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I haven't researched this in a while, but about two years ago, I read a lot about it, and this is what I recall:
- CWD was discovered as early as the mid-60's in the West, in penned stock (elk).

- Over most of the 35 years the number of confirmed cases remained very small. The recent increase might just be due to better detection, more testing, and increased awareness.

- the disease is protein related, simply killing the infected animals will not 'cure' an area. In the earliest instances, even after the infected stock were gone for over six months, new stock in the same pens developed the disease.

- at some point (in Idaho, Colorado, I think), testing was required at hunter check-in stations.

- The specific strain infecting Elk was thought to not be easily transferred to whitetail or muledeer (I forget why they said that), but there were cases.

- AT THAT TIME, no human had ever caught the disease by eating infected meat. Even in England, the people infected were rose gardeners who had been handling bone meal from infected cattle.

I think testing should be mandatory and openly provided by whomever - vets, state P&W/F&G, etc. at cost. I also think they should institute strict controls on the tranfer of penned stock (since this is where CWD is most common).

I am not aware of any cases in Texas, although I have tuned out for a while. Many ranches do import/transfer penned stock as part of their wildlife management program. Texas needs to very tightly control/monitor that, or we will end up with infected deer in the Texas wild.

I have a fairly extensive file on this, but not much time to dig into it today! Anyway, you seem to have the facts pretty well straight. It seems to me, though, that CWD was found in mule deer in Colorado originally, by a University of Iowa Veterinarian. These wouldd have been wild deer- although the disease spreads pretty readily when animals are penned.

Again, there is NO evidence I have ever seen that humans can contract this disease- although it appears that every mammalian species that has been intensively studied for prion disease has some variant of this, they tend to be very specific to each species. The exception, of course, is "Mad Cow Disease", which has made the jump from (probably) sheep to cattle to humans.