MAD DEER DISEASE?

摘要

This autumn, the nation's big-game hunters are lifting their guns and bows in the service of science. They're collecting the biggest sample ever of deer and elk brains―predicted to total 200,000―to test for a once-obscure wildlife disease that's become the stuff of headlines and headaches coast-to-coast. So-called chronic wasting disease strikes mule deer, white-tailed deer, and elk. It riddles the brain with tiny holes as the victim slowly withers and dies. Once found in the wild only in an area intersecting Colorado, Wyoming, and Nebraska, the disease appears to be spreading. This year, it turned up in wild herds in South Dakota, New Mexico, and Canada and jumped all the way to Wisconsin and Illinois.