Chronic Wasting Disease Update for White-tailed Deer Hunters and Landowners

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- Hi, Sanford Smith here with Penn State Extension.

Today I'm joined by Calvin Norman, a colleague of mine in Penn State Extension, and we're gonna talk about chronic wasting disease.

Many people have heard about this disease.

It's often referred to by its acronym, CWD.

So if you hear us saying CWD, that's what we're talking about today.

Calvin, can you tell us a little bit about this disease and what causes it?

- So, chronic waste disease is an always fatal prion disease.

Prions are misfolded proteins.

They're in, you know, they're in the brain, but found throughout the body of all mammals.

And chronic wasting disease specifically impacts all members of the deer family, also referred to as cervids.

So here in Pennsylvania, we think about it in elk and white-tailed deer, but it's been known to impact reindeer, moose, blacktail deer and mule deer as well.

- Yeah, this is a very serious disease, quite widespread, isn't it?

- Unfortunately. It's in many states and several countries.

- So if you wanna learn more about the history of chronic wasting disease, you can check that out online.

Go to any good reputable website and it can tell you that we're gonna talk about the problem here in Pennsylvania.

How extensive is it?

- It's pretty widespread.

And unfortunately it continues to be expanding the oldest pocket of chronic wasting diseases in management unit 4A.

So we have what are called disease management units or DMAs.

These are areas that we know chronic wasting disease has been found and we're trying to manage it as a state and reduce the amount of chronic wasting disease and try to keep it to those areas.

And doing that requires, you know, effort from hunters like you and I going out there and, you know, hunting deer and being responsible.

- Sure.

Of course, all the work that you're talking about is being done by the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

They do lots of education about this disease.

And they also collect samples, don't they?

So hunters can harvest a deer. And how do they process that?

- Sampling is when you take the head of a deer that you have harvested and then you put it into a bin.

They have these large white bins for testing.

So what happens is, is the technicians at the game commission lab, they take the head and they cut out the lymph nodes and they put those into a machine.

And you can detect if you have chronic wasting disease and you'll get your results back, you know, within two weeks.

Usually it's getting shorter and shorter every year as technology is getting better at this sampling.

And that's the only way to know if the animal has chronic wasting disease or not.

Unfortunately, it can take over a year for animals to die of chronic wasting disease.

And the signs of chronic wasting disease are not really, you know, apparent until the terminal stage of right before the end of, you know, death.

So I've seen very healthy eight and 10 point bucks that have they harvested and they had chronic wasting disease.

There's no way to know if an animal has chronic unless it's tested.

And no part of the deer is safe if it has chronic wasting disease.

- You can't eat it.

- Can't eat it at all.

- No, you don't want to eat it. Okay.

- To sanitize, you know, stuff that has had chronic wasting disease exposed.

So you need to hit to about 1,000 degrees for an hour.

A little toasty from my taste.

- Yeah, right. So a lot of questions here.

Let's say somebody harvests the deer and they're not sure, maybe they're not in a disease management area, but they want to get it tested.

You said you drop off the head, but then they should wait before they eat that meat. - Yeah.

And if you're not in a disease management unit, you could still get it tested.

It will cost you about $30.

But if you're in a disease management unit, you get it tested for free.

- Right? - Yep.

And so what I do, 'cause we live in a disease management unit, we hunt in a disease management unit, is I process my deer at home because I like to do that.

And then I put everything in the freezer and it sits there until I get my results back.

- Right. Huh.

What are some things that landowners and others can do to help with this problem?

And hunters, many hunters are not landowners, they hunt on public land or other people's land.

But if you're a forest landowner, what can you do to help kind of with this situation of chronic wasting disease?

- Well, we got a couple of things that we could do as landowners and hunters.

The first thing we gotta do is we gotta make sure we're out there.

We're harvesting as many deer as we legally and ethically can.

We're testing them after we harvest them.

If we're in a DMA.

And then even if we're in not DMAs, we need to make sure we're not feeding deer or using any deer attractants, especially in disease management units.

We don't wanna congregate deer artificially.

'cause that can help spread chronic wasting disease.

- Yeah. It's very contagious, isn't it?

- Yeah. - When they're in an area.

That's right. - And but you know, chronic wasting disease has been found in deer attractants like dough urine.

So it's important not to use those, you know, types of attractants.

- Wow.

How common is chronic wasting disease in the disease management areas?

- Unfortunately, it gets more and more common every year.

So 4A is our management unit with our highest disease density, and one in every three year tested in 4A last year.

So it'd be 2022, had chronic wasting disease.

So it's very important that we're testing deer.

- Yeah, right. Ooh, that's a serious problem.

And it's a regrettable one.

So Calvin, are there any other issues that we need to be concerned about with chronic wasting disease?

- So chronic wast disease is a number of pathways that it moves through the ecosystem that impacts deer.

And the most important thing to remember is that all deer are susceptible to chronic wasting disease and all deer of all ages can get chronic wasting disease.

As there are a number of pathways, even fawns in utero can be exposed to and get chronic wasting disease.

So you have to be very careful as deer hunters and as members of the public.

- Okay. Thank you very much, Calvin.

Thank you for joining me today out here in the forest.

It's a beautiful day, but chronic wasting disease is something we all should be better informed about and be following the recommendations for sure.

Thank you for listening.