Chronic Wasting Disease in local deer populations has been on a steady climb.
Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a highly transmissible disease that affects deer, elk, reindeer, sika deer, and moose. It can take months before an infected animal develops symptoms, which can include drastic weight loss, stumbling, and other neurologic symptoms. CWD is fatal to animals and there are no treatments or vaccines, it has been labeled as the “zombie disease”. Minnesota DNR Wildlife Health Group Leader, Michelle Carstensen says that the label is a misrepresentation.
“The ‘zombie disease’ is an unfortunate title that got attached to this. It’s more of a slowly progressive brain disorder that eventually causes sponge-like holes in the brain. What it looks like mostly is a totally healthy normal-looking deer.”
Hunters can potentially not see the disease until it’s too late.
“Sometimes hunters have a hard time believing when they shoot an animal and it’s tested for CWD it looks totally normal. The period where an animal starts to show clinical signs of the disease is very short. It’s usually 4 months until the animal really starts to deteriorate, and those animals are rarely observed.”
“What we tell hunters in the areas where the disease is more prevalent is to participate in the CWD testing program. The hunters should care because they want to eat a healthy animal and feed that to their family. We know from looking at our neighbor states that this disease, over time, will increase and spread. In the southern part of Wisconsin, 50% of Bucks and 30% of does have the disease. Imagine looking at a field of 30 deer and half of them are sick, no hunter wants to see that.”, says Carstensen.
Minnesota DNR asks hunters if there’s any question about the health of an animal to not eat it.
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