Sounds like an awful lot of trouble.

Its all about money...pure and simple.

And those folks, both the transporter and the rancher, are absolute nutjobs to risk what they're risking in order to make some fast cash.  If CWD ever gets in the deer herds here, wild or high-fenced, its not going to be pretty for anyone.

Here's part of the article....

The sight of deer munching in suburban gardens is a common one across America, particularly in places like Texas' hill country, where at holiday time the ubiquitous roadside deer-warning signs are decorated with round red stickers by an anonymous artist in an homage to Rudolph, the most famous deer of all. So plentiful are the white-tailed deer in Texas that the notion of smuggling deer into the state seems absurd — yet this growing and lucrative illegal trade, with its threat of devastating disease, is challenging federal and state wildlife officers across the country.

There are an estimated 10 million deer hunters in the U.S., and 80% of the annual $20 billion spent in the hunting industry is focused on the pursuit of the fleet-footed creatures, according to a federal census study released two years ago. For Captain Greg Williford, a Texas game warden, deer-hunting is a cultural tradition that has undergone major changes in the past decade; he now finds himself using the same undercover methods employed by federal drug agents to combat deer smugglers, who are lured to the illicit trade by big bucks for, well, big bucks. "It's like everything else in society — people want bigger, better, faster," Williford says.

But the high prices have prompted some reserves to reject Texas-bred deer. And so deer are smuggled in from northern states like Minnesota, where the stock is bigger and smugglers offer cut-rate prices. This way, smugglers skirt Texas laws that have closed the borders to non-Texas-bred deer. It's not chauvinism at work. There is a danger that smuggled deer can carry diseases like chronic wasting disease — which is similar to mad cow disease — and bovine tuberculosis.

Texas is thus far free of the wasting disease and wants to stay that way.

CLICK HERE to read the full article on the Time website.