The link is not 100% but two hunters eating from the same deer population and falling ill at around the same time is extremely unlikely to be a coincidence.
We are essentially one mutation away from this spreading between humans and that would be very, very bad.
Where did this disease even come from?
It's a certain protein that got misfolded, if it comes in contact with more of the original protein it causes that to also get misfolded. It can spread kinda similarly to a virus, via bodily fluids, animal-animal contact, in contaminated food/water, and by eating tainted meat in this case. Even if the deer was asymptomatic they can still spread the disease. The way the protein is folded causes it to be resistant to degradation so it can lay dormant for years or maybe decades in the environment. It causes horrifying symptoms causing deer to almost turn into zombies as their bodies waste away.
Yikes
Yeah it's not something to fuck with but we keep forcing factory farmed animals to eat animal by-products/waste, and overcrowd/stress wild animal populations.
We? Whos we
You and penitentkulak. We know what you're up to.
dumb deer don't have their own marie kondo
It's a prion, aka a protein which has gone wrong
The worst part about CWD is that it can sit in soil for a decade so once an area gets CWD, it will pretty much keep CWD