The discovery of chronic wasting disease in a wild deer southwest of Eau Claire has prompted the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to ask hunters in west central Wisconsin to voluntarily test deer they harvest during the gun deer season.
The death of the 2-year old female doe near the end of last winter triggered the first-ever bans on baiting and feeding deer in the nearby counties of Chippewa, Dunn, Pepin, Buffalo and Trempealeau. The two-year ban was effective May 1 and is a state law for any county in a 10-mile radius of a wild deer found with CWD.
The DNR now considers 55 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties to be CWD-affected.
The DNR is hoping to sample more than 300 deer harvested during the deer hunting season from the new counties in west-central Wisconsin.
"We are really looking for the participation and cooperation of hunters. We’re not going to be able to reach that goal without the help of hunters bringing us their deer heads to get tested," said Bill Hogseth, a DNR wildlife biologist in Eau Claire. "The more deer we test the better. We get a better picture and a better understanding of what this disease is doing in this area."
Hogseth said there are many locations in west-central Wisconsin to take deer heads to be tested. The locations range from meat processors and convenience stores to hardware stores and special kiosks established by the DNR for hunters to leave samples.
More information on testing locations is available on the DNR website and searchable by county.
While the doe was the first wild deer in Eau Claire County to test positive for CWD, a private deer farm was a major source of the disease in a captive deer herd in 2015.
More than 30 deer from a herd of 228 at Fairchild Whitetails in Fairchild tested positive for CWD and was depopulated. The deer farm in eastern Eau Claire County is about 30 miles from where the wild deer was found earlier this year.
"We have been testing wild deer in that area ever since and we have not had a wild deer test positive in that area since," Hogseth said. "We’re going to continue testing in that area, we are this year as well. It’s just that we are now adding additional opportunities for testing in other areas of the region."
Wisconsin’s nine-day gun season runs from Saturday to Sunday, Nov. 25.
