Twenty-five Missouri counties enact mandatory testing for Chronic Wasting Disease

One of the stations for checking deer for Chronic Wasting Disease. Before noon on opening day of the season hunters had brought more than 80 deer to this check point near Stockton Lake.

Ken White | Special to the Daily Mail

Chronic Wasting Disease caused the Missouri Department of Conservation to enact a special regulation requiring mandatory testing for 25 Missouri counties for the opening weekend of the November firearm portion of the deer season. (Nov. 11-12).

Missouri deer hunters harvested 94,977 deer during the opening weekend. Vernon County had 863 deer checked during the opening weekend. The November firearm season ends on Nov. 21.

Harry Hopkins, Warrensburg, was at a check point and said, “this scene reminded me of the past deer hunts when a hunter had to bring his deer to a check point. It was like a social thing where hunters could show off their deer they had taken. Those stations also brought revenue to some of the places, including service stations where the hunters also purchased gas and food.”

Added Hopkins: “I had a friend that had a gas station and convenience store, where he looked forward to the deer and turkey seasons that brought hunters to his place of business. I remember how the successful hunters would tell anyone who would listen, about their hunt.”

Hopkins went on to say “Many non-hunters who wonder what and why these check stations are all about. I tell them that Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) is a fatal disease that infects deer and is passed from one deer to another. It affects the brain as well as the nervous system and is always fatal to the animal.”

Because CWD has the potential to reduce the deer herd in Missouri, it also reduces the quality of deer hunting in the state. Since 2010, CWD has been found in seven Missouri counties. The Conservation department is working to limit the spread of the disease by enacting special regulations, and asking hunters to help by not attracting deer by using grain, salt or minerals ­— which unnaturally concentrates deer and increases the risk of transmitting the disease.

There have been more than 40 cases of CWD confirmed in the state via samples collected in most sections of the state. In the past 15 years there has been more than 76,000 deer tested within the state.

The special regulation that is mandatory for deer hunters includes the 25 counties that are within 25 miles where CWD has been detected. In these counties, if a hunter kills a deer during the opening weekend, they must take it or the head with at least six inches of neck attached on the day it was taken, to a designated sampling station within the CWD management zone. A list of the stations as well as additional CWD information may be found in the 2017 Fall Deer and Turkey (free) publication, found at locations where hunting permits are available.

Successful hunters outside the sampling counties may have their deer tested — if it was taken within the CWD management zone. To find a voluntary sampling location, visit mdc.mo.gov/cwd or call your conservation department office.