- BARNEVELD, Wis. (Reuters)
- In a gravel clearing beside the Eagle Mart Stop-N-Go gas station, about
20 men and a few women, some in flannel shirts and yellow rubberized coveralls,
spent a recent weekend sawing the heads off hundreds of Wisconsin deer
shot by hunters.
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- Hunting season began early in the hill country of southwest
Wisconsin this year and will run late as the state launches an unprecedented
effort to stamp out chronic wasting disease, a relative of mad cow disease
that threatens Wisconsin's massive population of whitetail deer.
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- "This is our chance to be able to eradicate this
disease in this area and keep the deer herd healthy," said Ruthe Badger,
director of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources' South Central
office. If it isn't eradicated, statistical models project large numbers
of deer will die.
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- Wisconsin announced its first cases of chronic wasting
disease (CWD) in February from three deer shot during the 2001 hunting
season. The diagnosis stunned wildlife officials because previously the
nearest known cases were hundreds of miles west in western Nebraska.
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- First observed in Colorado in the 1960s, CWD, which affects
deer and elk, had been confined until this year to the U.S. Rocky Mountains
and Plains regions and parts of western Canada. Like mad cow disease, CWD
is a fatal illness caused by misshapen proteins called prions that destroy
the brain.
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- Unlike mad cow, CWD has never been proven to cause illness
in humans or cattle. Still, the World Health Organization has advised against
eating venison or any part of a deer that appears sick.
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- CWD is a particular concern in Wisconsin because the
state's deer population, estimated at 1.65 million head, is much larger
and more dense than herds in the West, a factor that could hasten the disease's
spread. Furthermore, deer hunting is as close to the soul of Wisconsin
as cheese, beer and the Green Bay Packers.
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- "For anybody who has grown up in Wisconsin, deer
hunting is just a part of who we are," Badger said.
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- It's also a significant business. University of Wisconsin
economist Richard Bishop estimates that hunters in Wisconsin spend $500
million a year on the sport, while the state Department of Natural Resources
has estimated the annual "economic impact" of hunting in Wisconsin
at $1.5 billion.
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- HUNTERS TO PLAY LEAD ROLE
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- If the specter of CWD were to trigger a drop-off in hunting,
Wisconsin would lose both income and a critical means of controlling the
deer population. Hunters harvest 450,000 to 500,000 Wisconsin deer a year,
and they will play a lead role in the state's plan to fight CWD.
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- Wisconsin intends to eliminate all the deer -- some 25,000
whitetails -- within a 411-square-mile "eradication zone" west
of Madison where all 40 of the state's CWD-positive wild deer have been
found. Planners admit the job may take several years, and it could be 20
years before the area's deer herd rebounds.
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- In the eradication zone, the hunting season that began
in October will last more than three months until Jan. 31 instead of the
traditional nine days. Hunters are allowed to shoot all they deer they
want, provided they take a doe for every buck and submit the head of each
deer for testing.
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- Wisconsin intends to test every deer killed in the zone
for CWD. In addition, the plan calls for tests on roughly 500 deer from
every other county in the state, for a total of 50,000 -- about as many
deer as the overall kill in Colorado each year.
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- "This will be the most intensive testing effort
ever undertaken for a wildlife species," Tom Hauge, chief of the department's
wildlife management bureau, said in a statement.
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- FEARS OVERESTIMATED?
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- Results from the opening weekend of the fall hunt suggest
that deer hunters' concern about CWD may have been overestimated. Even
in the eradication zone, where the CWD infection rate is about 3 percent,
many hunters opted to keep their deer for meat after contributing the heads
for testing.
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- "Roughly 50 percent of the hunters are keeping their
deer," said Greg Matthews, a department regional public affairs manager.
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- Some shared the attitude of Duaine Hillenbrand, a trucker
from Cross Points, Wisconsin, who planned to keep a deer he shot and registered
at Black Earth during the opening weekend.
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- "Hell yes, I'm going to consume it," Hillenbrand
said. "If I'm going to kill it, I'm going to consume it."
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