You’re Bleeding All Over the Carpet

RZ WORTHAM, I’ve been welding steps and a platform in order to avoid using a ladder to get up into my deer blind come this next season. 

August, midday on a clear day on a concrete driveway is actually the best time of the year to do this kind of work. Cuts down on people coming over to “help” or to offer advice.  Cuts down on how much beer they mooch as well. 

   Anyway, I got to a good stopping place at about 1:30. Headed for the back porch under a fan with two cold beers (and counting) to read today’s mail. I was pleased to find the newest TF&G. As always, I start at the back. Looked at some kids making memories, then read your latest missive. That could have been me in that story. 

Remember when you came running home that time bleeding freely and your mom yelled “get outta the house… you’re bleeding on the carpet! Out! Out!”?  Maybe it didn’t happen that way for you, but it did for me….more than once. 

A correction to a statement you made. You said teachers look forward to the beginning of school. Not true sir. I taught high school for 32 years. Not once was I eager to go back. It was a great career. But I was the one the other teachers asked “how many more Monday’s?” I always kept up with how many more until the next extended holiday or summer break.

   Great story, sir. Keep it up!

Larry Caldwell

Nilgai Question

WHY ARE THERE NO  nilgai north of Corpus or even around Corpus for that matter?

Alton Hebner

EDITOR: We addressed this in a feature in the July issue, which you can check out by subscribing to the digital edition.

Here’s the short answer.

The nilgai along the lower coast are free ranging, and the species in fact is hard to keep in fences—not because they leap over them, but because they can destroy them.

I, too, have always wondered whether nilgais have been present for nearly 100 years in South Texas. They are free ranging, so why they have not migrated farther north.

According to the Texas State Historical Association it has to do with the cold.

“Approximately 15,000 nilgais are now on Texas rangelands. They will probably not become widespread. They suffer in extreme cold, and even in temperate South Texas, they might die during unusually cold winters when food is scarce.”

I have seen nilgais on high-fenced ranches in Central Texas, but those animals get supplemental feed, and I have heard of them dying off in temperatures that have little impact on other exotics.

CWD In Humans?

IS IT TRUE that Chronic Wasting Disease has been found to be transferrable to all primates including humans?

Anonymous

EDITOR: No. It has not been found transferable to humans. A recent study by Canadian scientists shows macaque monkeys contracted chronic wasting disease (CWD) after eating meat from CWD-positive deer.

According to jsonline the findings are the first known transmissions of the prion disease to a primate from eating diseased venison.

“The assumption was for the longest time that chronic wasting disease was not a threat to human health,” said Stefanie Czub, prion researcher with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, in remarks published Saturday in The Tyee a Vancouver, British Columbia, magazine. “But with the new data, it seems we need to revisit this view to some degree.”

This was in contrast to 2014 studies that showed macaques did not contract CWD, however CDC officials did admit there was enough evidence at the time to suggest a low risk of contracting CWD from tissue exposure.

Can people get CWD from eating infected deer? That has not yet been proved but officials in the Canada and U.S. advise exercising caution.

“Our studies have shown that squirrel monkeys, but not cynomolgus macaques, were susceptible to CWD. Although these nonhuman primates are not exact models of human susceptibility, they support the data from transgenic mouse studies, in vitro experiments, and epidemiologic evidence that suggest humans are at a low risk of contracting CWD. Nevertheless, it remains sensible to minimize exposure to tissues potentially contaminated with the CWD agent.”

There is a lot of hype on both sides of this issue but so far no one has proved human transmission and hopefully they never will.

 

Email your comments to: editor@fishgame.com

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