How Can You Tell If a Deer Has Chronic Wasting Disease?

Depending on where you live in the country, Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) is either something you’ve just read about, or it’s something you try not to think too hard about while you’re sending in your harvest for mandatory testing. What’s scary about CWD is that it’s basically like Mad Cow Disease, only for deer. It’s not a bacterium, and it’s not a virus. Instead, it’s a prion disease, which is far more terrifying.

Prions aren’t really even “alive” in the sense that, say, E. Coli is. They’re essentially just a self-replicating “fold” in the biological proteins that make up our brains. Holes burrow themselves into neurological tissue. The result is nothing short of zombie-like.

The biggest fear, of course, is that the disease may become zoonotic–crossing the species barrier from deer to livestock, or, worse yet, to humans. Other types of prion diseases, like Kuru and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Syndrome, are spread by consuming the flesh (especially brain or nerve matter) of the infected.

So how can you tell if the deer you’re seeing on your trailcam, in your backyard, or even in your crosshair is infected? Check out this great video from the National Deer Association (NDA) for the valuable–and sobering–truth.