Deer hunters have been wondering, and some have been worrying about it, for many years. Here’s the latest on Chronic Wasting Disease:

In a recent experiment at Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Montana, scientists tried to contaminate “human cerebral organiods,” or tissues that closely resemble human brain tissue, with injections of Chronic Wasting Disease, which has been documented to infect deer in 35 states and 5 Canadian provinces.

For a week the researchers exposed the imitation brain tissues to high concentrations of CWD from 3 different sources. Good news, in ongoing testing, no infection! Yet another scientific finding that CWD does not jump from an infected animal to a human.

BUT does this mean it is okay to eat a deer you just shot that tested positive for CWD? No, the researchers say, because the imitation tissue samples they tried to infect are not precisely the same as real human brain tissue. Yet more research is needed.

In other CWD news:

***CWD has now been identified in deer and elk 36 states. Georgia is the latest state to confirm a whitetail shot last season tested positive.

***States across the nation tested nearly 250,000 tissue samples in 2024 and spent over $25 million on CWD surveillance and monitoring.

***When you combine the mish-mash of confusing CWD testing procedures across 40-plus states, the result: The average length of time a hunter has to wait for the results of a CWD test on the deer he shot is 29 days.

***Researchers found that in whitetail deer, the prevalence of CWD is typically highest in adult bucks, followed by adult does. Adult bucks are often 1 1/2 to 3 times more likely to be infected with CWD compared to females.