2 weeks Ago By By Scott Mackenthun Special to The Free Press
I was digging through my parents’ basement earlier this year at their request, trying to cart off any old outdoor gear I’d left behind that was in danger of getting thrown in the trash. I came across a poster I had made back in my 4H days for the Wildlife Biology project area. The poster, a late 1990’s relict, was covered with photos and text with a topic I had learned about that summer, not unlike dozens of other projects that would make their way to the county fair as part of the annual exhibition of knowledge and learning that still continues within club and county level 4H programs.
My poster covered a disease mentioned in outdoor journals earlier that year, noting discovery or new observations in a number of Rocky Mountain states of a disease of which I had never heard. The poster title and disease chronicled was chronic wasting disease. My poster went on about prions and how CWD is spread, CWD’s remarkable similarity to Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, and touched on the outbreak in the late 1990’s of mad cow disease, or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy.
While CWD has not made the species barrier jump to Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, experts caution that it could happen someday, an anecdote that was shared on the poster. Looking over that poster that sat in a basement for a quarter century was like a reading a prophetic warning of what would come. In 2002, CWD was found in Minnesota in captive elk and in wild white-tailed deer in 2010.
Wisconsin found their first positives in 2002 from hunter-tested deer taken in 2001. Wisconsin’s hands-off and inconsistent approach to testing, regulating, and managing CWD in wild and captive cervid herds, against the advice of the state’s wildlife health experts and political willful ignorance, has resulted in the disease making a two-decade march across the state and moving from county to county. Minnesota’s response to CWD in wild deer has been aggressive in an attempt to stamp out outbreaks like a fire crew would labor to prevent a larger, raging forest fire.
But stagnated and delayed legislative action on farmed cervids and how they were regulated in Minnesota created a two-decade back door for the disease to continue to spread. Creating a unified approach to regulating the disease within wild and domestic populations is a good starting point but only time will tell how CWD impacts deer populations in Minnesota going forward. CWD has spread nationally and in Minnesota, although there is lingering hope for containment with continued testing both nationally and in the North Star State.
For many of my deer hunting years, I lived in blissful ignorance, aware of CWD’s damaging impacts to deer and elk herds but unconcerned because it wasn’t in the places I hunted, therefore I wouldn’t have to change my behavior. Then CWD-positive deer were discovered in the county I hunted in Wisconsin. I soon had to figure out how to remove lymph nodes and send off samples of my deer to get tested.
I shot a mule buck in Montana in a CWD zone and submitted a test at a mandatory testing station with Fish, Wildlife, and Parks. My venison sat in my freezer for a month before I got the all-clear; I removed the buck’s antlers but could not transport the head out of the zone. Even in Minnesota, in two deer management units I hunt within, bordering zones were found to have free-ranging deer with CWD.
Chronic Wasting Disease was creeping closer and hunter attitudes and behavior had to change. Testing your harvested deer is going to become a new normal for hunters, at least for those who take the time to understand the risk of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy and CWD testing results in their area, including positive cases and numbers of tests offered. One thing society observed, but perhaps it’s a stretch to say has learned, is that if few tests are administered, few positives are found.
You can mistakenly believe that the deer on a landscape are healthy if they aren’t tested. Epidemiologists will tell you that’s true for any disease. So all those deer management unit areas in Minnesota without positives may not be as spotfree and clean as some might imagine.
The only way to know if you have a CWD-positive deer and might be taking a risk in consuming CWD positive venison, is to test your deer. I made the mistake of living carefree of CWD for too long; now I try to test each harvested deer I plan to consume in my family or share with my friends. Testing options If you’re ready to start testing your deer for CWD, you have a few options.
To be crystal clear, hunters within Minnesota CWD management or surveillance zones must get their deer tested and should consult DNR regulations and information on mandatory testing locations. For those who want to voluntarily test, you also have some options. One way is to get a free testing kit mailed to you from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.
You can request a kit by visiting https://www.dnr.state.
mn.us/cwd/cwd-kits.html .
Just beware that supplies are limited. A second option is to visit a DNR Taxidermy partner who is taking samples for testing. You can find that list at https://www.
dnr.state.mn.
us/cwd/cwd-partners.html . A third option is to send your own sample to the University of Minnesota Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory for a CWD Immunohistochemistry.
To do so, you must send a lymph node sample in a leakproof jar or sample bag with 10% buffered formalin in a Styrofoam mailer, complete with payment and a CWD sample submission form available at the VDL website. You can purchase 10% buffered formalin online but only dispense it from the bottle when following safety sheet advice; wear eye protection and gloves and avoid inhalation. Formalin is formaldehyde and is a preservative with which you don’t want to come into contact! Extraction of lymph nodes is relatively straightforward and is easiest done when a deer is freshly killed and still warm.
Minnesota DNR has a great video that provides instruction. You’ll need a set of nitrile or latex gloves (you’re handling potentially infectious material), a knife, a pliers, a marker and a ziplock bag. Worth noting, the tailgate of a pickup truck provides a perfect operating table.
If you plan to mount your deer, you’ll want to cape out your deer before cutting out the lymph nodes as cutting through the hide to get at the lymph nodes will ruin the cape. You will start your cut from under the neck, so place the harvested deer on its side or back with its head upside down, or lean the head over the edge of your truck tailgate. Find the curve of the rear jawline and the deer’s Adam’s apple.
Your cut will go between these two landmarks, down toward the base of the ears, cutting through the skin, the esophogaus, all the way to the bone at the base of the spine. If done correctly, you will cut through the retropharyngeal lymph nodes. These lymph nodes are two-toned in color with a grayish texture and a firm appearance and are a matched set on either side of the esophagus.
They have the consistency of a gummy bear. If you don’t see the lymph nodes, try cutting further forward. You should hold the lymph node with a pliers and cut them out with a sharp knife.
Cut out both sets by cutting off the connective tissue and don’t sweat it if they are not whole and intact. They will suffice for disease testing. The lymph nodes when whole, are about the size of a U.
S. quarter. Be sure to refrigerate your sample prior to sending it in for testing.
Scott Mackenthun has been writing about hunting and fishing since 2005. Email him at scott.mackenthun@gmail.
com ..
