The dual-track testing comes after Bill Smith and other residents criticized a prior sampling by Cornell and the New York Department of Environmental Conservation that showed no permethrin on the hides, neck meat and livers of two does taken in late September. This time, Cornell scientists have high confidence that the recently culled deer fed at 4-poster stations were treated with permethrin within a day or two of being shot. And to appease the critics, samples of each deer have been sent to an independent laboratory in Louisiana.
The first deer, a buck about one-and-a-half years old, was taken by shotgun on Friday evening. On Saturday morning, a hunter's arrow took down a second deer, a stocky buck over two years old. Susan Walker and Nate Shampine, the Cornell scientists conducting the state-permitted program to test the efficacy and impacts of 4-posters that treat deer with a permethrin tickicide, provided hunters with photo albums of deer that regularly feed at some of the Islands 60 4-poster stations. The hunters identified the bucks from the photos before firing. The Cornell scientists and Island veterinarian Bill Zitek along with Councilman Glenn Waddington were on standby and got the call at about 7 p.m. Friday to meet at the Menantic Road entrance to the town Recycling Center. There the first deer was weighed and sampled. The process was repeated with the second deer on Saturday morning with the Reporter on hand.
“Susan and Nate have been great” about the additional testing, Mr. Waddington said as the scientists removed the buck's liver. If permethrin has entered the deer's bloodstream, either through ingestion or transdermally, it would likely collect in the liver. Examination of the eviscerated deer included opening the stomach — whole kernel corn was easy to see.
Dr. Zitek and Mr. Shampine held down a paper frame to delineate the area of the neck hide that Ms. Walker would swab. “This is where the rollers are rubbing the most,” Mr. Shampine said. The neck skin was then incised and pulled back to sample the muscle tissue beneath; Ms. Walker used a new scalpel and gloves after cutting through the deer skin to avoid any cross contamination between hide and meat. Testing of the skin is not required by the DEC but Ms. Walker saved the hide anyway. She explained that the DEC is most concerned about hunter contact with permethrin on the outer hide or by consuming venison. But permethrin may be present within the deer skin, the chemical working much like the insecticides placed by droppers on pets, which spread throughout the skin from one spot.
Three samples of the liver and meat (from both sides of the neck) were packaged for testing from each deer; one set of samples along with hide swabs went to Cornell's Animal Health Diagnostic Center (AHDC) in Ithaca, one to the Central Analytical Laboratories of Eurofins Scientific Incorporated, an international food safety and environmental/agricultural testing company, located in Metairie, Louisiana; the third set was frozen by Dr. Zitek as a back up.
Both deer were dressed by the hunters who shot them and will be consumed. The names of the hunters and culling locations were not released.
Both deer also had some ticks on them. Ms. Walker said that it is too early in the three-year testing program to use the presence of ticks on deer as an indicator of 4-poster efficacy. “We don't expect to see meaningful results this soon,” she said.
But the additional laboratory results are welcomed by the scientists and may put Islanders at ease about eating venison offered by the town. The new sample results “will solidify what we have already done,” Mr. Shampine said.
The September sampling, conducted by the DEC and Cornell, involved three full-grown does that the scientists could not “definitively” identify from 4-poster photos and observations, Ms. Walker said. “We need a unique identifier” to confirm that the deer used a 4-poster prior to being culled. Although neither of the bucks taken last weekend had tags or radio collars they did have distinguishing markings and racks that matched one or more recent photos of deer feeding at a 4-poster. The photo evidence “is actually better than the radio collar” tracking, Mr. Shampine commented; the presence of ingested corn further indicates recent use of 4-posters. Deer feeding at the 4-posters 24 to 48 hours prior to the hunting events would have come into contact with a fresh dose of permethrin — the tickicide was recharged onto all 4-poster rollers by Premiere Pest Control on either Wednesday or Thursday, Ms. Walker said.
The analytical results from sample testing are expected in the next two weeks.