CWD is a wasting disease caused by prions. Prions are misfolded proteins that cause proteins in the brain to have the same misfolded shape. Mad cow disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans are caused by prions.
CWD in the US and Canada:
Expanding Distribution of Chronic Wasting Disease | U.S. Geological Survey (usgs.gov)
CWD is primarily spread to the wild deer population by deer that escape from "hunting ranches" and breeding facilities, deer rubbing noses through high fences and interstate transportation of infected deer. In a few states CWD is totally out of control. In some states infected deer herds at "hunting ranches" and deer breeding facilities are allowed to continue to exist. CWD will continue to exist in the soil at former hunting ranches and breeding facilities for many years after the deer are gone.
Some "hunters" willingly pay $10,000 or much more to kill grotesque pen raised bucks.
Texas "gets it" when it comes to dealing with CWD. The Texas emergency order regarding CWD:
"Discovered in 1967 at a government research facility in Colorado, CWD has spread throughout half the United States and four Canadian provinces. It reached Texas in 2012, first in a free-ranging mule deer herd in the Hueco Mountains near El Paso, then at a South Texas breeding facility three years later. It was quickly discovered in several other breeding facilities. In the nine years since the illness arrived here, CWD has been detected in 270 animals; nearly three-fourths were whitetails in captive breeding facilities.
This spring, wildlife scientists found new cause for alarm. For the first time in northeast Texas, a whitetail deer tested positive for CWD at a breeding facility in Hunt County, about fifty miles northeast of Dallas. Another nine cases were traced to a breeding operation in Uvalde County, a hundred miles west of San Antonio. Upon further testing, a total of at least 30 infected deer were found at six facilities, 25 at the Uvalde operation alone.
Neither the Uvalde nor Hunt County farms had imported any deer in recent years—they were both considered “closed herds”—so the vector by which CWD spread there was a mystery. According to True, ranchers who bought infected animals from the Uvalde operation were forced to kill not only those deer but their entire herds—hundreds of captive does and bucks, culled as a precaution.
“When there’s CWD detected on your farm, it’s a total wipeout,” said True, the owner of Big Rack Ranch, a two-thousand-acre breeding operation about an hour east of Dallas. According to True, about 10,000 captive deer have been killed because CWD was found in their pens. Some, he said, were breeding bucks valued as high as $250,000."
Texas Intensifies Its Fight Against “Zombie Deer Disease” – Texas Monthly
Became interested in this stuff after a distant cousin died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Years a distant female cousin asked what happened to Mike. When it told her what killed Mike she said: "My God, my Dad died of that disease". .
