The Dell Creek Feedground is hot with chronic wasting disease (CWD). As GOHUNT previously reported, the deadly disease was detected in two adult cow elk earlier this month – both of which were discovered at the feedground – and, now, more dead elk have been found, causing Wyoming State Wildlife Veterinarian Sam Allen to call the problem an “epidemic.”

While there haven’t been any additional CWD-infected elk found at the Pinedale-area Scab Creek Feedground, “diseased carcasses” at the Dell Creek Feedground “are clearly accumulating,” according to WyoFile. To date, that includes another five-year-old cow elk and a three-year-old bull elk. 

And Allen predicts there will only be more diseased elk now that chronic wasting disease appears to have infiltrated the feedground, noting that the disease doesn’t increase “on a curve.”

“Most of the time it just goes straight up,” said Allen. “I would expect [prevalence] in this population to go a little bit faster than in some of our other elk populations, considering how feedgrounds are set up.”

Further, Justin Binfet, Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s deputy chief of wildlife, acknowledged that “[t]he age of the infected animals is notable,” specifically with regard to the bull elk, which “would suggest the animal contracted CWD when it was just a calf.” 

“That shows you the transmission potential may be elevated,” said Binfet. “At lower prevalence, in general, you don’t see a lot of CWD in younger age class animals. But as prevalence gets more and more substantial and the herds are further along that epidemic curve, then you tend to see more cases in younger animals.”

And the fact that the elk are dying now means that CWD has been around longer than wildlife managers have known about it.

“If these elk are dying — or at least circling the drain — right now, they were infected over two years ago,” said Hank Edwards, a longtime Wildlife Health Laboratory supervisor who retired in 2023. “That means that the horse is long out of the barn. This didn’t happen this spring. It’s been incubating for two years, and now we’re just starting to receive the results.”

Solutions appear to be limited as the feedground keeps hungry elk away from private ranching land, and severe winters and little forage mean that hungry elk depend on the supplemental food source. For now, until a long-term solution can be determined, WGFD is “staying on top of carcasses,” according to Brandon Scurlock, WGFD’s Pinedale regional wildlife coordinator.

“We’ll try to get those prions off the feedgrounds as fast as we can,” said Scurlock. “We can euthanize any obviously symptomatic elk, because we don’t want them shedding prions. That’s what we can do right now — and that’s what’s what we are doing.”