This Saturday thousands of Wisconsin hunters will head to deer camp as gun-hunting season opens on white-tail deer.

Hunters’ concerns have been growing about this year’s season since the discovery of Chronic Wasting Disease in deer herds in the Mount Horeb area.

Chronic Wasting Disease deteriorates the brains of deer and is an example of a spongiform encephalopathy, a family that includes mad cow disease in cows and Creutzfeldt Jakob’s disease in humans.

Tom Heberlein, professor emeritus of rural sociology at the University of Wisconsin, said CWD could hurt Wisconsin’s rich tradition of hunting.

“Right now, hunting license sales are down 17 percent. That’s the equivalent of a social earthquake in Wisconsin,” Heberlein said. “A year ago, if I told people there would be billboards up in this state urging people to hunt deer, people would’ve told me I’m crazy. In Wisconsin, that’s like a billboard begging people to go to Packer games.”

Richard Bishop, chair of the applied and agricultural economics department at UW, said he estimates a decrease in hunter participation of 10 to 20 percent compared to previous years. Heberlein agreed with that estimate but said turnout will be hard to predict, because the most hunting licenses are purchased on the day the season starts.

Bishop said in a paper he published this summer that he estimated CWD could cause hunters could lose between $70 million and $100 million in recreational benefits.

“You can place value on a colored television. The value people place on going deer hunting is very high,” Bishop said.

Heberlein said the hunters he talked to related possible risk of CWD to other mishaps seen every deer season.

“There’s always been risk involved with hunting,” Heberlein said. “People have heart attacks, fall out of tree stands, shoot themselves, shoot each other, there’s car accidents on the way up to deer camp. Now we just have a very small additional risk.”

“Until recently, venison has been considered a high-quality food,” Heberlein said.

Heberlein said deer are free-range animals and are generally healthier than mass-produced livestock like chicken or cattle.

“You could consume a hamburger that isn’t fully cooked and get sick for a few days, but we don’t dread that,” said Barbara Ingham, professor of food science at the UW-Extension.

Ingham said that both the Center for Disease Control and the World Health Organization have indicated there is no risk to humans involved with CWD.

“In Britain, it was never proven anyone came down with Creutzfeldt Jakob’s disease as a cause of them consuming beef infected with mad cow disease,” Ingham said.

“Eating venison is discretionary,” Heberlein said. He said most hunters are willing to accept the risk but would be wary about feeding venison to their grandchildren. He said he has also talked to hunters’ wives who are abstaining.

“Socially, these wild-game meals are often very special meals. Families invite friends and relatives over. That’s starting to evaporate, at least with venison,” Heberlein said.

Some companies are attempting to be cautionary.

“Gander Mountain is selling little kits that you can use to test your meat,” said UW senior Rich Burrack.

Heberlein said the Department of Natural Resources will also provide hunters with lists of veterinarians who will test for CWD in the heads of harvest deer at hunting registration sites.

“Hunters can buy a kit or go to a veterinarian and have their meat tested for a cost of between $50 and $90,” Heberlein said.

Heberlein maintained the chances of harvesting a deer infected with CWD are small.

“We’ve found CWD in 3 percent of the deer population in 2 percent of the state,” Heberlein said.

Burrack agreed.

“They’ve had CWD or diseases like it in other places,” he said. “In this state, we have a lot more resources to take care of it with the DNR and the number of hunters in the state.”

“It’s not going to stop me from hunting or eating the venison,” Burrack added. “I was going to try and leave for home a little earlier on Friday afternoon, but I have an exam.”

Heberlein said he will be leaving for a deer camp this weekend and staying in a cabin his family has owned for over 50 years.