Here it is…from November 5, 2015
I emailed Mike Tonkovich hoping for some clarification, well I got it, here it is in it's entirety for all to read.
Good Morning Ron –
My guess is that your email is in response to a thread on the Dumbassville regarding “headless deer.” This thread was brought to my attention last evening. Given the misinformation in the thread, I’m glad you took this opportunity to reach out to us for clarification. First and foremost, the quote from Mr. David Kohler is inaccurate. Perhaps if you had a source for this information, we could get things cleared up. Second, YES we are in fact collecting road-killed deer as part of our statewide CWD surveillance program. We have been collecting road-killed deer for a decade now and have been monitoring Ohio’s wild herd for CWD since 2002. In addition to the road-killed deer, we are also collecting hunter-harvested deer, suspect animals (those behaving abnormally or appear sick), and samples from taxidermists in several eastern Ohio locations. We are collecting only the head and later are pulling tissue samples for testing. Our staff is advised to make every effort to remove the deer from plain view after removing the head. We recognize that a headless deer is not a pleasant site. However, there are occasions where moving a deer is not practical for safety reasons. Moreover, most of the headless deer are the work of folks who are illegally collecting the antlers.In a good year, we’ll collect 800 road-killed deer. This year, roughly 20,000 deer will be hit on the road. Many of those will be bucks and most will lose their heads before we even have a chance to get to them.
We are leaving the deer where the sample is collected for two reasons. First, we have no way of moving the deer. We do not have the staff or the equipment to load these deer. Second, and most importantly, if that deer is positive for CWD and we drag it half-way across the county to dispose of it, we’re potentially contaminating everything along the way that comes into contact with the blood and body fluids. In my opinion, we’re minimizing our potential losses by leaving the deer where it fell. Yes, a positive deer would contaminate the site, but I suppose its best to contain it to a single site than run the risk of contaminating multiple sites during the move.
I hope this helps to clear up some of the confusion. If I’ve left anything unanswered, feel free to drop me a note. And again, if you have a source for the inaccurate statement attributed to Mr. Kohler, please share that with me and we’ll get that cleared up too! Finally, I’ve provided a summary of our CWD surveillance efforts in the table below.
Best,
Mike Tonkovich
Michael J. Tonkovich, Ph.D.
Deer Program Administrator
ODNR, Division of Wildlife
360 E. State St.
Athens, OH 45701
v(740)589.9922 f(740)589.9925
