Jim Thornton

A Close Call With Rabies

Joe_Cermele — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 16:53:50 -0400

At 9:30 on a sunny July morning, the screaming starts: a ragged, half-human keen that pierces the halcyon woods flanking our western Pennsylvania home. My wife, Debbie, our 11-year-old son, Jack, and I run outside to see what’s being murdered. There, beside a patch of Big Boy tomatoes, stand our two pugs, Lefty and Biscuit, with something scruffy and feral wedged between them. It takes a moment to realize what exactly is happening. A 20-pound raccoon has affixed its teeth to the jowly flesh of Biscuit’s muzzle and won’t let go.

I grab a shovel and pin the raccoon’s torso to the ground, which only intensifies the creature’s screams. Putting my full weight into it, I try to shovel the attacking beast in half. Debbie grabs Biscuit’s trunk and tries to yank her free, but the raccoon’s teeth refuse to unclamp. Debbie yells for our friend Rudy Plese, who’s inside working on a carpentry job. He runs out and grabs another shovel.

“Hit it on the head,” shouts Debbie, whose own hands are now perilously close to the raccoon’s teeth. Rudy raps the beast’s brainpan once, then again, and again.

“Whack it harder,” I say, trying my best to snap its spine with my own shovel. A half dozen hits later, the raccoon finally surrenders its death grip on Biscuit, who skedaddles loose, her normally curly tail straightened from trauma. Now that Rudy finally has a clean shot, he gives the raccoon two more blows to the head. Finally, its eyes bulge, blood spurts from its nostrils, and the demon dies.

Jack, Debbie, and I all cradle Biscuit, trying to calm her. She’s soaking wet, and the three of us have been thoroughly slimed. A call to the Allegheny County Health Department confirms our worst fears: The source of this moisture is almost certainly raccoon saliva. Debbie takes Biscuit to the vet for a rabies booster shot. Jack and I pack the raccoon in a garbage bag, surround its head with a bag of ice cubes to preserve the brain tissue, and drive it into Pittsburgh for testing.

Later that same afternoon, we receive a call from the lab. The raccoon has, in fact, tested positive for rabies. All four of us will need to go to the emergency room for evaluation.

Horrible and Fatal Rabies comes from a Latin word meaning “to rage”—an apropos description of the thrashing, hyperventilating death throes of victims of so-called “furious” rabies. There’s also “dumb” rabies, a less sensational death to watch, though no doubt equally unpleasant to suffer, which is characterized by apathy, depression, paralysis, and coma. Either way, after the symptoms arise, rabies is incurable and virtually 100 percent fatal.

The disease is caused by a nasty, bullet-shaped virus in the Rhabdoviridae family. Once inside the bloodstream, the virus invades and eventually overwhelms the brain and central nervous system. These microscopic miscreants are capable of infecting all warm-blooded hosts, including humans, though their most common victims in the United States today are wild animals, particularly raccoons, skunks, foxes, bats, feral cats, and coyotes.

Each year, 7,000 to 9,000 such critters test positive for rabies, though this surely represents only the iceberg’s tip. Nationally, almost half the positives come from infected raccoons. In the Mid-Atlantic states, which are currently in the throes of an unprecedented raccoon rabies epidemic, the rate is closer to 90 percent.

Rabies spreads from one animal to another through infected saliva, which accumulates in great foaming gobs once the virus paralyzes a victim’s throat muscles. Bites from infected raccoons have led to an increasingly bizarre array of affected animals. Just this summer, a black bear in Centre County, Pennsylvania, tested positive. In Georgia, rabid beavers have attempted to jump into fishermen’s boats, and rabid whitetail bucks have been spotted harassing horses and even chasing hunting dogs.

Spreading Like the Plague
The contemporary epidemic in raccoons dates back to the 1970s. In an effort to replenish depleted stocks in the Mid-Atlantic region, more than 3,500 raccoons were live-trapped in Florida and transplanted to West Virginia. Unfortunately, some of these animals carried presymptomatic rabies and ended up starting a chain reaction that wildlife health officials are still contending with today.

“The raccoon strain of rabies is known to travel approximately 10 times faster than any other type,” says Jason Suckow, director of wildlife services in Pennsylvania for the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. “It’s really unfortunate that those animals were transplanted, because once they arrived, raccoon rabies was able to spread in all directions along the Appalachian mountains.”

If federal, state, and local authorities had unlimited resources, they could blanket the entire Mid-Atlantic region with baits containing oral rabies vaccine, bringing the epidemic to a halt in a matter of years. But because of budgetary concerns—each bait costs $1.23—the current plan is necessarily more modest: establish a baiting corridor beginning at Lake Erie and running south along the Pennsylvania-Ohio border, through West Virginia and Tennessee, and down into Alabama. Once the spread of raccoon-strain rabies has been halted on the western side of this barrier, the idea is to gradually roll the curtain eastward toward the Atlantic Ocean.

When we arrive at the ER late on the afternoon of our own exposure, we get some good news and some bad news. Thanks in large part to the aggressive vaccination of domesticated animals, human deaths from rabies have dropped precipitously since the 1940s when such measures first became mandatory.

The fact that none of us were bitten this morning is further cause for guarded reassurance. On the other hand, skin exposure to the saliva has been known to cause infections through cuts and tiny abrasions. When I mention that Jack and I both have colds and that we might have rubbed our eyes after petting Biscuit, the doctor says this is another possible means of transmission.

Given our circumstances, he says, the choice to undergo a preventive series of shots remains up to us. But if he were in our shoes, he wouldn’t hesitate to get the shots.

We agree, especially after he explains that the agonizing stomach shots most people still fear haven’t been used for 30 years. To our great relief, today’s treatment is infinitely less draconian. On the first day we will begin with intramuscular injections of immune globulin, a thick concoction of antibodies that jump-starts an immune response to any potential rabies virus in our blood. Rudy and I each get four of these shots deep in the muscles of our thighs and butts. Debbie and Jack, who weigh less, get three and two shots respectively. The injections are a little painful but not unbearable. Then we each receive an additional single shot of live rabies vaccine in the shoulder. This contains a genetically altered virus designed to trigger our immune systems to begin producing our own natural antibodies to the disease.

Over the next 28 days, the doctor says, we’ll need to come back four more times on a precise schedule to receive additional doses of vaccine. It’s reassuring to learn that no human who’s adhered to such post-exposure treatment has ever come down with rabies. The main downside is some temporary muscle tenderness in the injection sites and the arguably more painful financial burden of the shot series, which comes to an estimated $1,500 per individual.

Back home that night, I’m thankful for the latest medical advances but conclude that, all in all, it would have been better to have avoided this morning’s encounter altogether. >

Physical Fitness for the Whitetail Nut

Joe_Cermele — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 15:16:48 -0400

Okay. Take off your clothes. Stand in front of a mirror, and let your gut go. Now take a good look at the horror show staring back at you and consider this: Couch spuds are 56 times more likely to have a heart attack during vigorous exertion—like scaling a ridge or dragging out a deer—than guys who are in reasonable shape. Even if you’re fairly thin and active, it pays to tune up before the season. We’re talking big bucks here, and you may have to hike farther or climb higher to score. Once you do, you’ll have more weight to haul. And if you’re in shape, you won’t nod off during the day from all the exertion and possibly miss your only chance at that buck. So here’s your regimen:

[1] Walk and Hike: You need a basic level of aerobic fitness so you don’t drop halfway through a 5-mile still-hunt. Your operative training maxim: Start low, go slow. First, establish a baseline. Walk briskly for 10 minutes on a flat surface. If this proves easy, wait a day and do the same except alternate 50 steps walking with 50 steps jogging. If this is a cake walk, wait another day and jog for 10 minutes.

Now with your baseline set, do your aerobic workout once every other day, gradually increasing both distance and intensity, adding no more than 10 percent per week. As you gain endurance, introduce some variety. Alternate bursts of speed with a slower “active recovery” pace. Throw in some hills. Your goal is to eventually either brisk-walk, walk-jog, jog, or run up to 30 minutes at a time.

[2] Work Out: Assuming you don’t have a gym membership, go with calisthenics. They cost nothing and can be very effective. Your legs are already getting a workout, so focus on your upper body.

Again, start low, go slow. For the chest and triceps, begin with knee push-ups, build up to classic push-ups, and eventually make these more difficult by putting on your pack and adding weight. For biceps and back, progress from modified chin-ups (bar at chest height, with feet on ground and body in piked position, underhand grip) to regular chin-ups. Eventually switch to an overhand grip. Also enhance abdominal strength with sit-ups. Don’t go all the way up—just curl to about a 45-degree angle. Make these progressively harder by holding a weight on your chest. For each, start with one set of 8 to 12 reps and move up to three sets.

Once you’ve achieved decent general conditioning, modify your workouts to tap the muscles you’ll actually use while you’re out in the field. Put on your hunting clothes and take a 30-minute hike over uneven wooded terrain. Slowly incorporate more hills. Then put on your pack and gradually increase its weight. If you can’t easily access a forest, go to the local high school and climb the bleachers on the diagonal.

Finally, of deer hunting’s physical challenges, by far the most taxing is dragging a buck. If you’ll do this yourself, you must train specifically for it now. Fill a burlap bag with a few rocks or some dirt and drag it a short distance. Over the weeks you’ve got left before the season, gradually add more rocks or dirt and more distance. When you can easily drag your tub o’ lard buddy (the guy with the body you used to have), you’ll be ready to drag out that 12-pointer.

Before You Start
Ask yourself these questions before

Have you ever been told you have heart problems?
Do you suffer frequent chest pains or have high blood pressure?
Do you often feel faint or dizzy?
Do you have a history of joint or bone problems?
Are there any other health concerns that could conceivably make exercising unsafe for you?

The Anglers' Guide to Sun Protection

Joe_Cermele — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 14:22:49 -0400

In 1992, Chuck Naiser of Rockport, Texas, decided to stop selling insurance and try to make his living as a flyfishing guide in the coastal bays near Corpus Christi. His wife gave him her blessing, provided that he’d make her two promises: (1) to religiously cover his skin with sun-protective clothing and slather sunscreen on when he went out on the water; and (2) to visit a dermatologist every six months.

Before making the switch to full-time guiding, the now 59-year-old Naiser had spent nearly every weekend of his adult life fishing beneath the broiling Gulf sun. Even this had taken a toll—prematurely “photoaging” his skin, triggering a couple of small precancerous lesions on his face and ears, and periodically causing his lips to crack and bleed for weeks.

Since he started guiding 13 years ago, Naiser has spent from 225 to 240 days a year out piloting his skiff and wading the shallows in pursuit of redfish. Despite all this time in the broiler, he says his ears and other parts remain fully intact and cancer-free, due in large part to his wife’s advice. He’s also grateful to his dermatologist, who, over the course of two dozen visits, has frozen off numerous precancerous growths on his neck, scalp, and ears, eliminating future problems.

Thanks to their efforts, Naiser says that he’s confident he’ll be able to keep catching redfish “until they find me lying facedown out there.” The key to any angler’s longevity, he’s become convinced, is sun-smart behavior.

“If I were to drop my guard for even two or three days,” he says, “it would shorten my career. Caring for your skin is as important in fishing as having a boat that runs. Just as your boat needs preventive maintenance, so does your skin.”

The Dark Side of a Sunny Day Sun damage is done by ultraviolet radiation, which bombards the Earth’s atmosphere in three basic forms: UVC, UVB, and UVA. The first packs the greatest wallop but is mostly blocked by the ozone layer. UVB is only partially blocked by ozone and is primarily responsible for sunburn and skin cancer formation. And UVA can pass through clouds and even glass; it hurts us by augmenting the burns that UVB triggers, and by photoaging the skin.

For fishermen of various stripes, excessive sun exposure is an occupational hazard. Southern-latitude anglers like Naiser are exposed to significantly more UVA and UVB than those in more northerly regions because solar radiation increases dramatically the closer you are to the equator. Not that those pursuing trout in the Canadian Rockies are significantly safer than their colleagues casting for bonefish in the Keys. “Every thousand feet you go up in altitude, there’s about 4 to 8 percent more UVB because there’s less atmosphere to filter it out,” explains San Diego dermatologist Lee Kaplan, M.D., author of the chapter on photomedicine in the definitive text, Wilderness Medicine (C.V. Mosby; 4th edition). “Guys who flyfish at high elevation—the mountains of Montana or Colorado, for example—do face a much greater risk of forming skin cancers.”

Another critical factor is that the sun’s rays bounce off the water, acting like a foil tanning reflector from yesteryear. “Fishermen can get burned in places you never think about,” says Kaplan. Behind the knees and under the chin are especially common. One guy suffered a painfully burned scrotum from light reflecting up his shorts.

Ignominious as this latter fate may sound, it could be much worse. The three most common forms of skin cancer have climbed in recent years:

• Basal cell carcinoma affects a million Americans each year. It’s rarely fatal, but if left untreated, it can ulcerate the skin and invade cartilage and bone, causing disfigurement.

• Squamous cell cancer targets another 300,000 Americans annually. These cells can travel to other parts of the body, including lymph nodes, lungs, and the brain, but fatalities are uncommon.

• Melanoma is by far the deadliest form of skin cancer—and one of the deadliest forms of cancer, period. Each year, some 7,500 patients die from it. Even more disturbing is the rate at which the risk is escalating, particularly for aging men. “Deaths from melanoma are rising most rapidly of all in men over 65,” says John Kirkwood, M.D., a world-famous melanoma researcher at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Melanoma, if caught early, has a cure rate of up to 87 percent. But once a tumor gets established and has moved into surrounding lymph nodes, it will kill up to 90 percent of its victims.

An important factor to be aware of is early sun exposure. A single bad sunburn in childhood significantly ups your odds of melanoma decades later. “For many adults,” says Kirkwood, “the die might already have been cast. The real challenge is to protect our children. It looks like we get our greatest sun exposure by far in the years of childhood and adolescence.”

Getting the Message Despite the impact of early exposure, older fishermen still have plenty of opportunities to protect themselves. One form of melanoma, called lentigo maligna melanoma, only seems to result in people who, says Kirkwood, get “gobs and gobs of sun exposure,” like tropical fishermen. A case in point is the retired businessman who came to see Kirkwood after a fishing trip to the Caribbean.

“He’d had multiple sunburns,” says Kirkwood, “and he’d developed a patch of freckle-like skin near his eye orbit the size of a quarter. A biopsy confirmed it was this form of melanoma, and fortunately we caught it early.” A plastic surgeon excised the affected tissue.

Kirkwood says his patient’s brush with a potentially lethal disease hasn’t stopped his love of angling. “People who are fishermen once are fishermen always. He has altered his behavior dramatically. He always wears a hat and other protective clothing. He is assiduous about applying sunscreen. He’s become a very good advertisement for sun-smart behavior.”

Professionals like Naiser see that the gospel of sun safety is spreading among fishermen. “The people I take on fishing trips have a common conversation about all this,” he explains. “They’ll say, ‘Remember how we used to try to tan. Now we do everything possible not to.’ Fishermen are getting wise to the message.”

Along these lines, Naiser has come up with a motto he repeats to anyone interested in protecting his or her vulnerable human hide.

“Wrap that rascal!” he advises. “Cover it, coat it, gel it down!”

Sun Smarts: A Three-Part Strategy Researchers have begun to reduce skin cancer death rates through new treatments. Still, prevention is by far the better option. Experts recommend a three-part hierarchy of behaviors:

First Priority: Avoidance “Your best bet by far is to stay out of the sun,” says Kaplan, “especially during the hours from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. when sunlight is most intense.” If you do venture forth during this prime frying time, try to stay in the shade as much as possible.

Second Priority: Barriers Protective clothing is the second most effective measure. Start with a wide-brimmed hat that shades your entire face and neck. Even better in very intense sun conditions are products like the Simms SunClava, a balaclava with a sun protection factor of 50+. For the rest of your body, realize that typical summer clothing isn’t as protective as you might imagine. A normal white cotton T-shirt, for instance, has an SPF of only about 5—and this declines significantly the moment the garment gets wet. Companies like Solumbra, Coolibar, and SunGrubbies use different technologies to give their activewear clothing lines a much higher SPF—from 30 to 50. Another option is a product called Rit Sun Guard, a laundry additive you throw in with your wash to gain an SPF of nearly 30.

Finally, don’t neglect your eyeballs. Look for sunglasses that provide adequate UVA and UVB protection. Naiser wears polarized Costa Del Mar sunglasses that also have side shields (polarization doesn’t affect UV protection).

Last Priority: Sunscreen Choose a product with a minimum SPF of 15, though SPF alone is not a perfect measure of a sunscreen’s effectiveness, since it only measures UVB-blocking potential. Select a “broad spectrum” formula that also stops UVA. Highly water-resistant preparations like BullFrog Sunblock and Aloe Gator are two good choices.

As effective as such products are, they only work if you put them on correctly. Coat any exposed skin, including under your chin, and don’t be stingy. The FDA specifies an application of 2 mg per square centimeter to obtain a given SPF rating. For the average adult, this means 11/4 ounces for full-body coverage. Surveys show that most of us use half this much at best. It’s also critical to put the sunscreen on before you go outside. And even the most highly water-resistant products must be reapplied every couple of hours.

The 10 Commandments of Eating for Endurance

Joe_Cermele — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 14:27:02 -0400

If you’re planning a hunting or fishing trip that’s likely to be demanding, experts recommend you start eating for success today. “If you give this approach a fair trial,” says nutritionist Suzanne Girard Eberle, “it can make an incredible difference. I’ve had people tell me the days just flew by—they never got tired.” These 10 tips will help you eat in a way that increases your endurance so you don’t “bonk” during the hunt. —Jim Thornton

Eat like an athlete. In the weeks and months leading up to hunting season, embrace the performance approach proven to work for athletes. This means about 60 percent of your calories should come from carbohydrates, 25 percent from fat, and 15 percent from protein.

Think complex carbs. Simple sugars are not health demons, but they lack the vitamins and nutrients found in more complex carbohydrates such as fruits, vegetables, brown rice, and beans. The latter also take longer to digest, preventing rapid fluctuations of blood sugar levels and keeping you on a more even keel.

Veg out. Put more fruits and vegetables into your system. Drinks count: Try swigging down a couple of glasses of orange or tomato juice. You can also add veggies to your meals—extra sauce on a pizza, for instance, along with some zucchini or green peppers instead of pepperoni.

Replenish carbs quickly. For about an hour after hard exercise, your body produces an enzyme that enhances the storage of glycogen in muscles, so it’s best to eat some carbs during this golden opportunity. Taking in a little protein at this time, too, has been shown to help consolidate the benefits of strength training.

Rest up. About four days before your hunt, stop any vigorous training and let your muscles rest and repair themselves. Elite athletes use this time to “carbo-load” as well—meaning they jam-pack excess glycogen stores into their muscles by eating a high percentage of carbohydrates.

Eat early. Breakfast is critical for a host of reasons, one of which is replenishing liver glycogen stores that have been tapped by your brain overnight. An ideal breakfast includes complex carbs like oatmeal, multigrain pancakes, or whole-wheat toast, plus some lean protein (eggs, Canadian bacon, yogurt) and a modest amount of fat. Protein and fat take longer to digest and will provide a steady influx of nutrients for sustained performance.

Catch a buzz. Caffeine has been shown in numerous studies to have an ergogenic—or sports-enhancing—effect in endurance athletes, most likely by reducing “perceived exertion” during exercise. For regular users, there’s another reason to have your morning ration: If you skip this, you might suffer withdrawal symptoms that range from lethargy to headaches.

Nosh on the go. Take an easily accessible source of carbs with you. Sports drinks, gels, and energy bars can all help keep blood glucose levels steady and prevent “bonking,” but so do more palatable snacks like trail mix, granola bars, and peanut butter sandwiches.

Reward yourself. Particularly if you’re venturing forth into cold weather, high altitudes, or other grueling conditions, you may find a well-timed dietary treat like a candy bar provides not only the energy your body craves but also a real psychological boost.

Banish food guilt. “Most guys can easily consume 3,000 to 4,000 calories a day on one of our hunts and not gain weight,” says outfitter Sallee. “In fact, their bodies typically get harder in the process.” She believes that the best nutritional advice of all comes not from diet books or scientific studies but instead from listening closely to what your body tells you it needs. “When you’re out in the wilderness and working hard,” she concludes, “it’s so much quieter and you can pay attention to these messages.”

What Hunters Need to Know about Cholesterol

fieldandstream-editor — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 20:00:00 -0400

Three years ago, the last time Jerry Robinson bagged a buck, he dragged the carcass a mile. Now 70, Robinson, who stands 5-foot-11 and weighs 190, is still in the kind of good health you'd expect from a guy who's led an outdoors life. He has never smoked and boasts the sort of blood pressure seen in athletes. He hikes, fishes, and has no symptoms of cardiovascular problems and no history of heart disease.Given all of this, you'd imagine Robinson's cholesterol—that much publicized villain in heart-health campaigns—would be exemplary. Not so.

In 1990, during a routine doctor's visit. Robinson was shocked to discover his total cholesterol measured 380mg/dL, a whopping 60 percent higher than the 240 level the American Heart Association considers the start of its "high risk" category.Despite his lack of symptoms, his profile was so ominous that his doctor immediately put him on the prescription drug Lipitor, from a class of cholesterol-slashing drug known as statins. Robinson's 380 dropped in a matter of months to 190. But the benefit came at a cost.

"I got a lotof muscle pains," he says of the side effects. "At times they were crippling." His reason for lowering cholesterol was to ensure more years of hunting and fishing. When the cure itself made this impossible, he wondered what the point was—and what to do next.

Just the Basics: Despite cholesterol's bad rep, humans need the stuff to live. It's a building block for hormones, helps form cell membranes, and is key in the digestion of fats.

We get cholesterol in two ways—about one-third comes from diet, and two-thirds is made in the liver. It's then transported through the body in two basic forms. The"good" (high-density lipoprotein or HDL) type is thought to protect youby carrying excess cholesterol to the liver for disposal. The "bad"(low-density lipoprotein or LDL) type is more likely to be deposited as plaqueon blood-vessel walls. This is where the potential for harm begins.

Over time, plaques can build up, choking blood flow like corrosion in old pipes. More dangerous is the potential for plaque rupture, wherein small fragments break off and move through a blood vessel.

"A clot canform and block an artery," explains Dean Wolz, MD, a Pittsburgh interventional cardiologist and lifelong hunter. Depending on where these blockages are, a victim can suffer a heart attack (inadequate blood flow to the heart) or stroke (inadequate blood flow to the brain).

This biochemical drama is influenced by a number of variables. Research suggests that high blood pressure. Smoking, lack of exercise, obesity, diabetes, and certain types of infection can damage the blood-vessel walls, increasing the risk that cholesterol will be deposited there as plaque.

Researchers suspect there's no one-size-fits-all cutoff for good and bad cholesterol.People with "healthy" levels can be at risk, while others with"unhealthy" levels never develop plaque.

"Patients ask,'If my levels are normal, why do you want them lower? ' " says Wolz. "Ianswer, 'Because your levels are too high for you.'"

So, Now What?: There's a limit to how much a healthy lifestyle can accomplish. "The liver makes most of our cholesterol." Wolz says. "How much depends largely on genetics."Fortunately for most of us, medication makes a huge difference. But there are exceptions. In the case of Jerry Robinson's rare side effects, his doctor switched him from Lipitor to the less potent Pravachol and added the medication Zetia. Unfortunately, Robinson's levels didn't respond as hoped, leaving him disillusioned with statins altogether. But for about 95 percent of patients, the right drug—or combination of drugs—is safe, has few side effects, and cuts cholesterol up to 40 percent.

The first step isto talk to your doctor—something even Wolz used to be reluctant to do. Hunting elk last fall, he felt short of breath and worried because he hadn't had a physical for years. Back home, he took his blood pressure. "I saw the needle bouncing around 220 and ended up in the ER." He's since practiced everything he's preached. The difference has been night and day, and he can't wait for this fall's hunt.

Heart Helpers: A few simple things that—used wisely—can benefit your cholesterol levels and, ultimately, your ticker.

ASPIRIN reduces blood clots, and seems to inhibit inflammation that leads to plaque buildup. Amount: One baby aspirin (81 mg) daily for men; one adult aspirin (325 mg)daily for women. Downside: Stomach upset and ulcers in some; a slightly greater risk of a typeof stroke.

ALCOHOL can boost protective HDL cholesterol and is associated with heart health. Amount: Limit of two drinks daily for men; one daily for women and anyone over65. Downside: Excessive consumption leads to other medical issues.

OMEGA-3 FISH OIL is linked to reduced triglyceride levels and lower risk of sudden cardiac death. Amount: Up to 4 gm daily in supplement form, or a serving of coldwater fishtwice a week. Downside: It's loaded with calories.

FLAVONOIDS & PHENOLS found in fruits and vegetables have antioxidants that seem to slow the conversion of cholesterol into its harmful forms. Amount: The USDA suggests at least five servings of fruits and vegetables daily.

GAME MEAT like venison has 20 percent of the fat in beef (although it does have slightly more cholesterol). Eating venison can lower LDL cholesterol and increase HDL. Amount: The USDA recommends 6 to 7 ounces a day.

Chronic Wasting Disease in Whitetail Deer

fieldandstream-editor — Thu, 31 May 2007 20:00:00 -0400

IN THE FALL OF 2004, a highway crew picked up the carcass of a road-killed buck near Slanesville, W.Va. The workers took the animal to a compost facility, where a wildlife manager arrived to pull tissue samples. He made an incision in the deer's neck and popped out a lymph node the size of a cocktail olive. He then cut through its neck vertebrae and removed a slightly larger brain structure called the obex. After being fixed in formaldehyde, these samples were sent to the University of Georgia, where preliminary test results were positive for CWD, or chronic wasting disease. By fall 2005, the tissues had been forwarded to the USDA's National Veterinary Services Lab in Ames, Iowa, which confirmed the diagnosis. It was the first positive case of CWD found in an east-central state.

Like mad cow disease in cattle, scrapie in sheep, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in people, CWD is an incurable and fatal condition that afflicts whitetails, mule deer, elk, and moose. All are "transmissible spongiform encephalopathies," which researchers believe are caused by mysterious, nonliving proteins known as prions. Prions accumulate in lymphatic and nerve tissues, riddling a victim's brain with holes (the "sponge" in spongiform), and in the process causing a horrific death. CWD was first discovered in the 1960s in captive cervids in Colorado. In 1981, the first wild cases appeared in Rocky Mountain National Park. Over the next few decades, it spread through free-ranging deer and elk populations in Colorado and Wyoming, and eventually into adjacent states.

In 2002, the disease moved east of the Mississippi, with whitetails in Wisconsin, then Illinois, testing positive. For eastern state game managers, the jump to the Midwest was a nightmare realized: proof that the East's much more densely populated herds were at risk. Wildlife managers stepped up their surveillance. In West Virginia, this included a cooperative agreement between the Division of Natural Resources and the highway department to sample road-killed deer. For the next three years, monitoring throughout the East was reassuring, with no new cases reported.

Then in April 2005, one emerged in Oneida County in central New York. The deer was a local game-farmed whitetail whose meat had been donated to a sportsmen's charity feast. The test result came back only after some 350 people had consumed steak, chili, stew, and sausage from the diseased animal. Subsequent testing of a 15-mile area in Oneida County found that CWD had crossed into wild deer populations. New York's experience left eastern DNR officers no longer wondering if but when the disease would strike their states.

In the case of West Virginia, it took less than six months to become the 14th state (along with two Canadian provinces and the nation of South Korea) to report CWD. Slanesville, perched as it is in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia, sits a mere 10 miles from the Virginia line and only a couple of dozen miles from Pennsylvania and Maryland—all of which support huge wild deer populations. "You probably couldn't have picked an area that affects more states," says Paul Johansen, assistant chief of the West Virginia DNR. "We got word of our positive reading late on a Friday afternoon, and one of the first things we did was pick up the phone and call our counterparts in neighboring states. They immediately offered their assistance—everything from staff to equipment to moral support."

Among other strategies, wildlife authorities immediately established a containment zone, and a collection team of sharpshooters harvested 216 deer, four of which tested positive. To further lower deer populations, the DNR proposed an antlerless season, restricted the transport of carcasses outside the zone, and outlawed baiting and backyard feeding.

That fall, hunters took an additional 1,016 deer within the zone; all were negative. Alas, in the spring of 2006, a second collection team culled 85 more deer, four of which tested positive.

"So far our preliminary surveillance indicates the disease is still confined geographically," says Johansen. "I think we have a chance of containing it in this area. I just hope it holds."

Even if West Virginia succeeds at this—something no other affected states have managed to do—the costs are already soaring. "From a conservation standpoint," says Brian Preston, a regional representative for the National Wildlife Federation, "it's like trying to get the toothpaste back into the tube. Once CWD gets into the wild, you virtually can't get it off the landscape. Management of it is a huge distraction of resources. Money for fisheries, quail, and every other game species gets diverted to deal with this nasty disease."

Recent computer models now predict that the once unthinkable—local extinctions of deer populations due to CWD—are not only conceivable but increasingly likely within the next 20 to 50 years. For his part, Johansen tries not to dwell on the distant future, adding that he has enough to worry about in the short term. "Since we got our first case," he says, "life has totally changed here at the WVDNR. I don't like to think about worst-case scenarios, but I can tell you from our agency's perspective, we're running flat out right now. If CWD surfaces in another location, that's going to really stretch us thin. I'm not sure I've got any more resources to throw at this thing."

The Long-term Spread

Although CWD has not yet panned out as a significant health concern for humans (a fact that seems to have engendered a sense of public complacency regarding the disease), it remains a staggering threat to cervids. The chief reason: Unlike other prion diseases, this form has proved remarkably easy to pass from one animal to the next. "This is perhaps the most unique feature of CWD—how readily it can be transmitted from deer to deer," says veterinarian Edward A. Hoover, PhD, a professor at Colorado State University in Fort Collins.

Hoover is the lead author of a landmark CWD study published in the October 2006 issue of Science, a report that has further stoked anxiety levels in wildlife managers. He and his colleagues proved that the abnormal prions exist in both the saliva and blood of infected cervids. Though transmission via the latter is less likely in the wild, the former is inevitable given a wide range of deer behaviors, from licking scrapes and nose nuzzling to side-by-side grazing and grooming.

On game farms, where cervids are concentrated in high numbers, one contaminated animal can quickly infect 80 percent of the herd. In a few localized hot zones in Colorado and Wyoming, where the disease has been present for decades, prevalence rates of 30 to 50 percent have been reported in wild herds.

Cervids have no natural immunity to CWD, and there is no treatment. Most researchers believe animals are contagious long before they develop noticeable symptoms. These may take years to show, but eventually all victims succumb to a pattern of staggering, shaking, and excessive salivation, thirst, and urination. This "night of the living deer" stage leads to death.

Equally disturbing, the prions responsible don't disappear along with their victim's demise but rather leach intact into the environment. Recent studies have shown that prions are extraordinarily resistant to natural decay. Take the carcass of a deer felled by CWD, dump it in a fenced pasture, return in a couple of years and remove the now bare skeleton from the landscape, then reintroduce healthy deer. Many of these animals, researchers have found, will become infected.

"Prions bind tightly to soil particles," says Bryan J. Richards, head of CWD research at the Department of the Interior's National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wis. "For at least three years—the longest these paddock studies have been conducted in deer—prions in the soil continue to be infectious." Though admittedly less efficient than direct deer-to-deer transmission, it is enough of a threat that wildlife officials must go to great lengths to safely dispose of CWD-positive carcasses.

In Wisconsin, for instance, any deer testing positive must, by law, be placed into a monstrous contraption called a tissue digester, which uses heat and chemicals to break down the prion protein. It's expensive, but only one of multiple costs that have together rung up a $26 million tab for CWD management in Wisconsin since 2002. And it's an important preventive measure.

"Conservation for future generations is one of the core missions of natural resource agencies," says Richards. "Even at $26 million, are we doing enough to combat CWD? Years from now, do you want to go deer hunting in an area where every other deer is infected with a neurodegenerative disease? It will be up to future generations to judge our efforts."

The High-Fence Factor

With no way to treat the disease, all wildlife managers can do to contain CWD is to curtail "accelerants" of the contagion. For cervids, the prime accelerants revolve around concentrating deer numbers beyond natural limits. The greater the overpopulation of a species, the greater the likelihood that disease will spread through its ranks.

Even in locales where wild deer have not exceeded the land's carrying capacity, human behavior can dangerously increase local deer densities. Take baiting, for instance. Ethical or not, researchers believe the practice can serve as a powerful CWD accelerant. "What you get," says Preston, "is an already high-density herd, all coming together to swap spit every night at the bait pile."

Arguably the most controversial means of concentrating cervids occurs within the so-called captive-deer industry. In some cases, population densities of fenced-in deer, elk, and other "farmed" cervids extrapolate out to 10,000 animals per square mile. Some 8,000 such businesses exist in the multiple states that allow them. Fawns are born in pens, raised to adulthood, then sold for a variety of purposes, from "Velvet Viagra" (an aphrodisiac harvested from antlers that was exported to South Korea until a farmed elk tested positive for CWD) to meat sold to restaurants and supermarkets.

But by far the greatest revenue for most of these operators comes from the lucrative sale of trophy animal "targets"—big bucks for big bucks. Top-class whitetails can go for up to $12,000, and in Texas some "hunts" have been documented in the $40,000 range. The marketing slogan for one establishment nicely sums up the hunting "ethic" at many such places: "We supply the trophy—you supply the lie."

There are some responsible, regulation-compliant proprietors in the captive-cervid industry, but officers like Wisconsin game warden Ron Preder have seen firsthand how farms that operate under the radar can contribute to the CWD problem. "We've been involved in this business long enough," he says, "to know that not everybody plays by the rules."

Take the curious case of Buckhorn Flats, a captive-cervid operation in Portage County, Wis., consisting of a 59-acre hunting preserve and a smaller breeding facility. On September 4, 2002, a hunter paid $4,000 to shoot a captive buck, which tested positive for CWD. When state authorities tried to trace its history to see what other captive herds might have been exposed, they were stymied by its lack of a state-mandated ear tag as well as inadequate record keeping by the preserve's owner, Stanley Hall.

Hall, who did not respond to an interview request for this article, had a long history of trafficking captive deer. From 2000 to 2001 alone, he shipped at least 39 deer to seven other operations both across Wisconsin and out of state.

The state DNR involved 60 game wardens in tracing the trophy buck's movement. Ultimately, Buckhorn Flats and a handful of other Wisconsin game farms were put under quarantine, and Hall was ordered to depopulate all his deer. He chose to appeal the ruling, as was his right, and the legal battle continued for the next three and a half years.

During this period, Wisconsin passed legislation requiring that all captive-cervid hunting preserves in the state needed a minimum of 80 acres. In the spring of 2005, the DNR notified Hall that his 59-acre facility no longer qualified and he had to stop hosting hunts as of that fall.

By December 2005, Hall and his lawyers came to an agreement with state and federal agriculture officials. Hall, who would receive indemnification payments from the state and federal government for each animal killed, told authorities he had around 80 does and yearlings in his breeding area, and 40 or so bucks in his hunting preserve.

On January 12, 2006, several days before the deer were to be put down, Hall notified the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) that someone had cut a hole in the preserve fence and baited the outside area. The DATCP closed the breech and alerted the DNR, which, concerned that dozens of exposed bucks had escaped into the wild, dispatched sharpshooters to the scene. They found none of the purported 40 bucks still inside the preserve—and no sign of them outside, either.

"We even sent a plane up to look for them," says Preder. "One thing we didn't find was a pile of deer running around on the landscape. So what happened to them?"

Whatever might have become of those valuable bucks, there were still the does and yearlings in Hall's breeding pen. No hole had been cut in their fence. When the DATCP arrived for the scheduled cull several days later, they found three already dead and killed 76 more. When lab results came back, 60 of 79 deer tested positive.

According to their previously negotiated agreement, Hall was indemnified for his loss to the tune of $130,913, which worked out to a little over $1,700 per animal—a far cry from the $10,000 some hunters at Buckhorn Flats had said that they'd paid for trophy bucks.

Over a year after the mysterious hole in the fence appeared, the fate of the missing bucks is still uncertain. The local sheriff's department and the DATCP initiated criminal investigations but thus far have come to no definitive conclusion.

Most everyone agrees that there was no mass escape into the woods. "These were pen-raised deer, dumber than a box of rocks," says Preston. "It's also one of the most heavily hunted areas in Wisconsin, and not one of them was seen during the rest of the season."

The majority of those who've followed the case have a hypothesis. "The likeliest scenario is that these CWD-exposed bucks were sold and moved by horse trailer to other preserves," says Preston, adding that a buck's value as a trophy animal dwarfs even the most generous governmental buyout. "CWD is not being spread by law-abiding citizens—it's being spread by these midnight cowboys who would sell their mother's soul for a dollar."

Indeed, when it comes to controlling the disease, the short-term financial interests of the few seem to trump the long-term conservation ethics of the many. Drastically culling herds within hot zones; outlawing baiting and backyard deer feeding nationwide; requiring high, double fences around all captive-cervid facilities; clamping down on the interstate transport of both live deer and harvested carcasses: All such tactics could make a real impact on the disease's future course. But are any likely to become widely adopted?

Unfortunately, management strategies must be couched in "political and social realities, not biological ones," says Preston. "That's the world we live in. My commander in the National Guard always says, 'The answer is money. Now what is your f---ing question?' As long as there's a market where somebody will pay $20,000 to shoot a piece of livestock in a pen, there will be bad things happening to wildlife."

The Bureaucracy of Containment

The politics of deer management, both wild and captive, is a contentious and cumbersomely bureaucratic matter. If anything, the process seems designed to stall rather than foster constructive action. Were CWD to emerge as a threat to human health, federal authorities such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could step in to direct a unified national strategy to combat it. But as far as we know, CWD doesn't threaten us. It threatens a species that a disconcerting number of nonhunting suburbanites have come to view as rats with hooves.

Any regulatory powers not granted to the federal government by the U.S. Constitution typically default to state and local authorities. Many, though not all, of the laws involving deer and other cervids thus fall under a patchwork of balkanized purviews. Sometimes, as in the case of West Virginia and its neighbors, adjacent states do attempt to coordinate their efforts. Just as often, however, a hodgepodge of different and sometimes contradictory regulations switch abruptly at state lines.

Further complicating the odds of an effective overall strategy is the wrangling within different state agencies. Deer and other game, historically speaking, have largely been the responsibility of natural resource agencies whose mission it is to manage, conserve, and otherwise provide stewardship to wildlife. As more evidence has linked the captive-cervid industry to CWD's spread, many game farmers balked at what they considered to be costly DNR regulations designed to protect free-ranging deer. In many states, they lobbied successfully to have their deer reclassified from "wildlife" to "livestock." This meant that deer in pens would fall under the control of state agriculture departments, whose mission includes the promotion of alternative agriculture.

"As soon as captive-cervid operators started feeling pressure from wildlife agencies to have, for instance, taller fences around their property and mandatory ear tags," explains Preston, "they went and hid behind the skirt of the ag department. They did this purely to protect themselves from regulations they didn't like. Face it: Nobody is giving to pay $20,000 to shoot a deer with a 3-inch orange ear tag."

When it comes to matters affecting multiple states, such as the interstate transport of deer, the federal government does play some role in cervid management. Similar philosophical differences—i.e., the stewardship of wildlife vs. agricultural commerce—are regularly debated before Congress. On one side is the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, part of the $16 billion Interior Department. This agency serves as a kind of national-level DNR with a mission of "Conserving the Nature of America." On the other side is the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), under the $96 billion Department of Agriculture. APHIS exists to "improve agricultural productivity and competitiveness and contribute to the national economy and the public health." In terms of funding and influence, it hardly seems a fair match.

Dean Goeldner, a veterinarian and the APHIS program coordinator for CWD, acknowledges that his agency gets "the lion's share of the federal budget for this disease." The funds, he says, are targeted primarily at eliminating it from captive cervids but also at helping states address its spread in the wild.

Among other perks for the industry, APHIS shoulders the tab for laboratory testing of some 15,000 captive deer and elk per year. And it pays to depopulate affected captive herds, as well as to compensate operators for their loss. Goeldner denies that the industry has undue influence over his agency's decisions. But not every interest group agrees.

Consider, for example, proposed regulations that APHIS began drafting in 2002 in the wake of the outbreak in Wisconsin. The idea was to create a nationwide "captive herd certification program" that would, among other provisions, spell out rules for the interstate movement of farmed deer, elk, and moose.

After consulting with various groups, from state wildlife authorities to deer farm lobbyists, APHIS published its final proposed rules last July—four years after the process started. These rules were slated to take effect on October 19. Almost immediately, however, there was an outcry. By early August, APHIS had received petitions from the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, the National Assembly of State Animal Health Officials, and the U.S. Animal Health Association—demanding a review of what they believed was overly lenient treatment of the captive-cervid industry.

To entice game farmers into signing up for its voluntary herd certification program, APHIS proposed to allow them, after a period a surveillance, to move animals from state to state. Problem was, this was shorter than the incubation time necessary for CWD to become detectable.

Moreover, individual states could do nothing more to protect themselves from the unwanted important of captive cervids. The APHIS guidelines would supersede any more restrictive state legislation.

APHIS recently solicited public comments as part of its review process, which—depending on the outcome—may wind up in federal court as a states' rights issue. "Some states do want stricter standards than what we're proposing," says Goeldner. "But our lawyers are telling us that there has to be one national set of standards. That's part of why we pulled back and plan to work with the states to sort this out."

Meanwhile, in areas like West Virginia, where the ordeal with CWD has just begun, the prospect of further import and contamination keeps DNR officials like Paul Johansen up at night. "I don't think that CWD just arose spontaneously in our state," he says. "It was either brought here in a truck in the form of a captive animal, or it came in on an infected carcass." To be sure, as federal agencies, private industry, local authorities, and legions of attorneys debate, CWD prions continue to slip quietly through wire fences and across state lines.

CWD STATUS REPORT WHERE THE DISEASE IS TODAY

This chart lists testing results in the 11 states that report the disease in the wild. No national CWD monitoring system exists, so each state was contacted for statistics. Note: Sampling procedures vary among states, so these numbers do not represent a side-by-side assessment of prevalence.

STATE	CERVIDS TESTED LAST YEAR	POSITIVES LAST YEAR
COLORADO	11,107 ('05–'06)	123
ILLINOIS	6,500 (est.)	38
KANSAS	2,978	0
NEBRASKA	5,830	15
NEW YORK	7,881	0
UTAH	2,378	7
WEST VIRGINIA	1,900 (est.)	5
WISCONSIN	29,523	188
WYOMING	4,653	116
NEW MEXICO	275	1
SOUTH DAKOTA	2,531	11

"CWD IS NOT BEING SPREAD BY LAW-ABIDING CITIZENS—IT'S BEING SPREAD BY MIDNIGHT COWBOYS WHO WOULD SELL THEIR MOTHER'S SOUL FOR A DOLLAR." BRIAN PRESTON, REGIONAL REPRESENTATIVE, NWF

CWD BY THE NUMBERS

Percentage of reporting states that indicate they have less than satisfactory funding to combat chronic wasting disease: 75

Amount the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) spent on CWD in 2005–06: $18,523,000

Amount the Wyoming Game and Fish Department spent on CWD management in fiscal 2006: $434,500

Amount the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources spent on CWD management in fiscal 2006: $4.9 million

Total number of animals tested by all 50 states in 2002–03: 117,715

Number of same that tested positive: 592

Estimated number of wild cervids tested by the 11 states with CWD in free-ranging animals last year: At least 64,449

Estimated number of same that tested positive: At least 381

How to Treat (and Avoid) Poison Ivy and Other Toxic Plants

fieldandstream-editor — Wed, 31 May 2006 20:00:00 -0400

Eager to startflyfishing New York's Croton River, Jay Cassell hiked a half mile to the wateron a cloudless spring day. Four hours and the same number of brown trout later,he trekked back to his car, reenergized by his midweek brush with nature. ButCassell, FIELD & STREAM deputy editor and a lifelong outdoorsman, had noidea how devastating this encounter would prove to be.

"Within 24hours," he recalls, "blisters had broken out all over my face and arms,even between my fingers. My eyelids were so swollen I couldn't see. My lipswere so bad I had to drink liquid food through a straw. I looked like apunching bag for George Foreman."

At the ER, adoctor gave him a cortisone shot to begin counteracting his extreme allergicreaction. Despite this, Cassell couldn't work for a week and devoted all hiswaking hours to soaking the maddening lesions in an oatmeal bath as hot as hecould stand it. It was two weeks before he felt normal again.

Some 60 differentspecies of poisonous plants, or toxicodendron, pose a risk in North America.The most common are poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac. Though a smallhandful of people appear to have natural immunity, the majority of us—85percent or more—can count on an unpleasant reaction after exposure to urushiol,the culprit sap produced by these plants. For Cassell and other extremelysensitive people (an estimated 10 to 15 percent of the population), as littleas 50 micrograms (less than a grain of salt) can precipitate a fortnight oftorture.

PREVENT IT

The best defenseagainst poison plants is limiting your exposure in the first place, but evenexperts have trouble identifying such a ubiquitous enemy. "I've written abook chapter on toxicodendron and emergency medicine," says Dr. StevenStephanides, an ER doc and peer reviewer for the Wilderness Medical Society'sjournal. "I still got poison ivy last summer."

Stephanidesrecommends the following strategies to reduce exposure:

• Don't rely onthe "leaves of three, let it be" rule. Poison plants can vary greatly in appearance between different geographicalregions and depending on the time of year. Leaves differ in color and size, andidentification can be especially tricky in the fall. Ask a local guide to showyou exactly what you need to stay away from.

• Dress right. Wear long pants and socks whenever you're hiking in poison-plant territory.

• Avoid secondaryexposure. Urushiol is a fiendishly stubborn compound that reportedly can stay potent foryears. Once the resin has contaminated your fishing gear, clothes, or even yourdog, it can be transferred to you. Wash or hose down any potential sources ofcontamination.

• Don't burnbrush. Some of the nastiest run-ins with poison plants occur when urushiol becomesairborne in smoke, allowing it to penetrate the eyes and lungs. "This israre," says Stephanides, "but it can be life-threatening. You've onlygot one airway. If you get too many blisters there, it makes breathingdifficult."

• Lather up. Apply products like IvyBlock on any uncovered skin. This may provideprotection, as long as you reapply if you sweat.

TREAT IT

If avoidancefails, treatment can range from over-the-counter products to a trip to thedoctor for steroids. It all depends on the severity of your symptoms.

• Start withwater. Your efforts at lessening the effects of contact with a poisonous plant canstart in the field. Urushiol appears to require 10 to 20 minutes to penetratedeep inside the skin. Soap is helpful, but water, especially if applied within20 minutes of exposure, can usually prevent a bad reaction. Jumping in a streamand washing the stuff off will help.

• Try the oldstandards. If a rash still develops, use an itch-stopping agent like calamine lotion,which can also help keep scratched skin from becoming infected. Calamine issometimes sold blended with an antihistamine similar to that found in productslike Benadryl, which could also lessen the effects of the allergic reaction.But don't just take whatever treatments you can get your hands on. "Everynow and then," says Stephanides, "we see a patient who lathers himselfup with calamine, then takes a high dose of Benadryl orally, and ends up havinga toxic reaction from this combination."

• Take a bath. Soaking in hot water can also reduce itching, possibly by triggering therelease of natural antihistamines or by interrupting nerve transmissionpathways from the skin to the brain. If your rash develops into weepingblisters, and either Burrow's solution or Aveeno oatmeal bath treatment to thewater. Another OTC product, aluminum acetate, can be used in compresses to dryout the lesions. But the belief that touching the blisters will spread poisonivy around the body is a myth.

• Get somehelp. See a doctor at the first sign of a severe reaction (nausea, stomach cramps, orexposure of sensitive body parts like the eyes, groin, or lungs). Stephanideshas twice had to treat anglers who got into severe trouble after using poisonivy leaves as toilet paper.

• Pop a pill. The gold-standard treatment for severe cases is prednisone, a prescription formof cortisone. If your doctor prescribes these pills, make sure to take theentire course, or the worst symptoms may bounce back. "Once urushiol haspenetrated deep inside your skin," says Stephanides, "it takes a weekor longer for your immune system to eliminate it."

• Grow older. There's evidence that the aging process reduces sensitivity to poisonplants.

For his part,Cassell says he has become both older and wiser when it comes to toxicodendron."It's sunk in that I need to be extremely careful. If there are poisonplants by a stream and it's a good stream, I'm still going to fish it. But I'llmake sure I don't touch a damn thing."

RUB IT IN

A variety of barrier creams offer new hope to outdoorlovers. Do they work? Several studies, including one at Duke University, foundthat the answer is yes—in a lab. A few new products rated as having "goodefficacy" include IvyBlock, Hollister Moisture Barrier, Stokogard, andHydropel IV Block. But Stephanides says that no one has studied them in thefield. "These creams probably work somewhat, but there's no perfectsolution to poison plants." Of these, you might want to try IvyBlock, theonly one that is FDA-approved. It retails for about $15 at most pharmacies. —JIM THORNTON

How to Stay Awake

fieldandstream-editor — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 04:15:00 -0500

A perfect September day was about to dawn in Minnesota. Following a trail of ribbons he'd laid down on a scouting expedition, bowhunter Stuart Bestul silently made his way to the tree he'd chosen on the fringe of a dense forest. He set up his stand without a single clang or bang, pulled himself into position, tested his bow, and glanced at his watch: 5:30 A.M. All he had to do now was sit and wait.

"But no sooner had I settled in," Bestul recalls, "than my head started doing the old woodpecker." The cause of his somnolence: a newborn baby who'd kept him up much of the night before. He tried gouging his fingertips hard against his cheeks. When this failed to rouse him, he stood up in his stand-only to find himself swaying so much he was sure he'd fall. Figuring that a 10-minute catnap would help, Bestul lowered himself to the ground and was just about to nod off when it happened.

"It was the biggest buck I'd ever seen," he says, 14 years after the morning that still haunts him. "If only I'd stayed up there just five more minutes, the deer would have been walking down the trail exactly where I had predicted."

The buck shook its massive 10-point rack several times in Bestul's direction, trying to make him move. His heart beating wildly, the hunter remained frozen, unblinking, hoping the animal might wander off unspooked. It was not to be. In an instant, the deer spun around into the brush and was gone forever.

HUNTING SHEEP Bestul is clearly not the only hunter to suffer impaired performance due to a surfeit of grogginess. And in fact many Americans have some sort of difficulty getting enough rest-the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic says that 31 percent of us regularly suffer excessive daytime sleepiness, and the National Sleep Foundation says that 54 percent suffer insomnia. No one has collected such statistics on outdoorsmen, but stand hunting combines circumstances that hit sportsmen with a double whammy of sleep-related difficulties-hunters will suddenly reduce the amount of sleep they get at night, and they engage in a monotonous activity during the day.

Tom Roth, Ph.D., director of research at the Henry Ford Sleep Disorders Center in Detroit, explains that as long as we're running around and staying hyper, adrenaline can usually override the sleepiness. But the moment we sit down, we'll start to nod off. "Feeling sleepy in a tree stand is not that much different from feeling sleepy in church or while watching TV. Inactivity doesn't make you fall asleep-it simply unmasks the sleepiness that you already have."

Missing a buck is one thing. But consider the real dangers that can result from sleep deprivation. It's no fluke that most tree stands today come with a safety harness to help protect against falls. But even with that precaution, Bestul's decision to climb down was the right one-better to ease yourself down on your own terms than to have gravity do it for you.

Expert Advice: Six Tips for Staying Awake
To stay awake when you need to, and maximize the sleep you manage to get during hunting season, here's what experts in sleep medicine recommend:

Catch up. Make up your "sleep debt" a week or two before you hunt. It takes an hour of sleep to provide two hours of daytime alertness. If you're getting less than eight hours on a regular basis, your sleep debt has been accumulating. Say you've slept only seven hours a day for the past week. You "owe" yourself seven hours more (1 hour x 7 days). Sleeping nine hours a day for the next week will get you caught up.

Take a nap. Of course, during hunting season, you're building up a debt as well. For sportsmen who hunt on weekends and work during the week, a good way to pay it back is through naps after work. For days in the field when yyou can't stay awake, Roth says that Bestul's catnap was a good idea, though its timing proved unfortunate. "When you get hungry, your body is giving you a biological signal to eat," says Roth. "When you get sleepy, what's the biological signal? It's not saying to slap yourself on the face. It's telling you to go to sleep." A short rest of 10 to 20 minutes can help clear your brain temporarily of a chemical called adenosine, which induces grogginess.

Go easy on the alcohol. A couple of beers after dinner doesn't seem like a big deal, but as alcohol wears off, it causes subtle withdrawal effects that trigger repetitive awakenings throughout the night. Most of these are too short for you to consciously notice, but they greatly erode the restorative value of your sleep.

Get comfortable. If you'll be sleeping on the ground, it's worth the additional weight and space in your pack to bring whatever you need to get comfortable: a sleeping pad and a bag that's rated for the weather, earplugs, and maybe a blindfold. It's also helpful to simulate as much as possible anything you're used to doing at home, maybe wearing a familiar pair of pajamas or bringing a book if you're accustomed to reading in bed.

Consider medication. If you know you'll be too excited to sleep well the night before, ask your doctor about one of the new-generation "hypnotics," i.e., sleeping pills, which have been proved safe and effective when used on a short-term basis. Fast-acting prescription medicines like Sonata and Ambien would be best suited for a hunter because they induce sleep quickly and do not cause the "hangover" effect common with other sleep drugs.

Be aware of potential problems. Sleep disorders, especially sleep apnea (characterized by loud snoring and brief breathing cessation), are extremely common among middle-aged men. Other medical conditions, from heart failure to Parkinson's disease, can also trigger excessive daytime sleepiness. Your doctor can help diagnose any of these root causes and, if necessary, refer you to a sleep lab for specialized treatment.

Get a Good Night's Sleep for a Good Day in the Field

fieldandstream-editor — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 19:00:00 -0500

A perfect september day was about to dawn in Minnesota. Following a trail of ribbons he'd laid down on a scouting expedition, bowhunter Stuart Bestul silently made his way to the tree he'd chosen on the fringe of a dense forest. He set up his stand without a single clang or bang, pulled himself into position, tested his bow, and glanced at his watch: 5:30 A.M. All he had to do now was sit and wait.

"But no sooner had I settled in," Bestul recalls, "than my head started doing the old woodpecker." The cause of his somnolence: a newborn baby who'd kept him up much of the night before. He tried gouging his fingertips hard against his cheeks. When this failed to rouse him, he stood up in his stand—only to find himself swaying so much he was sure he'd fall. Figuring that a 10-minute catnap would help, Bestul lowered himself to the ground and was just about to nod off when it happened.

"It was the biggest buck I'd ever seen," he says, 14 years after the morning that still haunts him. "If only I'd stayed up there just five more minutes, the deer would have been walking down the trail exactly where I had predicted."

The buck shook its massive 10-point rack several times in Bestul's direction, trying to make him move. His heart beating wildly, the hunter remained frozen, unblinking, hoping the animal might wander off unspooked. It was not to be. In an instant, the deer spun around into the brush and was gone forever.

HUNTING SHEEP Bestul is clearly not the only hunter to suffer impaired performance due to a surfeit of grogginess. And in fact many Americans have some sort of difficulty getting enough rest—the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic says that 31 percent of us regularly suffer excessive daytime sleepiness, and the National Sleep Foundation says that 54 percent suffer insomnia. No one has collected such statistics on outdoorsmen, but stand hunting combines circumstances that hit sportsmen with a double whammy of sleep-related difficulties—hunters will suddenly reduce the amount of sleep they get at night, and they engage in a monotonous activity during the day.

Tom Roth, Ph.D., director of research at the Henry Ford Sleep Disorders Center in Detroit, explains that as long as we're running around and staying hyper, adrenaline can usually override the sleepiness. But the moment we sit down, we'll start to nod off. "Feeling sleepy in a tree stand is not that much different from feeling sleepy in church or while watching TV. Inactivity doesn't make you fall asleep—it simply unmasks the sleepiness that you already have."

THE MAX FOR THE MINIMUM To stay awake when you need to, and maximize the sleep you manage to get during hunting season, here's what experts in sleep medicine recommend:

• Catch up. Make up your "sleep debt" a week or two before you hunt. It takes an hour of sleep to provide two hours of daytime alertness. If you're getting less than eight hours on a regular basis, your sleep debt has been accumulating. Say you've slept only seven hours a day for the past week. You "owe" yourself seven hours more (1 hour x 7 days). Sleeping nine hours a day for the next week will get you caught up.

• Take a nap. Of course, during hunting season, you're building up a debt as well. For sportsmen who hunt on weekends and work during the week, a good way to pay it back is through naps after work. For days in the field when you can't stay awake, Roth says that Bestul's catnap was a good idea, though its timing proved unfortunate. "When you get hungry, your body is giving you a biological signal to eat," says Roth. "When you get sleepy, what's the biological signal? It's not saying to slap yourself on the face. It's telling you to go to sleep." A short rest of 10 to 20 minutes can help clear your brain temporarily of a chemical called adenosine, which induces grogginess.

• Go easy on the alcohol. A couple of beers after dinner doesn't seem like a big deal, but as alcohol wears off, it causes subtle withdrawal effects that trigger repetitive awakenings throughout the night. Most of these are too short for you to consciously notice, but they greatly erode the restorative value of your sleep.

• Get comfortable. If you'll be sleeping on the ground, it's worth the additional weight and space in your pack to bring whatever you need to get comfortable: a sleeping pad and a bag that's rated for the weather, earplugs, and maybe a blindfold. It's also helpful to simulate as much as possible anything you're used to doing at home, maybe wearing a familiar pair of pajamas or bringing a book if you're accustomed to reading in bed.

• Consider medication. If you know you'll be too excited to sleep well the night before, ask your doctor about one of the new-generation "hypnotics," i.e., sleeping pills, which have been proved safe and effective when used on a short-term basis. Fast-acting prescription medicines like Sonata and Ambien would be best suited for a hunter because they induce sleep quickly and do not cause the "hangover" effect common with other sleep drugs.

• Be aware of potential problems. Sleep disorders, especially sleep apnea (characterized by loud snoring and brief breathing cessation), are extremely common among middle-aged men. Other medical conditions, from heart failure to Parkinson's disease, can also trigger excessive daytime sleepiness. Your doctor can help diagnose any of these root causes and, if necessary, refer you to a sleep lab for specialized treatment.

THE CAFFEINE NAP

If you want to optimize your alertness during any monotonous activity, sleep researchers at Britain's University of Loughborough may have an answer. They put volunteers on a driving simulator and tested the effectiveness of blasting the radio, opening the window, slapping yourself, etc. Such measures worked dismally at best

A much better solution: Drink a cup of coffee, and immediately take a 15-minute nap. Both caffeine and naps are antidotes to adenosine, a natural sleepiness-inducing chemical. By the time your catnap is done, the caffeine has kicked in. This one-two punch clears gobs of adenosine, buying the sleep-deprived a couple of hours of additional alertness.

Keep Your Cool

fieldandstream-editor — Fri, 05 Aug 2005 05:05:00 -0400

John Kirwin, a paramedic in Grand Isle, Louisiana, got the call from the U.S. Coast Guard at 10:15 on a sweltering summer morning. A boat captain was racing a sick tuna fisherman back to shore. The victim, a 42-year-old attorney from Baton Rouge, was suffering from some form of heat illness. He'd vomited twice and was slipping in and out of consciousness.

The heat index that day was already hovering near 105 degrees. By the time Kirwin and his team met the boat at the marina, the victim was conscious but was suffering such severe leg cramps that he couldn't stand. The paramedics took him by stretcher to the air-conditioned ambulance, and Kirwin began checking his vital signs on the way to the closest emergency room. The man's breathing was fast and shallow. He was pale, sweating profusely, and his body temperature was 99.2. With the patient lying flat on his back, his feet slightly elevated, Kirwin did an EKG, then placed bags of ice under the victim's arms and groin and started two IV lines to pump in fluids and electrolytes.

Out trolling with his buddies since early that morning, the fisherman had neglected to drink water to replace the fluids lost by sweat. He then hooked a large tuna and exhausted himself fighting it. His symptoms began with a sudden onset of weakness and a bad headache, followed by vomiting and leg cramps.

The ER doctor would later tell Kirwin that if the patient had spent another hour or two in the heat, he could have died.

Two days later, the fully recovered attorney returned to Grand Isle to thank Kirwin. "He brought me a couple of tuna steaks," Kirwin says. "He said, Â¿Â¿Â¿This is for saving my life.'"

Mercury Rising
The name for what ailed Kirwin's patient is heat exhaustion. "The main symptom is that you just can't sustain the activity you're doing," explains Howard Backer, M.D., past president of the Wilderness Medical Society and an expert on environmental heat illnesses. "In this regard, heat exhaustion is a healthy adaptation. It forces you to stop before you get yourself into even worse trouble."

Worse trouble means heatstroke, which can be lethal. Even victims who receive timely treatment die in up to a third of cases, and 17 percent of survivors suffer neurologic damage.

[NEXT "Story continued here..."] "Heatstroke," says Backer, "is on the far end of a spectrum that usually starts out as heat exhaustion. What's a mystery, however, is the triggering event that tips a person over to the point where adaptive temperature regulation fails." In the direst cases, body temperatures have been known to soar as high as 108 degrees in minutes. This leads to a metabolic cascade of events that can cause liver and kidney failure, simultaneously denaturing the protein in your brain like egg whites in a hot skillet.

The body is not without its defenses. When the brain detects a dramatically rising body temperature, it triggers processes that transfer heat away from the core by pumping blood to the skin where the heat can radiate away, abetted by the evaporation of sweat.

Unfortunately, many factors can impair this natural mechanism for heat dissipation. Alcohol (Kirwin found out that his patient had been drinking) and certain prescription medications impair the body's capacity to regulate temperature. The same holds true for circulatory problems, from heart disease to high blood pressure, excess body fat, and aging.

Stay Out of Trouble
Heatstroke is virtually always avoidable if you're smart. Here are a few tips from the experts:

See the doctor. If you have special risks, including obesity, heart problems, medical restrictions on your fluid intake, a low-salt diet, or prescription drug usage, or if you are over 65, talk with your physician before you go out.

Get in shape and acclimate. Almost all of us can improve our ability to toolerate high temperatures by acclimating to the heat. But just sitting in a sauna won't do it. You have to actually exercise for an hour a day in the heat for five to 10 days in order to improve your tolerance.

Take cover. Wear a wide-brimmed hat and light-colored, loose, breathable clothing, and try to stay in the shade as much as possible. Also limit outdoor exercise on hot days to the morning and evening hours.

[NEXT "Story continued here..."] Stay hydrated. Drink nonalcoholic beverages, like water and sports drinks. Beer doesn't count because alcohol dehydrates your system and interferes with heat regulation. (Kirwin says that he frequently responds to calls involving fishermen who drink beer on a hot day and don't understand why they end up dehydrated.) Excessive water drinking, however, can sometimes cause the body to flush out too much sodium, leading to a potentially fatal condition called hyponatremia. Your best bet is to drink enough water to stay a little ahead of your thirst and supplement it with salty snacks.

Buddy up. Heat illness can cause confusion and loss of consciousness. Keep an eye on your buddy, and have him do the same for you.

Don't downplay symptoms. If you start feeling sick in the heat, stop exercising and head for the shade or air-conditioning. Drink water, eat a salty snack, and take it easy. If you see someone collapse in the heat, summon paramedics.

Watch your best friend. Dogs are more vulnerable to heatstroke than humans, due to their coats and inability to sweat. In the fall of 2003, an estimated 100 hunting dogs died in South Dakota when pheasant season coincided with an autumn heat wave. "Most guys are very conscious of their dogs' health now," says David Smith, a dove-hunting outfitter and owner of Texas Wild. "Many of them won't bring a dog on a hot day. When they do, they bring a dish and plenty of water. If only they'd take as good care of themselves as they do of their dogs."