Wisconsin Ag Connection - DNR Confirms CWD in Second Wild Deer Harvested in Sheboygan Co.

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DNR Confirms CWD in Second Wild Deer Harvested in Sheboygan Co.
Wisconsin Ag Connection - 02/06/2023

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) confirms that a second wild deer tested positive for chronic wasting disease (CWD) in the Town of Lyndon in Sheboygan County. The deer was a hunter-harvested 4-5 year-old doe taken during the 2022 gun deer season.

As required by law, the DNR enacts three-year baiting and feeding bans in counties where CWD has been detected and two-year bans in adjoining counties that lie within 10 miles of a CWD detection.

The previous state-issued ban in Sheboygan County was lifted in December 2022 because the designated time had passed without any new additional CWD positive detections as required by state statute. This recent CWD positive reinstates a three-year baiting and feeding ban in the county, effective Feb. 1, 2023 and does not impact the baiting and feeding ban implemented by Sheboygan County. This recent positive also renews the two-year baiting and feeding ban already in place in Fond du Lac County.

Baiting and feeding encourages deer to congregate unnaturally around a shared food source where infected deer can spread CWD through direct contact with healthy deer or indirectly by leaving behind infectious prions in their saliva, blood, feces and urine.

More information regarding baiting and feeding regulations is available on the DNR webpage.

CWD is a fatal, infectious nervous system disease of deer, moose, elk and reindeer/caribou. It belongs to the family of diseases known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) or prion diseases. The DNR began monitoring the state's wild white-tailed deer population for CWD in 1999. The first positives were found in 2002.

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