#334 CWD Fact or Fiction with Lann Wilf and William McKinley

All right, fellas, I appreciate you both jumping in here with us.

I've already introduced you, uh, formally before this, so I wanna just get right into the nuts and bolts of what we're talking about today.

And I figure, Lan, if you could just pipe in, you know, when applicable.

I'm gonna ask William these first couple questions, and then y'all just take off and go.

But-

That will work

...

I wanted to...

The, the biggest thing that me and Nick were already talking about is we're just average hunters with lots of questions about CWD.

Like, I don't know what, I don't know whether to look up, down, sideways on this deal.

I just don't feel like I'm well informed, especially with social media and all of the craziness that goes on there.

Uh, so I guess to start, William, could you just walk us through what the basics of CWD is?

Sure.

I'd be glad to, uh, Aaron.

I, I will say there is a lot of information out there on chronic wasting disease, and there's a lot of good information, and there's a lot of misinformation as well out there.

Um, so it's a spongiform encephalopathy.

Okay, that's a really big word for meaning it's a disease that affects the nervous system, and it's transmissible, and it's caused by a prion, a misfolded protein.

Uh, when this misfolded protein, which is very, very durable in the environment, I mean, you throw it out there, it's been equated to chunking a ball bearing out on the landscape.

It just, it just sits there waiting.

Uh, it's not alive.

It is just a protein.

It's really hard to, uh, denature it because you can't kill it because it's not alive.

Uh, so this protein is sitting there.

It gets taken up by a deer, maybe that was on deer-to-deer contact, and it goes into the body, and either through a nasal or through the oral, uh, mechanism, generally believed, [clears throat] goes into the digestive system, where it then makes its way to the spleen.

This is in whitetail.