Fear of Disease Triggers Order to Kill 25,000 Deer

Desperate to control a mysterious wildlife disease, Wisconsin authorities have set out to kill 25,000 deer at the epidemic’s epicenter, in a mass slaughter that sickens even those who support it.

Chronic wasting disease has been identified in just two dozen deer here. But the fatal brain illness, related to “mad cow” disease, has hunters spooked about eating local venison. Hundreds of thousands could stay away from the Wisconsin woods this fall, devastating the state’s $1-billion-a-year hunting industry. So, although they are not at all sure the plan will work, state wildlife managers are trying to destroy every deer that could have been exposed.

The state has hired teams of sharpshooters to patrol the wooded hills of southwestern Wisconsin at night, picking out deer with spotlights. In an unprecedented summer hunt, private citizens are being asked to kill even fawns.

At carcass collection centers, technicians methodically decapitate deer 15 hours a day to test the brains for chronic wasting. On a blood-slick table, they plunk down those shot the previous night: A buck, his antlers soft with velvet fuzz. Two fawns with spotted hides. A doe, her swollen tongue protruding from clenched teeth. Without a word, the technicians saw through the spinal columns, deer by deer. They wrap the severed heads in trash bags and pack them into a cooler to send to the lab. A musty smell, curling toward putrid, hangs thick in the hazy dawn.

“It doesn’t make anyone feel good,” says Carl Batha, a supervisor for the state Department of Natural Resources, which is overseeing the kill.

Adds Meg Zigler, pulling on her gloves to wrap a head: “It’s pretty sad.”

Chronic wasting is not new: First identified in 1967, the disease has been endemic for decades among the sparse deer herds that straddle northern Colorado and southern Wyoming. It also has popped up on commercial deer and elk ranches in Nebraska, Montana, Kansas, Oklahoma and South Dakota, prompting authorities in those states to kill thousands of captive animals.

But the discovery this year of three bucks infected with chronic wasting in southwestern Wisconsin set off a panic. It was the first time the disease had been spotted east of the Mississippi River, where deer herds are so dense that chronic wasting could spread rapidly. It also was the first time that the disease had shown up in a heavily hunted wild deer population. (More recently, one mule deer in New Mexico has tested positive for the disease; scientists are examining other animals in the region.)

Chronic wasting has never been shown to sicken humans. But scientists note that mad cow disease jumped the species barrier and infected at least 125 Europeans with an agonizing, fatal brain disorder. No expert will say with complete assurance that chronic wasting can’t do the same.

So politicians and biologists alike warn of disaster if the disease gains ground in Wisconsin. The state’s whitetail herd is famously abundant; hunters come from all 50 states and from half a dozen foreign countries.

Hunting deer in the frosty nip of a November dawn is as much a family tradition in the state as madly cheering the Green Bay Packers. Already facing a record budget deficit, Wisconsin politicians did not want to lose millions in hunting license fees and millions more in lodging and equipment sales if a large number of the state’s 690,000 hunters gave up their fall ritual.

And biologists warned that if the deer were not hunted, the population would explode out of control.

More motorists would be endangered by collisions with deer. More farmers would lose corn and soybeans to hungry interlopers. Disease, including chronic wasting, would spread more rapidly through the overcrowded herds. “It’s not a real rosy picture,” says Tom Hauge, the state’s wildlife director.

So authorities, grimly, set a course for slaughter.

After routine testing of dead deer found the three infected bucks in February, the state moved quickly to test several dozen other whitetail in the area. Pinpointing each infection on a map, scientists identified a 400-square-mile “hot spot” of infection. That became known as the kill zone.

All 25,000 deer within it are marked for extinction.

Live animals cannot be tested for the disease; their brains must be sliced, stained and studied under a microscope. So every deer killed within the zone will be decapitated and their brains sent to a lab in Madison. Scientists need to test every one to find out how far the disease has spread and to estimate how long it may have been incubating in the herd.

“The only way to eradicate the disease is to eradicate the transmitters of the disease, and those are the deer,” says Tom Howard, a state biologist. “It seems like a real harsh thing to do, but it’s necessary.”

Experts acknowledge that even killing every deer in the infected zone may not vanquish chronic wasting.

The disease is caused by a mutant protein, called a prion, that infects healthy brains and converts normal proteins to its own twisted, deadly form. Prions are incredibly hardy: They can survive in soil for years and can withstand high temperatures.

Even with all the sick deer dead, prions could persist in the environment--deposited there by infected saliva, feces or carcasses. Healthy deer moving into the region years later could pick up the infection. Wisconsin officials are hoping that the disease hasn’t been established here long enough for prions to build up in the soil. The truth is, though, no one can be sure.

“We don’t know,” says Beth Williams, a Wyoming researcher who is perhaps the nation’s top authority on chronic wasting.

“But we do know, if we don’t eradicate the deer, [the disease] will persist for sure,” Hauge says.

So the state Department of Natural Resources has declared killing and testing deer its top priority. River experts have been reassigned to the decapitation tables. Forest and prairie specialists have been ordered to set aside the tasks that usually occupy them in summer--clearing trails, planting habitat, tracking duck migration--for a single-minded focus on chronic wasting.

They answer dozens of phone calls a week from panicked citizens. They plead with landowners to allow state hunters on private property. They pack blaze-orange backpacks for the sharpshooters: latex gloves, drag ropes, walkie-talkies, searchlights, extra batteries.

In the rolling fields and forests of the eradication zone, the agency has organized one-week public hunts in June, July and August. A fourth hunt will take place in September. In addition, the fall hunting season has been extended from the traditional nine days to more than three months.

Come winter, the state may send in helicopters to do an aerial kill. For now, it has hired dozens of sharpshooters to hunt at night, when deer are often more active. The shooters flood the shadowy woods with spotlights. The deer freeze. The men poke rifles out their truck windows and take them down. No one relishes the job.

“We’re taking the deer in ways that are not ethical,” Batha says. “You can’t dwell on that, because you’ll get depressed.”

As the eradication campaign revs up, so has criticism. Opponents point out that chronic wasting has been around for decades in the West. In Wyoming’s hot spot, about 12% of deer are infected. Where the disease is endemic in Colorado, 5% of the herd is sick. Those numbers are inching upward, but slowly.

So why not learn to live with a small percentage of infected deer in Wisconsin? “Let the sick ones die,” urges Linda Derrickson, a vocal critic. “Our herd will get stronger in the long run.”

If action must be taken, why not wait a few months for more data? critics ask. Wisconsin officials hope to test another 25,000 deer that are killed in a normal fall hunting season from outside the eradication zone--at least 500 from each county. Until those results are in, authorities cannot say for sure whether southwestern Wisconsin is the most critical place to take a stand.

“They’re pulling the trigger a little too quick on mass extermination,” complains Mark Sherven, an avid hunter who founded Citizens Against Irrational Deer Slaughter.

Other critics express fear that the all-out hunt could endanger public safety. Every government sharpshooter must walk his territory during daylight and write up a safety plan. Still, local resident Ross Reinhold says he and some buddies were “knocked off our feet” by a shot that was “way too close” to his back deck one recent evening.

“All I could think about was that when my boys were young, they might have been out there catching fireflies, or camping, or just goofing around,” Reinhold says.

It’s hard to gauge how deep such opposition runs. Just half the landowners in the eradication zone have given permission for summer hunting on their property. On land that homeowners have declared off-limits, deer graze placidly in plain sight, fawns tucked up close to their mothers. But officials expect many more landowners to allow hunting this fall.

At public forums to press their case, state experts explain that Wisconsin’s deer population is so dense, there’s little hope that the disease would hold steady at 5% or 10% of the herd, as in the West. Left unchecked, they say, it could decimate the state’s entire population of 1.5 million whitetails. The best bet is to wipe it out now before the prions get established in the soil.

In any case, they ask, what do they lose by trying? At most, 25,000 deer in the kill zone and another 25,000 brought in for testing from elsewhere in the state. That is a lot.

But state officials point out that about 40,000 deer die each year in Wisconsin after being hit by cars. And 400,000 are slain in a typical hunting season, a sizable kill that wildlife biologists believe is necessary to control the size of the herd.

Most hunters understand those numbers. It’s not the deaths that bother them. It’s the idea that tens of thousands of healthy animals will be tossed into an incinerator, shot not to feed families but to try to stop a disease that might be unbeatable.

In theory, the hunters who stalk the kill zone could eat the meat. In practice, frightened by the possibility of infection, just 12% of summer hunters have kept their venison.

Hunters who swear by the ethic of using what they kill find the waste of all that venison almost sacrilege.

“The first time I did this, I was thinking, this is great, I’m going to get to hunt and be paid for it,” says Charles Kilian, a state biologist tapped as a sharpshooter. “Then I went to collect the doe I shot. I looked at her and realized I wasn’t going to use her, and it was an emotional crash.”

Jerry Davis, a retired biology professor, echoes that experience. Convinced that the slaughter is necessary, he sits for hours at dusk in a field near his house, bolt-action Remington across his knees, scouring the weedy brush for deer. But he is repelled by the idea of shooting an animal he will not eat. This to him is not hunting--it’s killing. “You have to close your mind to it,” he says.

A shot rings out down the road. Davis keeps his hand on the rifle.

“This is something you just have to do,” he says. “And you do it.”