For many deer hunters in North America, chronic wasting disease is the new normal. If you hunt in a county where CWD has been found in deer, you aren’t alone. The disease has been found in deer in 35 states to date, although most deer and hunters in those states are unaffected. If the county where you hunt is now designated a CWD management area, or if your favorite hunting area in another state is battling CWD, do not despair: Deer hunting continues! Not only does life go on for deer and hunters where CWD occurs, it’s important for hunters to stay engaged so they can help maintain healthy deer populations despite the disease.
If you are still fortunate that the woods where you hunt are unaffected by CWD, there’s also a role for you in this fight, and we outlined your assignments in an earlier article. This article is for those of you who hunt where CWD has already been found.
Keep Hunting
This is probably the most important step. Deer hunting doesn’t end just because CWD is found at some level in the local deer population. Except in a few areas where CWD has been poorly and passively managed or where the disease has been around for decades, most deer remain healthy. Keeping them healthy and productive requires ongoing management through appropriate levels of buck and doe harvest, and that’s where you are needed.
Without hunters, state wildlife agencies are powerless to manage the disease and maintain a healthy, huntable population of deer into the future. If hunters check out of the fight, CWD will spread faster from deer to deer. Sooner rather than later, the population’s productivity won’t be able to keep up with increasing disease-related deaths. This situation is preventable, but only if hunters remain engaged and continue hunting.
Test All of Your Deer
Fighting CWD in a disease zone is easier and more successful when biologists know its approximate location. Testing deer for CWD reveals those locations and helps take the fight to the disease where it hides. You can help by submitting every deer you harvest in the CWD zone for testing.
Drop by a check station, drop a deer’s head or lymph nodes in a collection box, ask your processor or taxidermist to assist, or use whatever submission process is available where you hunt. These opportunities are usually free and available conveniently. If you don’t know where they are, talk to your state wildlife agency, game warden, taxidermist or other hunters.
If your deer tests positive for CWD, good! You helped fight the disease by removing an infected animal from the landscape. Your state likely supplies replacement tags for deer that test positive for CWD, if you need additional tags. Collect your replacement tag, keep hunting, and harvest another deer.
Do Not Fear For Your Health
There is no evidence that suggests you need to worry about your own health in a CWD zone. There is no confirmed case of CWD ever having jumped to humans through consumption of CWD-positive venison and ample evidence that it is impossible or unlikely to happen. If there is any risk, it’s minimal, and you can make it even smaller with a simple step: Wait for your CWD test results before you consume venison. Simple and easy. You’ll be minimizing your health risks and helping monitor the disease through testing at the same time.
Properly Dispose of Carcasses and any Positive Venison
It’s important within a disease zone to slow new infections. A critical step is disposing of all parts of infected deer in ways that prevent CWD prions from ever coming in contacting with healthy deer. Your state wildlife agency will supply instructions on carcass disposal and may even supply special dumpsters, landfills or other sites. Community organizers may even be operating volunteer-based dumpsters or disposal efforts.
Whatever you do, don’t leave the CWD management zone with a deer carcass, and especially don’t cross state lines with a deer carcass. Learn the rules on which deer parts are allowed to leave the zone or the state before you travel. These rules are now being policed by wildlife law enforcement.
If your deer tests positive for CWD, you will also need to dispose of the venison from that deer. Follow the same recommended disposal procedures for frozen venison as you would for deer carcasses.
Maintain Healthy Deer Density Through Doe Harvest
The goal for deer populations affected by CWD is to keep them in balance with available nutrition and habitat and to avoid overpopulation. The disease spreads faster in high-density deer populations. Doe harvest is the best method for maintaining healthy deer densities.
State wildlife agencies want to sustain hunter harvest for the long haul. Deer populations in balance with available resources produce more fawns and can continue to sustain hunter harvest – in spite of the presence of CWD – for as long as hunters continue to harvest deer and stay involved in meeting deer harvest goals in the area.
Don’t Feed or Bait
The science is clear: artificially feeding or baiting deer in a CWD zone is a good way to increase the spread of the disease. NDA has looked carefully at the research, and that’s why we support bans on feeding and baiting in all CWD zones. Even if your state does not ban these practices where you hunt in a CWD zone, we encourage you to voluntarily stop feeding and baiting. It’s the right thing to do for disease management, and you have many better options for providing deer nutrition through habitat management.
Organize Against CWD
If you live in or close to the CWD zone where you hunt, this issue is a great opportunity for you to organize a community effort. For example, Doug Duren of Wisconsin took it upon himself to establish CWD disposal dumpsters, organize doe harvest contests, and other activities aimed at helping his fellow hunters fight CWD. You can do the same in your community. You could begin by creating an NDA Branch of volunteers so you have help taking on these efforts.
Organizing against CWD in your community will bring hunters together for a common cause and will lead to conservation achievements beyond fighting a deer disease. Social events, deer contests, harvest drives, youth hunts and other activities mean fun in the name of deer conservation. This can turn what might seem like a depressing situation into many positive outcomes for hunters and deer in your community.
Stay Connected to Your State Wildlife Agency
From the beginning and through the entire process, we recommend you follow reports and information from your state wildlife agency. This helps you stay aware of regulations, rule changes, testing opportunities and results, and much more. Follow your agency on social media, sign up for their e-mail newsletter, download their app, and get to know your local wildlife biologist and game warden by name.
We still have a lot to learn about CWD and how to protect deer into the future. But we know how to slow the spread of the disease to maintain huntable populations of deer today. Your presence is requested to help achieve this goal. Thank you for helping fight CWD today!