Chronic wasting disease hasn’t been found in any Indiana deer yet, but when the season starts, you might be asked to let DNR officers sample your kill to test for the disease.
“It is, as far as we know, a hundred percent fatal to deer,” said Joe Caudell, deer biologist with the Indiana Dept. of Natural Resources, on Indiana Outdoors radio. “Typically a deer, once it’s infected, will live about two and a half years.”
The disease was first identified in the 1960s in the United States in deer in Colorado. Since then it has moved to other states through the deer and elk population. But, as far as scientists and epidemiologists can tell, it has never been found in people. But, caution dictates that people not eat the meat of any deer known to have it.
If it takes hold in a deer population, it literally wastes them away. Their weight drops and they become listless. It spreads through bodily fluids, including snot and saliva. So, rubbing noses and eating after each other are ways deer spread it.
“We spend a lot of time, especially on opening weekend, surveying our deer to make sure we still don’t have chronic wasting disease in the state,” said Caudell.
It has been found in both Illinois and Wisconsin.
“Finding CWD in a deer population is very difficult because to start with, there may be only a couple of infected deer out on a ladnscape,” said Caudell. Biologists sample the population, but they only end up getting to a small portion of the deer that are harvested, or killed by hunters.
“If you see us at a processor or somebody asks you at a taxidermist, can we sample your deer, if they do that they’re just contributing to us looking for it,” he said.
This year, the state’s DNR officers will be moving around to different counties, rather than concentrating on one area of the state, trying to get a bigger sample size than in the past. Caudell said it will still be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
“We’re just trying to be vigilant and make sure that if it does show up in Indiana we’re very awar of where we have it at.”
