By Robert Imrie
Associated Press

WAUSAU, Wis. — When Wisconsin wildlife officials first asked hunters to kill hundreds of deer to test for a fatal brain disease found in southern Wisconsin, more than 600 people volunteered for the job.

But now the state wants to destroy all the deer in a 361-square-mile area starting in June, and hunters are balking, saying authorities are moving too fast and going against long-held hunting traditions.

"It has been nothing but panic, panic, panic. We are saying, 'Slow down,'" said Mark Kessenich, a hunter who owns 80 acres in the hot zone west of Madison.

Other hunters say they support trying to eradicate chronic wasting disease from Wisconsin's 1.6 million deer herd by targeting animals in the infected hot zone. But they won't hunt until fall — the traditional time.

The crisis began in February when the state Department of Natural Resources announced that three deer shot earlier near Mount Horeb had tested positive for chronic wasting disease, the first time it had been discovered east of the Mississippi River.

Chronic wasting disease is a relative of mad cow disease in cattle and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. Infected animals become weak and develop brain lesions, and the disease is always fatal, but is not thought to be transmissible outside of deer or elk. It previously had been found in deer and elk in parts of Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, Nebraska, Montana, Oklahoma and South Dakota and in Canada. There is no vaccine.

"We need to get these animals killed," said Steve Oestreicher, chairman of the Wisconsin Conservation Congress, which represents thousands of hunters and says the state has the right strategy.

"All eyes in the nation are on Wisconsin," he said. "If this is indeed a crisis, the governor would be wise to very seriously consider even calling out the National Guard on this. The hunters and sharpshooters are not going to get them all."

A special spring hunt was ordered to determine the spread of the disease. Hunters killed 516 deer in the Mount Horeb area; 15 of them were found to be infected.

The DNR then announced its plan to kill nearly 15,000 deer in the area beginning in June, in hopes of keeping the disease from spreading to the rest of the herd.

That's when some hunters began questioning the plan.

Kessenich, 50, and five other people formed Citizens Against Irrational Deer Slaughter and is considering suing to stop the killing.

Landowner and hunter Mark Sherven said the state's timing is off. Instead of killing deer now, the DNR should test every deer carcass during tradition hunts this fall to provide a better picture of the disease's spread, and to reassure hunters their venison is disease-free, he said.

"I give the DNR credit for not dragging their feet, but I think they are pulling the trigger a little bit too quick on this one," he said.

The emerging opposition doesn't surprise Bruce Heberlein, a hunter and retired University of Wisconsin sociologist who has researched hunting trends.

Deer hunting is steeped in tradition in Wisconsin. The hunting season in the fall draws nearly 700,000 enthusiasts, and has provided both food and the chance for social get-togethers.

Finding the so-called mad deer disease in the herd jeopardizes all of that, even though the area where the disease was found represents only 1 percent of the state's hunting land, Heberlein said.

Since the disease's discovery, the state has asked Congress for money to fight the sickness, passed a state plan to spend $4 million for the battle, and authorized state veterinary labs to be equipped to test for the disease. State leaders also approved allowing DNR sharpshooters to shoot deer from helicopters.

Though some people have proposed building a fence around the hot zone to contain the diseased deer, DNR spokesman Bob Manwell said too much land is privately held for such a plan to be feasible.

Doing nothing would mean that within 10 years, so many deer would die that the population would crash, and the disease would spread, he said.

"The only way to attack the disease is to eliminate those that carry it," he said. "We know some number of deer in the area have this and we can't know which ones do. That is why the suggestion we take them all. ... This is our only shot at doing this."

Will it work?

"I think everybody has some doubts," he said. "This is uncharted territory."

May 25, 2002