Kathleen Lavey

Lansing State Journal

MERIDIAN TWP. - Chris Lofton had been dispatched to handle an injured deer.

He expected an animal struck by a car, a frequent occurrence in this suburban checkerboard of woodlots, wetlands and houses with wide green lawns.

But the whitetail deer he found near Haslett Road and Woodside Drive was not injured.

She was sick.

The six-year-old doe was thin, frail and lying down. She couldn’t stand or walk and had a severely swollen jaw, yet a narrow nose.

“It was definitely malnourished, from what I could tell,” he said. “Because of the condition of the deer, I decided to put it down.”

That was in April of 2015. Over the preceding few days, several neighbors had reported seeing a deer in distress, wandering and unafraid of humans. That piqued the interest of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

The animal's head was sent for testing, first to Michigan State University, then to a federal lab in Iowa, which confirmed the worst: The deer was infected with chronic wasting disease, a contagious, always fatal malady similar to mad cow disease that leaves the animal's brain riddled with tiny holes.

Michigan had a brush with chronic wasting disease once before: a captive deer in a Kent County hunting facility was diagnosed with it in 2008.

But this was the first confirmation in wild deer, in which the disease is much more difficult to control.

State wildlife officials had drafted a plan in 2002 as the disease spread eastward from its first discovery in Colorado. Now they scrambled to implement it as quickly as possible.

Unchecked, chronic wasting disease has the potential to wipe out half or more of Michigan’s deer herd in heavily infected areas, disrupting the state's $2.3 billion hunting economy.

That's the worst-case scenario. It's already playing out in Wyoming, one of the first states to discover the disease in wild deer. A 2015 study projected that it could cause extinction of the Wyoming mule deer herd within 41 years.

In Arkansas, where the disease was discovered last year and now is believed to infect 23 percent of animals in the northwest corner of the state.

"At 23 percent, we have no illusions that we will be able to eradicate the disease," said Jennifer Ballard, veterinarian with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, "but we want to minimize its spread."

So far, Michigan has tested 13,000 deer. Nine wild deer, all genetically related, have been found to have the disease.

In the best case scenario, the Meridian Township outbreak and a diagnosis of the disease in two captive deer in Mecosta County earlier this spring will be blips on the timeline for Michigan's deer herd.

“We don’t have a well-established disease, and we don’t want a well-established disease,” said William Porter, a Michigan State University professor who will be tracking deer movement in the core area.

“Twenty-five other states are watching Michigan very closely because they haven’t got it yet, they don’t want it and they want to see what’s the best way to handle it. We’re hoping we can provide those answers.”

Michigan is spending $2 million in containment efforts, including a special $1 million appropriation from the state Legislature.

When the first deer was discovered, a nine-township management zone was immediately established in Ingham, Clinton and Shiawassee counties. It has grown to 17 townships as more deer have been found. In those townships, hunting regulations are more liberal, all deer killed must be tested, and feeding and rehabilitating deer are not allowed.

Sharpshooters have thinned local herds and will continue to do so this fall. A project is in the works to fit 100 or more deer with radio collars to track their movement to better predict where the disease might spread.

So far, results are encouraging, and may put Michigan in league with New York and Minnesota, where outbreaks appear contained.

"If we can continue to get high levels of samples and can go three years without another positive test, that would be one of the greatest success stories," said Chad Stewart, deer specialist for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. "From a realistic standpoint, we're probably going to be dealing with chronic wasting disease somewhere else in the state within the next five years."

So can I eat this deer?

So far, chronic wasting disease has not crossed from deer into other species.

“There has been no known transmission of chronic wasting disease to humans,” said Dr. Cheryl Collins, cervid and small ruminants program manager for the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Still, those who handle deer carcasses, meat and skins are advised to use an abundance of caution. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control recommends using gloves to handle deer in the field, having them tested for the disease and not eating infected animals.

Chronic wasting disease was first observed in mule deer in Colorado in the late 1960s and began to spread through western states. It affects deer, elk and moose.

The disease is caused and transmitted by prions, which are proteins that normally exist within the body but become toxic when they begin to fold abnormally. Over time, the prions replicating causes holes which spread through the brain -- think of it as a sponge instead of solid gray matter. Animals may lose weight, drool, stumble or walk repetitively in circles.

Prions spread through animal saliva, urine and feces, as well as infected carcasses. Unlike bacteria or viruses, they’re not a living organism, and heat or chemicals won't necessarily kill them. They can bind with soil in the environment and continue to infect other animals for years.

Chronic wasting disease is similar to mad cow disease, which caused worldwide alarm in the 1990s. The version that occurs in sheep and goats is known as scrapie. Prion disease can also occur in farm-raised mink, cats and, occasionally, people.

Scientists are studying how prions work and how prion diseased could be stopped or even cured.

“There’s lots of research going now,” Collins said. “I think the best hopes are probably improved methods of detecting it and better understanding of transmission.”

Stemming the disease quickly is vital. In Wyoming, where the disease is well-established among mule deer, a recent study showed that it's reducing the herd by 19 percent a year.

In New York, a quick response to a 2005 outbreak among five white-tailed deer in captive breeding facilities included mandatory disease tests on animals killed by hunters, rules against moving deer carcasses outside of a quarantine area and rules against feeding or rehabilitating deer.

No new cases have been identified since, but 1,500 to 2,000 deer are tested each year.

That type of containment is Michigan's highest hope.

"We were really encouraged this year, because we only found one positive sample within hunting season," Stewart said. "That gives us a lot more optimism in terms of containing the disease."

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Radio collars

One way to understand transmission of the disease is to track where deer go.

That’s where Porter comes in. He and colleague David Williams will lead a project this fall to fit 100 or more deer in the quarantine area with radio collars that will pinpoint their precise locations every 30 minutes as long as they’re alive.

Previous tracking studies show that deer are more-or-less homebodies, Porter said. They generally don't move beyond a one-mile radius of where they live.

But every now and then, they’ll romp away, going three or four miles out of their normal zone.

“We don’t know why they do it,” he said. “All we know is that they do.”

Deer also have a behavior known as dispersal. Many males and some females will leave the area where they are born to seek their own territory.

“Generally we think it’s motivated by mom kicking them out,” he said. “If you’re a young male and mom kicks you out, now you have to deal with all of the more-mature males, and the mature males don’t want you around. You keep moving until you find a place where you don’t get pushed around.”

The collars will help show where the deer go, how they get there (for example, following a river) and what other animals they are likely to encounter on the way.

Workers will live-trap or tranquilize deer, take a tissue biopsy to test each animal’s current health, then fit them with collars and send them on their way. That work is expected to begin shortly, although the entire study will last for as long as two years.

“By the end of the summer, we hope to have good information to help the DNR better pinpoint where they should be watching for the disease to erupt,” Porter said.

Disease has an impact on businesses

Mark Esch worked carefully on a recent Friday morning, carefully fitting the lower lip of an eight-point, whitetail buck hide over a foam form and gluing it into place.

Esch’s taxidermy studio in Watertown Township is just a couple of miles from where infected deer were found last year. He works on all types of animals, including exotic game from Africa and other parts of the United States, but whitetail deer are a mainstay, with 185 of them this year.

The disease is not yet widespread, but even the threat of it has changed the way he practices his craft. Gloves and aprons always have been recommended. Now they're a must. He double-bags and saves brains and other parts of deer heads in a freezer, to send to the DNR for testing.

“It’s just more precautions,” he said. “Some guys consider it a hassle that you have to do this, but wouldn’t you rather know that the venison you’re eating is healthy?”

Proposed regulations that would keep hunters from bringing deer to Michigan from other states may put a dent in his future business, but containing the disease may be worth the trade-off.

“Hopefully it stays as it is, very small,” he said.

Merindorf Meats’ Mason location processed more than 1,300 deer from local hunters in 2014, said owner Linn Merindorf.

Then came news of chronic wasting disease and a tough decision: to quit processing deer.

Deer always were processed separately from other meats, Merindorf said, but, with the disease being new to Michigan, he didn’t want to take a risk.

“It isn’t a food safety issue per se,” he said. “I can tell you they have dealt with this out West for 30 years. But it’s new to here, and perception can kill you. So basically, it’s a risk management thing.”

Merindorf said he’s considering building a separate, seasonal facility for processing deer.

“It’s a huge expense, and the payback is a long time on that,” he said. “We’ve just got to crunch the numbers and see.”

Hunting is a double-edged sword

Thinning the deer herd in Meridian Township and neighboring areas has been a key part of containment efforts. Many deer living in a small area have a greater chance of passing the contagious disease to one another.

Sharpshooters who kill deer throughout the zone are part of the thinning process, so are liberal hunting rules in the area.

But Andrew Kroeger thinks it may have gone too far.

He hunts in Shiawassee County, within the 17-township zone where disease-management thinning has taken place for the past two years.

“I know a lot of hunters that hunt the same area are not going to hunt this area anymore, because there are no deer left," said Kroeger, who teaches shooting classes and accompanies people with disabilities on hunts. "Guys that used to see 10 to 20 deer in a sit are now seeing one to two a week.”

The DNR and the Natural Resources Commission in April authorized establishing a panel to work together through December to deliver recommendations for moving forward.

A campaign also started this spring to make Upper Peninsula hunters aware of the disease and to teach them how to keep from bringing it in from Wisconsin, where many western U.P. residents hunt. Infected deer have been found in 40 counties in Wisconsin.

New regulations also have been proposed to keep people from bringing deer carcasses from other states.

The best thing a hunter can do to help is get out and hunt, said Dan Eichinger, executive director of the 80,000-member Michigan United Conservation Clubs.

Testing deer they kill will not only thin the herd but bring new samples to be tested to track the disease.

“The worst thing that we can do is have folks who are accustomed to buying hunting licenses to stop going hunting in those areas,” he said. “Harvest your deer, turn the heads in to get tested. The more we know about chronic wasting disease in this area, the better.”

Not to mention that the revenue from more than 600,000 hunting licenses sold each year supports conservation efforts that extend well beyond deer, Eichinger said.

“If you’re a duck hunter or a grouse hunter of a non-hunter, you’re paying for conservation of grouse and ducks and geese and rabbits and everything else on the backs of the deer license,” he said.

“If people lose confidence in the deer herd, that causes people to not buy licenses. It has the ability to upset our whole funding model for conservation.”

Contact Kathleen Lavey at (517) 377-1251 or klavey@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @kathleenlavey.

Help spot sick deer

The Department of Natural Resources is asking for help from hunters and the public in reporting deer that are:

-Unusually thin.

-Acting strangely, including stumbling, drooling or allowing humans to approach.

Call the DNR Wildlife Disease Lab at (517) 336-5030 or fill out and submit the online observation report found on the DNR website at https://secure1.state.mi.us/ors/Home.