CWD detected in a wild Shawano County deer

GREEN BAY, Wis. (WBAY) - The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources reports a deer taken during the gun-deer season in Shawano County has tested positive for Chronic Wasting Disease.

It’s the first wild deer in the county to test positive for CWD, as the deadly deer disease continues to creep into Northeast Wisconsin.

The DNR now plans to take steps to gauge the infection rate in the county.

“We were made aware that we have a positive Chronic Wasting Disease wild deer that was taken during the gun deer season this year, so that represents the first wild positive in Shawano County,” says DNR District Wildlife Biologist Jeff Pritzl.

Pritzl says the adult deer was harvested in the Town of Germania, in the far southwestern part of Shawano County, just west of Tigerton.

“So we have had wild positive deer not that far to the west, in Portage and Marathon County, so it’s not a tremendous surprise, it’s unfortunate, but not a big surprise to have found it near there, but we do want to get a better handle now on figuring out where is the edge of the spread of the disease and infection rate and that type of thing, so we will be working with landowners in that area, the hunting public to further intensify our surveillance in that immediate area,” says Pritzl.

After first appearing in Southwest Wisconsin in the early 2000s, the fatal deer disease has slowly spread this way, with a deer testing positive for CWD in Sheboygan County last year.

Pritzl says CWD monitoring efforts will now intensify in the next few years where the Shawano County positive has been detected.

“So it actually affects from a 10-mile radius, is what we use to consider affected counties, it actually affects Waupaca, Portage, Marathon and Shawano Counties as it relates to baiting and feeding restrictions,” explains Pritzl.

The CWD positive will be front and center when Shawano County’s County Deer Advisory Council holds its meeting on January 19th.

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