# Off-season hunt gives bad feeling to some-Baltimore Sun



## Tom Morang (Aug 14, 2001)

http://www.sunspot.net/news/nationworld/bal-te.deer03jun03.story?coll=bal-news-nation


Off-season hunt gives bad feeling to some

Wisconsin wants all deer in 'hot zone' killed to halt mad cow-like affliction

By Jean Marbella
Sun National Staff

June 3, 2002

MOUNT HOREB, Wis. - To everything there is a season, and for those who both love and hunt the state's white-tailed deer, this is usually the season of birth, a time when local drivers instinctively slow down on the roads because any doe emerging from the woods is likely followed a few unsteady steps behind by its newly born fawn.

But this spring, in a proposition that has unnerved, if not appalled, many of them, hunters are being asked to kill every deer in a 361-square-mile "hot zone" where a fatal illness similar to mad cow disease has been detected. Kill all the estimated 15,000 deer in the zone, wildlife officials urge, and stop the disease from spreading to the rest of the state's herd.

Chronic wasting disease, a little-understood neurological ailment, was previously believed to be confined to deer and elk in Western states, but it somehow jumped hundreds of miles and the Mississippi River to land here. Its arrival, which the Department of Natural Resources announced in February based on tests of deer killed in the regular fall hunting season, sent shock waves through Wisconsin, where whitetails hold a cherished role beyond the $2.6 billion annually that deer hunting brings to the state.

For many hunters, white-tailed deer bond them to past generations - the fathers and grandfathers who took them as boys on their first hunt - and the family and friends who gather every fall for something that is as much tribal ritual as mere sport. Any threat to the deer is a threat to all that.

"It's just tragic," says Ed Weaver, who owns a 100-acre farm west of Mount Horeb, where one confirmed case and one suspected case of CWD were found.

Like other hunters, Weaver is sickened by the prospect of killing deer during the fawning season. He couldn't imagine killing a fawn, or even a doe because that would essentially be the same thing - a baby would probably starve to death without its mother.

"Nobody wants to leave a fawn alone," he says.

But Weaver generally supports the state's eradication plan because he believes he has seen CWD up close: Several years ago, he saw an obviously ill deer on his property - it was lethargic, didn't run away when he approached and fell trying to jump over a narrow creek. Weaver didn't see the deer again, even after he went into the woods to look for it. He now suspects the deer had CWD.

This spring, a neighbor spotted a similarly afflicted deer near the same creek and called the Department of Natural Resources, which sent someone to kill it. Tests confirmed it had CWD.

"The rest of the state doesn't want this disease," Weaver says. "It's a ruthless disease from what I've seen."

Spongy-brain disorder

CWD is part of the same family of diseases - the spongiform encephalopathies - as mad cow in cattle, scrapie in sheep and Creutzfeldt-Jakob in humans. Such diseases are believed to be the result of a mutant protein that causes the brain to develop lesions and grow spongy as the sufferer degenerates. The illness was first observed in captive deer in Colorado in 1967 - although not identified as a spongy-brain disorder until later - and since then has also been found in six other Western states. Wisconsin is the first state east of the Mississippi to find the disease in its deer.

Weaver isn't sure he can bring himself to participate in the out-of-season hunt that the Department of Natural Resources has scheduled - the first round of which will begin Saturday after several delays because of the uproar the original plans created - although he will allow other hunters onto his property. The state is issuing special permits to landowners allowing deer hunting for one week each month this summer. The department also held a hunt in March and April to get an idea of the extent of CWD in the area - only dead animals can be tested - and has sent sharpshooters in full SWAT-like gear to kill deer in public parks.

But even as a sort of state of siege has descended on this normally placid countryside of dairy farms and small towns west of Madison, the state capital, many are refusing to participate in the eradication plan.

It's slaughter, they say, not hunting.

The stance may seem surprising in these parts, where seemingly everyone from plant workers to organic farmers to college professors avidly hunt, and antlered deer heads decorate tavern walls and corporate offices alike. But to many, the hunt just seems wrong: There is the fawn issue, and also the fact that the CWD scare has caused some to stop eating venison.

Some food pantries have said they will no longer accept hunters' donations of venison. And with no need for the meat, some believe, there's also no need to hunt. A recent poll by a Wisconsin college of 405 deer hunters found that 36 percent are thinking of skipping their fall ritual. (Last year, the state issued 688,540 deer hunting licenses.)

'I'm going to say no'

"If someone wants to come onto my 600 acres and wants to shoot, I'm going to say no, at least until this fall," says cattle farmer Vern Wendt.

Wendt says he thinks the Department of Natural Resources should spend the summer conducting more research and testing rather than rushing to wipe out the area's deer. There are too many unanswered questions, he and others say: How is the disease transmitted? Can it spread to cattle and dairy cows? What about to humans?

Scientists say they do not know how the disease infects the deer population but think it may spread through saliva and droppings - although they also have said the disease hasn't been known to jump species. In Europe, the spread of mad cow disease was blamed on cattle eating feed that contained ground sheep infected with scrapie. Humans may have contracted it by eating infected beef.

Even before CWD appeared in the state, wildlife officials had been trying to reduce the deer population. By current estimates, the state has about 1.5 million deer, about twice what the Department of Natural Resources believes it should have. High deer densities make the spread of disease much easier, which is why the agency says it developed such a drastic response to CWD.

Deer densities are particularly high in an area such as this, which increasingly draws people seeking a country home near their jobs in cities such as Madison and Dodgeville, home to the Lands' End catalog company. Many of the newcomers are urbanites who don't hunt themselves or people who don't allow others on their property, which has allowed deer populations to rise, the department says.

'Trophy homes'

"You get a lot of people who want to have their trophy homes out here and don't allow people to hunt on their property," says Carl Batha, a state wildlife biologist who has been appointed "CWD incident commander" to coordinate the deer eradication. "They don't understand the mechanisms of the population, and now deer densities have gone up everywhere."

So far, about 1,200 of the 4,600 landowners in the hot zone have requested the special permits required for hunting on their property during the designated weeks this summer, according to the Department of Natural Resources. But opponents of the special hunt have organized and are considering filing a lawsuit to block it.

Those who kill deer are supposed to bring the animals to a state collection point, where employees will sever the head so that the brain can be tested for CWD. The rest of the carcasses will be buried in landfills or incinerated. Some area landfills, though, are refusing to accept deer carcasses for fear of the disease somehow leaching into the surrounding area. The Department of Natural Resources, which regulates landfills, said it is negotiating with facility managers to convince them that there is no danger involved.

The department is not saying how long it might take to reach its goal of eradicating all the deer in the zone or at what point it would step in if too many landowners refuse to allow hunting on their property.

"I hope they understand the gravity of that decision," Batha warns. "We do have the authority to go on private land."

But he says it probably won't get to that point. The department would instead probably use aircraft to spot remaining deer and herd them onto land where they can be killed, he says.

"This isn't going to work unless everyone is in on it," says farmer Keith O'Connell, noting that deer could simply escape hunters by moving to land where no shots are being fired. "These deer aren't dumb."

O'Connell plans to participate in the hunt, although it is the busiest time of the year on his 607-acre farm and he wonders how hunters will be able to see deer through the thick foliage and brush. He'll do it to protect his cattle, which he worries might be at risk because deer frequently will come up and eat out of their feed bags.

Already, there is a sense that hunting has changed here, perhaps forever.

For Dave Ladd, who lives on what used to be his family's dairy farm, hunting is what happens in the fall - the traditional opening day cookout at his home for his neighbors, the first Monday of the season when about half of the men who work at his woodworking business call in sick, the joys of initiating each new generation into the fold of hunters.

"It's a great sport," says Ladd, who is active in local conservation issues and supports the state plan. "But this? I don't have a good feeling about shooting a couple doe and throwing them in a Dumpster."


----------

