Game check points testing deer harvested for Chronic Wasting Disease

TEN SLEEP – Since the onset of hunting season, game check points, manned by Wyoming Game and Fish personnel, have popped up to help both in-state and out-of-state hunters make sure that the deer that have been harvested are free of chronic wasting disease (CWD).

“What we have here is chronic wasting disease and that’s basically what we [Wyoming Game and Fish] are doing here now, we are testing for chronic wasting disease. We have to send it in, it usually takes about 10 days to get the results back and then they [hunters] can actually go online, we identify each deer that we sample with a QR code/number and then they [hunters] can look that up in 10 days and it will show the results of that deer they harvested, whether it was positive or negative,” Wyoming Game and Fish wildlife biologist Bart Kroger explained.

According to the Wyoming Game and Fish, “Chronic wasting disease is a chronic, fatal disease of the central nervous system in mule deer, white-tailed deer, elk, and moose. CWD belongs to the group of rare diseases called transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs). These disorders are caused by abnormally folded proteins called ‘prions.’”

Kroger explained that the disease may not be easily detected just by looking at the animal. He stated that a lot of times big healthy bucks can have the disease.

The Wyoming Game and Fish website states that early in the disease, animals may show no clinical signs. Later on, affected animals show progressive weight loss, reluctance to move, excessive salivation, droopy ears, increased drinking and urinating, lethargy, and eventually death. Animals will test positive for the disease long before these clinical signs appear and the majority of CWD positive animals that are harvested appear completely normal and healthy.

While there are some cases of CWD in the area, it is not a huge problem for the area at this point. Kroger stated, “The prevalence we have here around Ten Sleep, around Worland; most hunt areas are less than 10 percent prevalence. The majority of them [hunt areas] are less than 5 percent, so it is pretty low but we still want to test as much as we can so we can get a better idea of what that prevalence is and that’s just a percentage of deer we sample that come back positive.

While there has so far been no known human contracting the disease through consumption, there has been evidence through animal testing that shows that the disease does pose a risk for monkeys. “The World Health Organization and the CDC [Centers for Disease Control] has come out and said if you have a positive deer, do not eat it,” Kroger said. “We give the hunter the option to throw the deer away and some hunters have told us, ‘I don’t care; I’m going to eat it anyway.’ Some of the deer probably do get eaten and some probably do get thrown away,” he added.

When asked if hunters need to be concerned about the bovine tuberculosis that has been reported to have infected the white tail in Michigan, Kroger stated that there is nothing to worry about. “We don’t have any reports of that here.”