As the 2018 deer hunting season tapered off, Mid-South hunters learned the slow spread of Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) has continued. The disease has now been confirmed in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee.
Affecting the nervous system, CWD is always fatal in deer. Much mystery still surrounds the disease, but biologists believe it is spread through contact between animals. Although eating meat from infected deer is not advised, there are no known cases of humans contracting the disease.
Tennessee is the latest Mid-South state to confirm CWD.
“The tests came back preliminary positive about mid-December,” says Jennifer Wisniewski, Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency chief of outreach and communications. “Those have been confirmed and we now have 13 deer that tested positive for CWD in Fayette and Hardeman counties. Where those deer were taken was close enough to the border of another county, within 5 miles. So, according to our CWD Response Plan, McNairy County is also on the list. We have three counties in a row on the Mississippi border in our CWD zone.”
Since the infected deer were discovered close to the end of the hunting season, “our commission decided to extend deer season so we could get more sampling done. We really want to know how far the disease has spread. So, until Jan. 31, the season is open and we’re asking hunters to help us. Hunters will be able to hunt a bit more and we’ll get to test extra samples.”
So far, that’s been working well, says Wisniewski. “There are deer freezer drop-offs throughout the counties that you can just throw a head during the week. Thus far, there’s been a couple of hundred deer tested since the season was extended. The extension is for modern gun, archery, muzzleloaders.”
Test results lag time
There’s some lag time to get test results back for CWD. “It takes about two weeks to get samples tested and the results back. We’re sending samples to Colorado for that.