Not an expert, but seems deer un-naturally congregating around feeder eating corn out of the dirt has to have some impact with spreading a disease that comes from the dirt. As far as political pressure, folks that buy the deer likely can exert pressure, but TPWD doesn't like deer breeders. They make them test and will kill every animal on the place with a single non-negative. I've heard live testing is un-reliable, but could be wrong. Seems like a slippery slope with govt overreach. Do they ban exotics, do you ban pen raised birds?

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As I stated earlier, that is a completely false statement that TPWD requires killing the entire herd for a single positive. That has not happened to any breeder in the state of Texas, and any one who says that happened to them is lying. Rank and file TPWD guys may not like the breeders, but in terms of how TPWD has treated breeders, they have gone way out of their way and scrapped their initial CWD response plan to avoid the situation of killing entire herds on breeder properties. They offer any breeder with more than one positive multiple options to avoid complete depop and only the ones that refuse all the other options are even considered for complete herd removal.

Gunny456 said:

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Just curious. What places received negative test live tested deer that then showed a positive deer later? I was understanding that the couple of places that that happened on had also previously purchased non tested deer and they really couldn't determine it was brought in by the live tested deer or the non tested deer before.

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I am travelling at the moment and can't pull up the specific press releases, but I know there have been at least a couple within the last few years that were positives in previous breeder deer at the release site. In order to be cleared for transport to the release site, they would have had to pass two separate live tests.

I go back to probabilities. It's probably fairly rare for a prion to be ingested and happen to wander around until it hits another protein that is its opposite handed match and reconfigure it and start a an infectious chain reaction. I image you need extremely high concentrations of trillions and trillions of them.


My guess is they are spread from the body in low concentrations in urine, offal, and other body fluids. They are then on the ground surface in that for an extended time until dispersed by weathering or buried or slowly destroyed by microbes biochemical processes or radiation from the sun. They are very stable proteins but not indestructible. If you have an area where a lot of animals gather all the time for extended periods, and some become infected, the soil and surfaces in that area will build up a huge load of prions, and these get consumed by the deer when feeding on scattered feed, corn, low growing food patched, whatever, on the ground. After enough consuming off the ground in the same high animal concentration location, the odds of infection steadily climb with regular exposure.

Note the feeding off the ground issue: deer in the wild almost never do this unless eating acorns. That alone would drastically lower infection odds if my conjecture is right. Deer in the wild don't tend to congregate in large numbers in the same physical location virtually daily. That also would reduce the odds in wild deer. And these are geometric functions for exposure, not linear, due to the effects of concentration versus radial dispersion.

This is why I think that deer breeding facilities are by far the most likely to cause and spread infection with prions, and why there is some small increase in risk with deer feeder usage (but orders of magnitude lower as deer concentrations are far lower and more irregular in the wild versus a facility)

One of the problems with attribution studies related to finding out how it passes from deer to deer is the super long incubation period from exposure to the point where it has accumulated enough to test positive. There are literally thousands of possible exposures that could have been "the one" that will occur for each deer in an open air herd. That is why we need some more very long duration tightly controlled captive herd studies to figure out the prevalent exposure pathways.

Well Gunny an outfit called Blackjack Hunting and Ranching is currently at a residence in Hollywood Park. Used to be called Blackjack Whitetails or something to that effect, which can be googled and found as a breeder in previous TDA auction books.

Not seeing where the Hollywood Park case was deemed a false positive. The press release is still posted on the TPWD site.

https://tpwd.texas.gov/newsmedia/releases/?req=20230530a

Yea I have seen that. Then perhaps there were two instances because i knew one of the wardens that had knowledge of the case and it was deemed as I stated. However, the details sound very similar.
As I stated in another post, that of all the meetings and seminars, etc. I have attended on CWD, I specifically tried to bring a discussion to bear on if it could be transported by trailers, mud, dirt, plants etc to the "experts". ….only to either get non definitive answers or the admission that they have no data or proof to support it one way or the other.
Funny thing is that after 4 years of not being able to have feeders or such in MO, they basically have said they don't know if helped or not.
Seems stupid that they put all the restrictions on feeders, mineral blocks, mineral distributions etc. but then say food plots are ok. So 30 deer standing in a 40 x 60 food plot …peeing and pooping on the plants and ground is ok.
I'm just waiting for the day they say Texas can't use feeders or mineral blocks, licks etc. and watch the meltdown.

MouthBQ98 said:

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Density. That is it. Breeding facilities have lots of deer in close contact on a small area all the time. Prions build up in the environment at much higher concentration. They are durable and persistent. The close contact amongst animals, and the very high concentration of environmental prions from body fluids and waste vastly increase the odds of the deer in that environment getting infected.

In the wild, the density is far far lower, and not geographically concentrated to one tiny area full of infected animals shedding prions. This means the odds of spreading are extremely low. The wild deer live and die faster than a few infected deer can spread it in natural wild deer densities.

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This. Same concept happened with Colorado elk heard up north. State started supplementing feed for winter and CWD exploded

Gunny456 said:

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Yea I have seen that. Then perhaps there were two instances because i knew one of the wardens that had knowledge of the case and it was deemed as I stated. However, the details sound very similar.
As I stated in another post, that of all the meetings and seminars, etc. I have attended on CWD, I specifically tried to bring a discussion to bear on if it could be transported by trailers, mud, dirt, plants etc to the "experts". ….only to either get non definitive answers or the admission that they have no data or proof to support it one way or the other.
Funny thing is that after 4 years of not being able to have feeders or such in MO, they basically have said they don't know if helped or not.
Seems stupid that they put all the restrictions on feeders, mineral blocks, mineral distributions etc. but then say food plots are ok. So 30 deer standing in a 40 x 60 food plot …peeing and pooping on the plants and ground is ok.
I'm just waiting for the day they say Texas can't use feeders or mineral blocks, licks etc. and watch the meltdown.

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Would be interesting to see the guys with 5-6 digit protein bills suddenly have to figure out how to maximize their habitat instead of just filling feeders religiously.

Yea, It's supposed to be " supplemental feed" not all sustaining feed.
ETA: Proper game/range management, should, most importantly, insure an abundance of natural browse and forbes and the "supplemental feed" should be adding proteins and minerals that may be lacking in the habitat to help maximize antler growth, body weight and health, and fawn production.
Supplemental feeds should not and cannot be used as the sole food source to obtain maximum herd health and productivity.

How would we ever kill a deer again with no feeder full of deer candy corn to sit at??

SanAntoneAg said:

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Yet another example of why ear tags should be mandatory throughout the lifespan of captive deer in Texas.

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Truthfully, I think they should be freeze branded. Ear tags are too easy to cut out.

OnlyForNow said:

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It doesn't come from the dirt, it can be vectored/"stored" in the dirt for years though.

It has to come through/from the animal host.

CWD most likely started as sheep scabies I believe and has morphed into what it is in the cervid population now.


Sort of like parvo can live outside the host for a long time in dirt/soil, then be ingested by a dog and boom, pup's got parvo.

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Did you mean scrapie instead of scabies?

AnScAggie said:

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SanAntoneAg said:

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Yet another example of why ear tags should be mandatory throughout the lifespan of captive deer in Texas.

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Truthfully, I think they should be freeze branded. Ear tags are too easy to cut out.

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That would work as well. So long as it's visible so that if, theoretically, my breeder deer are on your property, you can shoot them and get them tested for CWD before you consume them.

SanAntoneAg said:

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AnScAggie said:

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SanAntoneAg said:

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Yet another example of why ear tags should be mandatory throughout the lifespan of captive deer in Texas.

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Truthfully, I think they should be freeze branded. Ear tags are too easy to cut out.

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That would work as well. So long as it's visible so that if, theoretically, my breeder deer are on your property, you can shoot them and get them tested for CWD before you consume them.

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It has to be visible so that the animal can be IDed from a distance. That way if a deer from the same breeder tests positive, you can single out that deer that was already released for recapture and testing if needed.

Yes. Sorry!

Deer held for any time at a facility or breeding operation should be required to be tagged or branded