Maine should monitor Iowa’s deer herd threat

Your June 1-2 story concerning hunting ranches was informative and interesting. I will resist the temptation to comment on the ethics of hunting ranches. Like Maine, Iowa has a limited number of hunting ranches. Iowa also has a thriving wild whitetail deer population which I have enjoyed hunting for about 30 years. However, Iowa is encountering a problem which places all of this in jeopardy.

Both Wisconsin and Nebraska (which border Iowa) as well as other western and mid-western states have a growing problem with a wasting disease in their wild deer populations. This disease closely resembles the mad cow disease that was epidemic in the British Isles and which was responsible for the human version of the same disease.

Despite intensive efforts there is a very poor understanding of the causative agent of these diseases, except that they are prions – abnormal versions of naturally occurring brain proteins that cause a recognizable brain pathology best described as holes in the brain. No one thus far knows whether the deer wasting disease is transmissible to man (as mad cow clearly is) but it probably is wishful thinking to assume it is not.

Currently Wisconsin is attempting to eradicate the white-tail deer population in the affected counties. Iowa is screening brains from road-killed deer, and will collect brains from deer taken during the fall hunting seasons to attempt to monitor the situation in the Iowa herd.

Underlying this multi-state problem are the commercial deer and elk farms. Ranchers buy and sell animals for legitimate commerce, but this is believed to be the primary means whereby the disease has moved from one state to another. The wild populations have become infected by animals escaping from confinement (and, perhaps, by contact across fencing).

Once an area is infected (as pens at Colorado State University were during early studies of the disease) there is no known way to sanitize/sterilize the area. Healthy animals come down with the disease when confined in the same pens despite all efforts to clean them.

Maine would do well to consider these facts, monitor what other states facing this problem are doing, and consider whether Maine wants to face the prospect of having to eradicate all or part of their deer herds, much less ask whether they want to run the risk of infection of those folks who consume infected game meat. As an Iowa resident I am faced with wondering if I will be able to hunt deer -and if I can, do I want to consume the meat so harvested.

Peter A. Pattee, of Hancock, is professor emeritus at Iowa State University Department of Microbiology.