Energy

Montana Is Organizing A Hunt For Deer That Are Turning Into ‘True Zombies’

This is not a picture of the buck in the story (Shutterstock/Tom Reichner)

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Tim Pearce Energy Reporter
Font Size:

Montana state officials are organizing a hunt meant to assess how widespread a fatal disease has affected the state’s south-central deer population, Wyoming’s Caspar Star Tribune reports.

Chronic Wasting Disease, caused by deformed proteins called prions, was first documented 50 years ago in 1967 and has since appeared in two dozen states. The disease attacks the mule deer’s nervous system, causing the animal to lose weight and awareness until it dies after a span of months, according to The New York Times.

“They have a vacant stare, they have a stumbling gait, their heads are drooping, their ears are down, you can see thick saliva dripping from their mouths. It’s like a true zombie disease,” Dr. Mark D. Zabel, a Colorado State University immunologist and Chronic Wasting Disease expert, told TheNYT.

A hand-selected group of Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) officials will take part in the hunt. Some of the hunt’s details still need to be finalized, such as how many deer are needed for a valid sample and the hunt’s boundaries of the hunt. A proposal is expected to be presented at a Fish and Wildlife Commission meeting Dec. 7, the Casper Star Tribune reports.

“It’s a tight window,” FWP Region 5 Supervisor Barb Beck, who is leading the state’s study of the disease, told the Casper Star Tribune. “But things are coming together.”

“It will be a milestone for how the commission handles this issue,” she added. Though the disease has been monitored for decades, the Montana hunt will be the first time this tactic has been tried to assess the problem.

Zabel has suggested the only way to beat the disease is to purify the environment through fire. After an infected animal passes through an area, Prions carrying the disease can stay in the environment for years and infect other deer passing through.

“We found [prions] in urine, in saliva and in feces,” Zabel told TheNYT. “If you eliminate the plants that have prions on the surface, that would be a huge step forward.”

Zabel, along with a team of other researchers, is working on testing his theory with controlled burns on federal land in Arkansas and Colorado.

Follow Tim Pearce on Twitter

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Tags : montana
Tim Pearce

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel