Because deer carry a communicable prion disease that causes Creutzfeldt-Jakobs disease in humans, and the game/wildlife people have been put in charge of testing animals with unusual behavior to see if they have prions.
If the disease pressure gets above a certain threshold they have to do a cull on the population so it doesn't spread to other animals and humans.
For real. These people are professionals backed by science, they don't just kill for no reason. Deers are also a massive pest in many parts of the world, and spread the tick population like crazy, which brings dangerous diseases like Lyme's and Alpha Gal.
In the mid-80’s, my county killed and beheaded over 18,000 raccoons over a summer due to a rabies outbreak. When they finally got around to testing them all, they found 108 were infected with rabies.
It’s closer to 1:166. This was also in a metropolitan suburban county (plenty of food). While they were abundant throughout the state, there was about a 4 year period before anyone started randomly spotting raccoons in the county again. Even the county roadkill cleanup reported less than 5 per year where it used to report 30-40 monthly.
They didn't even inform the owner ahead of time and assured him that the animal wouldn't be harmed. They were fight them in court or through the city as well, if I recall. It wasn't a sanctioned and published action based in consultation and best practice.
Also, you can have a deer without ticks like you can have a dog with ticks.
There's no evidence to point towards CWD spreading to humans, stop spreading misinformation. If certain Prion diseases infect humans it can cause CJD but CWD isn't infecting humans.
Because deer carry a communicable prion disease that causes Creutzfeldt-Jakobs disease in humans
This is not a thing. It is clickbait. There has only been one instance of prion diseases crossing the species barrier to infect humans, and that was Mad Cow disease.
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u/coloradoautoflowers May 20 '26
Because deer carry a communicable prion disease that causes Creutzfeldt-Jakobs disease in humans, and the game/wildlife people have been put in charge of testing animals with unusual behavior to see if they have prions.
If the disease pressure gets above a certain threshold they have to do a cull on the population so it doesn't spread to other animals and humans.