PENROSE, Colo. (AP) - State agriculture officials have confirmed that a bull elk killed recently on property near Canon City tested positive for chronic wasting disease - the first case of its kind in southern Colorado.

The 4-year-old elk was killed on a 2,800-acre hunting ground maintained by Ron Walker, who may sell his herd to the U.S. Agriculture Department so all 323 animals can be slaughtered and studied.

"It's terrible," he said. "I have 300-plus head of healthy elk here, and they quarantine me?"

The case represents the farthest south the disease has been found in a domestic elk herd in Colorado, said Linh Truong, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Agriculture.

A mule deer buck killed five miles east of Penrose tested positive.

"Right now, there's not a definitive answer of how it spreads, how it originates," Truong said. "It's definitely one of those things we can't explain."

The fatal brain disease is in the same family as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, which has been tied to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. Scientists say there is no evidence chronic wasting disease can affect humans, but officials recommend avoiding consumption of meat from infected animals.

"The more we think we know, the less we really know," Walker said. "If they look here, they're going to find it here. If they look in Kansas, Wisconsin, Indiana, South Dakota, they'll find it there."

The disease has been found in wild and captive deer and elk in several neighboring states and two Canadian provinces. Walker said he hasn't decided whether to sell the herd.

"I raised a lot of these animals," he said. "I've laid awake a lot of nights thinking about it. What do you do? It's a state regulation."