Cause I have no tolerance for stupidity right at the moment, and maybe if I rant it out here I won’t there?
As any hunter who’s done their homework is likely aware there is a disease in some deer populations called Chronic Wasting Disease. At this time it is not believed that this disease is transmittable to anyone but another deer or related species (or a laboratory mouse that has been genetically modified to be susceptible to it), but to be safe the .gov recommends some basic safety techniques for hunters to be sure they’re not spreading the disease. First off is to not shoot or eat any deer that looks sick (duh), the rest basically state to take some extra precautions in how the deer is butchered, including trying to avoid cutting into the bones, spinal cord, or brain of the deer and making sure that certain organs aren’t consumed. There is also note that the disease appears to be present in the antler velvet (see above link).
Nice and straightforward huh? Except that with the rise of using deer and elk antlers as possible chew toys for dogs there has been a massive alarmist movement that OMG the DISEASE is PRESENT in the ANTLERS so you could be MAKING YOUR DOG SICK. Unfortunately a huge number of people believe this, including some vets, so a basic search for “dog chew deer antler cwd” will get you all kinds of alarmist posts stating that antlers aren’t safe due to possibly giving your dog CWD, including all kinds of official sounding and looking articles by vets. Yet not one of them can actually tell you WHERE to find this information actually saying this beyond their alarmist tendencies.
I can’t find a single instance of the disease being identified in antlers. I can only assume that the misinformation is the result of one or more people reading antler velvet, and the suggested instructions for removing the skull & antlers for trophies and misunderstood it.
If she was stating that she didn’t want to give HER dogs antlers due to the possibility of breaking teeth, and because the possible potential of CWD worries her I’d be ok with it. Instead, every time someone mentions dog chews (regardless of the TYPE of chew in question) she has gone out of her way to find several articles (and repeats of the same articles), some of them written by people of very dubious backgrounds, to prove that YOUR DOG COULD GET CWD FROM THOSE ANTLERS!!!!!!!eleventy!!!! So you should NEVER EVER GIVE THEM TO YOUR DOG!!!!!
The ignorance I can deal with, thats solvable, but the outright stupidity frustrates the heck out of me.
Edited to add: and I’m right!