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Mytton, who has served the Department of Natural Resources for 10 years as a deer and bear ecologist, is leaving to take a position with the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. 

Mytton, who worked in western states before coming to Wisconsin, has moved to Montana, where he will be based at a ranch he and his wife own north of Yellowstone National Park.

He is officially a Wisconsin DNR employee until his annual leave expires, Mytton said, and his parting comments are made as a DNR biologist, not as a representative of the elk foundation. 

Mytton said the theories of how chronic wasting disease got to Wisconsin include:

A spontaneous mutation among Wisconsin deer.

The consumption of food blocks containing rendered parts of infected animals.

Contamination from infected captive deer and elk imported to Wisconsin.

If you asked wildlife biologists in private about the most likely mechanism for the disease coming to Wisconsin, they would say contact between live game farm animals and wild deer, Mytton said.

“We have evidence that captive deer have been released in that Mount Horeb area. Whether they were diseased or not we don’t know, but we do know we have found captive deer dead on the highways, and nobody reported the loss,” he said.

“We had reports of a mule deer with an ear tag running around in that area for several years,” Mytton said, noting mule deer are a western species not native to Wisconsin. 

Deer and elk farms have not always done good job of keeping track of their animals, he said, and wild deer still are not protected from diseases spread by captive wildlife.

“The records we’ve looked at have not been very good records,” he said. “There needs to be a penalty for escaped animals.”

Agriculture officials point out there has never been a case of chronic wasting disease on a Wisconsin deer or elk farm.

Mytton said that is not a reassuring as it sounds because the testing on deer and elk farms has not been comprehensive.

There is no known method for testing a live animal for the disease. The animal must be dead and a thin section of brain examined. 

In theory, every deer or elk that dies in captive herds is being monitored for the disease. In practice, during the warm months the brain decomposes to the point where no samples can be taken within a couple of hours, he said. 

Mytton said more aggressive testing would involve killing deer and elk on farms so immediate samples could be taken. 

Donna Gilson of the state agriculture department said getting a statistically meaningful sample from the more than 900 elk and deer farms in the state would require killing and testing almost all the captive animals -- about 35,000 elk and deer. Each farm would need to be treated as a separate small population. 

“Aside from the fact that it destroys peoples’ entire operations, who’s going to pay for it?” Gilson asked. “Should the farmers just sacrifice their operations? It’s not a realistic solution.”

Mytton said meaningful testing could be done with smaller samples.

“The reality is we have not been able to test these farms,” he said.

DNR biologists and some legislators have cautioned for years that a lack of regulation of the movements of captive deer and elk among states could bring chronic wasting disease to Wisconsin, Mytton said. 

“We’ve known this disease has been around. We know they have been moving these animals around. It was a time bomb that was waiting to go off,” he said. 

The agriculture industry and some key state senators squelched increased monitoring of captive deer and elk movements until recently, he said. 

In 1995 the responsibility for regulating most captive wildlife farms was transferred from the DNR to the agriculture department. Wisconsin was not alone. 

“The captive industry in every state that I know of has requested a move from fish and game departments to the departments of agriculture,” he said.

Wisconsin’s Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection has some good people, but they only have four field officers to enforce laws on all the livestock operations and deer farms. 

“They have over 900 game farms, plus the entire dairy industry, beef, chickens. It’s just impossible,” Mytton said. “What appears to be enforcement on paper is in reality nonexistent.”

Gilson said DATCP took over the registering of elk farms and exotic deer farms in 1995, but the DNR retains regulatory authority of white-tailed deer farms until Jan. 1, 2003.

If Mytton is concerned about deer escaping from deer farms he should blame the DNR, because they are the agency charged with monitoring deer farms, Gilson said. 

The state has 272 elk farms and about 100 “nonnative” deer farms, where reindeer, red deer, fallow deer and others are raised. DATCP has jurisdiction over those. Until January the DNR oversees the 575 whitetail operations in the state, she said. 

Gilson agreed that the agency could use more field staff.

“We would dearly love to have more people,” she said. 

Knight, the Leader-Telegram’s Getting Out editor, can be reached at 830-5835, (800) 236-7077 or joe.knight@ecpc.com.