LONG PRAIRIE, Minn. _ Thor, a spectacularly antlered whitetail buck, lives only in the fevered imaginations of most of the 450,000 Minnesota hunters who have ventured afield this deer season in search of a trophy.
But to a select band of hunters willing to pay money, everything about Thor is real.
The 5-year-old buck is a genetically engineered wonder. His monstrous, knotty, bulging rack of antlers would measure more than 280 inches. He reigns supreme in the breeding pens at Autumn Antlers, a 400-acre hunting preserve that features more than 100 bucks with traits rarely seen by hunters in the wild.
Like Thor, they all live behind an 8-foot-high fence. And for the right price _ $3,000 to $30,000 _ customers can bag the buck of their dreams. While clients are not guaranteed a shot at their favorite deer during a typical three- or four-day hunt, no one has left yet without a trophy, co-owner John Monson said.
"If you only have an afternoon, I'm going to put you up on hamburger hill and we'll get you a deer," he said.
Hunting preserves have been around for decades and are an integral part of the $7.9 billion deer farming industry. In states like Texas, where public hunting land is scarce, high-fence hunting is common. That's not the case in Minnesota, but the state's 339 family-owned deer and elk farms are emerging as a flash point in an increasingly acrimonious debate over who is to blame for spreading deadly chronic wasting disease (CWD) to Minnesota's wild deer herds.
Minnesota has gone from zero to 58 confirmed cases of CWD in wild deer in three years. While the origin of the largest outbreak, in Fillmore County, is not known, Minnesota's three other CWD outbreaks in wild deer have been linked by the Department of Natural Resources to infected deer farms. One, a hunting preserve and breeding facility in Crow Wing County, stayed in business for more than two years after the disease was discovered festering in its herd.
Partly because there is no live test or screen for CWD, state wildlife officials and mainstream deer hunting groups have pressed for more restrictions on deer farming as a key way to protect Minnesota's wild deer population. Deer farmers have successfully opposed many of those measures, including double fencing to prevent nose-to-nose contact of livestock deer and wild deer, and to reduce the possibility of livestock deer escaping from a farm, or wild deer wandering onto one.
"Legislators are not wanting to burden the business owner ... but we have to do something," said state Rep. Jamie Becker-Finn, D-Roseville, a deer hunter who has pushed for new regulations.
CWD has already raced across wide swaths of the U.S. and Canada, and now poses one of the biggest threats to the future of deer hunting in Minnesota, which contributes an estimated $700 million to the state's economy.
State wildlife officials worry that fewer people will take up deer hunting, depriving the state of license fees that help fund management of wild deer. Property owners fear that a CWD outbreak will lower rural land values. Small towns worry it could mean fewer hunters spending money in their bars, restaurants, hotels and stores.
"It's (CWD) destroying our deer hunting and will completely change our hunting heritage," said Bryan Todd, whose family has stalked whitetail deer in the blufflands of Olmsted County for three generations.
