Deer disease worries some officials

General firearms hunting season opened Saturday. And for thousands of Virginia deer hunters, the sport is healthy and the deer are plenty.
But there is something new for state hunters to think about - the emergence of chronic wasting disease in deer just across the state line.

Although the fatal neurological disease has yet to be found in Virginia, four recent cases in West Virginia have some biologists thinking it will eventually cross the state line.

If they are right, Virginia's deer hunters might not find the meat so appetizing. While studies have suggested that the disease can't be passed from deer meat to humans, biologists are still cautious.

"We feel pretty comfortable that it cannot, but you would never want to say never," said Nelson Lafon, an assistant deer project leader with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.

Before chronic wasting disease was first identified in 1967 in a group of captive mule deer in Fort Collins, Colo., people likely had been eating venison from infected deer and hadn't gotten sick, Lafon said.

The four cases in Hampshire County, W.Va., bring the problem a little too close to home for comfort.

"That's about a good hour's run [to Winchester] for a deer," said Ed Clark, president of the Wildlife Center of Virginia. "It's really almost inevitable that the problem is going to make it to Virginia."

Lafon agreed. "Long term, I think it's almost impossible to keep it out of the state," he said.

The disease is believed to pass from deer to deer through urine or decomposing carcasses, but it moves around the country through captive deer facilities, such as exhibitors or zoos.

Biologists credit the lack of chronic wasting in Virginia to the state's strict captive deer regulations. For example, captive deer holders must have permits and tag all their deer. Bringing deer into the state and moving deer within the state are illegal. And when a deer dies, the facility must report the death and submit the head for testing.Game and Inland Fisheries also recently prohibited importing or possessing whole deer carcasses or specified parts of the carcass that originated from a state or Canadian province where chronic wasting disease has been found.

That won't necessarily keep the disease out, Lafon said. "No matter what kind of laws you make and try to enforce them, someone's going to bring something in illegally."

Too close

Jonathan Fleeman, a Game and Inland Fisheries wildlife veterinarian, said he was not prepared to concede that chronic wasting disease would definitely come to Virginia. But, he said: "It's closer than we would like it to be."

Paul Johansen, an assistant chief in charge of game management in West Virginia's Division of Natural Resources, said that while the disease was known to spread around the country through captive facilities, that wasn't necessarily what happened in West Virginia. There are no captive facilities in Hampshire County, Johansen said, but surrounding counties have some. "I think it's far too premature at this point to speculate how that positive animal showed up in Hampshire County," he said.

West Virginia's first case was found in a roadkill deer in September, and subsequent testing of about 220 deer found that three more had the disease.

Almost 1,000 carcasses were sampled last year in Virginia, all from deer killed by hunters. Game and Inland Fisheries requests that hunters submit for testing any deer they kill that look sick.

Lafon said that this year Game and Inland Fisheries also plans to target 550 deer in Loudoun, Shenandoah, Clarke and Frederick counties, which are near the West Virginia border.

Although no one is sure exactly how deer originally got the disease, some biologists think it came from sick sheep.

"The disease is thought to have been one that, as we say, jumps the species barrier," Clark, of the Wildlife Center, said. "It's not a bacteria. It's not a virus. It's not a germ, exactly. It's caused by a modified protein."

The proteins produce holes in brain cells and eventually leads to death, Fleeman said.

Tough to treat

Unlike viruses and bacteria, the proteins can survive high temperatures and can't be killed through cooking or other easy means.

"It can be killed," Clark said. "It can be destroyed with extremely high-temperature incineration or certain chemical treatments. But that's a pretty extreme process. That's part of what makes this whole thing so sinister and so frightening. It's not the kind of thing that the average citizen has the capacity and the knowledge to do."

Deer-meat eaters are advised not to cut into the animal's brain, spinal cord or bones and not to eat the brain, spinal cord, eyes, spleen, tonsils or lymph nodes. However, there's no evidence that chronic wasting disease can be transmitted to humans, Fleeman said.

Clark was a little more cautious. "We don't know if it can affect people, and we don't know if it won't," he said. "We do know that it's already jumped one species barrier from sheep to deer. That at least convinces me that I probably have got to be real careful about any venison I eat" from areas where chronic wasting disease has been found.

If chronic wasting disease comes to Virginia, Matt Knox, a Game and Inland Fisheries deer program supervisor, said it could have a very bad effect on the deer population. "The disease is 100 percent fatal," he said. "There's some disease models that predict it would eventually eradicate deer from the area where that started."

But Clark doesn't think that will happen.

"The problem with chronic wasting disease is not that we think the disease itself is going to disseminate the deer herd," he said. "What the problem is, people are going to be afraid to eat venison. ? If people don't hunt them, our main tool for managing the deer population in Virginia is gone."

Virginia's deer population currently stands at about 900,000, according to game department estimates.

Fearful feeding

People afraid of chronic wasting disease will "go back to hamburger," Clark said. But he added: "Your chances of getting chronic wasting disease are probably a thousand times less than your chances of getting hit by lightning."

Johansen said the Division of Natural Resources is assuring hunters that the disease hasn't been linked to human health concerns. "We've tried to get information out to the public in an accurate and rapid means to provide landowners and sportsmen with the most up-to-date information that we have. I think we've been successful with that and have not generated any unnecessary hysteria. But people are concerned. You bet they are."

Jesse Gibson, a Scottsville resident who shot a buck on the first day of muzzleloading season in early November, said he wasn't nervous about chronic wasting disease even though his family eats the venison. Still, he looks for the signs while he's out hunting.

"It's something that I've not given a lot of thought to, just because I haven't heard or seen anything that's close to here," he said. "If I was to start hearing of it close to home, I might be a little more wary. But at this point, I don't see any threat that's keeping me from eating them."

If Virginia's hunters stopped looking for a good piece of venison for dinner, "the deer population would explode," Knox said, adding that last year hunters checked 220,000 deer. "You think they would've died some other way? No, they'd still be here."


Contact Megan Rowe at (434) 978-7267 or mrowe@dailyprogress.com.

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