CWD
The Facts About CWD & Deer Urine
The spread of Chronic Wasting Disease is a matter we take very seriously. Tink’s has been following recent events concerning CWD and have been for many years. We have ongoing communications with the facilities where our urine comes from, various wildlife agencies, and top experts on this subject matter. We care about protecting whitetail deer and want to do our part to prevent the spread of CWD.
We monitor our urine suppliers and their facilities to insure they are in continuous CWD monitoring programs approved by the National CWD Herd Certification Program under USDA-APHIS. No CWD has ever been found in any of our facilities.
The Science…
The risk of CWD being spread from our urine based hunting scent products is virtually zero.
The speculations you may have seen inferring risk of urine based scents spreading CWD are not well founded.
In all of our searching and communication with experts, only two published studies we know of suggest any possibility of a link between urine and CWD transmission. Both studies involved experimental and artificial/extreme protocols that are clearly not present during normal use of a urine based hunting scent.
For example, in one of the studies, urine from clinically sick CWD positive deer was concentrated (10 fold) and injected directly into the brains of mice that were genetically altered to be susceptible to CWD. In this study 1 out of 9 mice became infected. Obviously hunters are not going around injecting deer urine into deer brains with a hypodermic needle.
Based on the experimental conditions, results and other consideration, Nicholas J. Haley, DVM PhD, who happens to be the lead author on both of those studies, has advocated against banning the use urine based products because the risk is so low.
It is simply in the best interest of any urine collection facility to have healthy deer. This along with the virtual zero risk, you can be extremely confident that you are not spreading CWD by using urine based scents.
We care greatly about the deer and about the tradition of hunting. If we thought our hunting scent products could spread CWD, we would not offer them.