Robert Scheer/The Star
This is X-Factor, an Indiana deer that in his prime was worth an estimated $1 million.
His value as a stud comes not from research and not from the quality of his venison. Instead, his value is in those freakish antlers, the product of more than three decades of selective breeding.
In less than 40 years, a relatively small group of farmers has created something the world has never seen before — a billion-dollar industry primarily devoted to breeding deer that are trucked to fenced hunting preserves to be shot by patrons willing to pay thousands for the trophies.
An Indianapolis Star investigation has discovered the industry costs taxpayers millions of dollars, compromises long-standing wildlife laws, endangers wild deer and undermines the government’s multibillion-dollar effort to protect livestock and the food supply.
To feed the burgeoning captive-deer industry, breeders are shipping an unprecedented number of deer and elk across state lines. With them go the diseases they carry. Captive-deer facilities have spread tuberculosis to cattle and are suspected in the spread of deadly foreign deer lice in the West. More important, The Star’s investigation uncovered compelling circumstantial evidence that the industry also has helped accelerate the spread of chronic wasting disease, an always-fatal deer disease similar to mad cow. CWD now has been found in 22 states.
CWD’s spread roughly coincides with the captive-deer industry’s growth. In half of the states where CWD was found, it first appeared in a commercial deer operation. Officials in Missouri, Nebraska, New York and Canada think captive deer or elk introduced the disease to the wild.
So far, government programs have failed to halt CWD’s spread, largely because there is no reliable way to test live animals for the disease. So infected deer may be shipped into disease-free states, where they can infect other animals, captive or wild. The Star’s investigation uncovered examples of deer escaping from farms, shoddy record keeping and meager penalties for those caught breaking the rules, which further undermine state and federal efforts to contain the disease. Plus, in less than a decade, more than a dozen people have been charged with smuggling live deer across state lines.
More: http://www.indystar.com/longform/news/investigations/2014/03/27/buck-fever-intro/6865031/
Exposing the Big Game 
Good grief – just when I think I’ve heard the worst that people can do, along comes something even more reprehensible. SICKOS ALL!!! This is certainly not the stewardship role that humans were supposed to attain after the Garden of Eden debacle. It’s just hateful greed.
Yep, time for another flood.
Sometimes all I can do is sit and shake my head, in total disgust 😦
Next ? !!!!
It seems simple enough to ban, considering the potential but real threat to wild deer herds. So what’s the problem?
THE MORE YOU SAY, THE LESS PEOPLE REMEMBER. (Fenelon)
Thanks for publicizing this in-depth examination of the canned-hunting industry! The authors should be congratulated. The degenerates that run and those who patronize such establishments truly represent the crème de la crème of crap.
I’m sure they’ll find a way to blame the wolves for the captive deer spreading disease to cattle, right? I mean, seems like the wolves are the sacrificial lambs — blamed for everything. Hey, why don’t we start accusing people of witch craft and start all that bullshit back up again.
There is no hope. We are outnumbered by all the idiots seeking to earn a profit off the lives of sentient beings.
Animal exploitation. Sickening.
‘Contract execution’ and ‘pay to slay’ …….. say no, of course….The canned-hunting industry can’t be considered separately from the game-breeder industry, because canned-hunt proprietors who aren’t breeders themselves buy their stock from breeders who may or may not offer canned hunts of their own and who, in any case, couldn’t stay in business without the canned-hunt market. http://archive.audubonmagazine.org/incite/incite1011.html
Factory farms for deer, commercial transaction with no conservation or ecological parameters….Keeping bucks subdued, isolated, or just conveniently shot to reduce buck fights, antlers are cut off, bucks are subjected to castration…….http://www.whitetaildeerbreeders.com/author/admin/page/6/
So, wild deer is treated as just another industrial farm commodity…..These deer breeders can offer top of the line breeder bucks, shooter bucks, bred does, open does, fawns, and semen for sale……..Indiana laws protecting welfare of wild animals…..pathetic!
There are 400 deer breeder farms in Indiana……..400!! This is outrageous, needs to be addressed. What are these breeders doing with all these captive deer, when there are plenty of wild deer running free in this state?? Wild game breeders, whether deer, fox, raccoon, skunk, is so wrong, as these types of wildlife are not endangered, should not be privately owned, captive bred, like domesticated livestock.