Hunters asked to remain on the lookout for chronic wasting disease

Hunters asked to remain on the lookout for chronic wasting disease

CWD cases still being reported

From Randy Zellers

AGFC Media Director Arkansas hunters stepping up to provide samples for deer disease LITTLE ROCK – Deer hunters in Arkansas have voluntarily provided more than 5,300 biological samples from harvested deer to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission so far this hunting season, helping AGFC to continue monitoring the distribution of chronic wasting disease in the state.

“This is a huge increase over samples collected by this time during last year’s deer season,” said AJ Riggs, wildlife health biologist for the AGFC’s Research, Evaluation and Compliance Division. “For comparison, this same period for 2017, a total of 2,607 hunter harvested samples were collected.”

Riggs says the testing is all voluntary and free to hunters in the vast majority of cases.

“If a person takes their deer to one of our cooperating veterinarians, they may charge a fee for their time,” Riggs said. “But all of the other options for testing, which have received 99 percent of our samples, are totally free to hunters.”

The increase in samples has come despite a reduced number of manned testing locations during opening weekend of modem gun deer season this year. In 2018, the AGFC has operated five temporary CWD sample stations on opening weekend, which garnered 459 samples to help investigate the prevalence and spread of the disease.

“We felt the amount of manpower used to staff those stations could be better used to gather samples through a different method,” Riggs said. “But it was important to have a place for staff to be able to talk one-on-one with hunters who arrived to turn in a sample or ask questions. That’s why we continued the stations in a few areas that recently were added to the CWD Management Zone.”

A large portion of the samples collected so far this year has come through the agency’s new system of unmanned CWD testing drop-off containers placed throughout the state.

“Staff are operating 44 freezers, mostly located inside the CWD Management Zone, but we do have locations throughout the state,” Riggs said.

The freezers are monitored to prevent vandalism or theft, but there have been no major issues so far and the response from the public has been excellent.

Dr. Jenn Ballard, state wildlife veterinarian for the AGFC, is very happy with the response from hunters and the quality of the samples submitted.

“It’s been incredible.”

Ballard said. “We have pretty well saturated the CWD Management Zone with drop-off locations,” Ballard said. “But we have already added four additional freezers this year.”

Ballard says the added drop-off locations came after a recent positive case of CWD appeared in Oregon County, Missouri, northeast of Arkansas’s CWD Management Zone.

As of Dec. 31, 185 new cases of CWD have been detected in the state from the increased sampling effort, which is consistent with previous years results if the increased volume of samples is taken into consideration.

“So far, we have not detected any new positive cases outside of the existing CWD Management Zone,” Ballard said. “But the drop-off locations and other sampling methods will all be available until deer season ends at the end of February. If a positive case of CWD is found in a new county and confirmed, we will issue a press release, but we’ve been fortunate so far this year.”