Pennsylvania Game News - January 2023 - 21

SCREENING FOR CWD
Some heads handled by deer-aging crews
get tested for Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD).
That includes more than 100 on this day.
They're placed into garbage bags, 10 or so at
a time. They're surprisingly heavy, grouped
like that, and it takes two people to swing
them into the enclosed bed of deer biologist
Bret Wallingford's truck. They're destined for
Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area,
where " cutters " will collect lymph nodes and
send them out for analysis.
Wallingford worries a bit until the heads
are in their hands.
" I'm always afraid of the tailgate opening
and having bags of deer heads spill out and
tear open on the highway, " he said with a
laugh.
That would be bad, and not just because no
one wants heads rolling around the interstate
like so many hairy marbles.
These samples are important because
they're a big part of CWD monitoring statewide.
Hunter-harvested
deer account for about
70% of whitetails tested for CWD each year,
said Andrea Korman, the Game Commission's
CWD biologist.
One-third of those come from deer processors.
All
are older deer. That's not because
fawns can't have CWD; they can. The Game
Commission has detected CWD in a few each
year since 2017.
But, Korman said, research reveals it can
take a month or more from the time a deer is
infected with CWD until it shows up in lymph
nodes. That makes it harder to find in fawns.
" So our statewide efforts focus on the
yearling and adult deer to increase the odds
of detection, " Korman said.
That testing reveals CWD continues to
spread.
The Game Commission examined a total of
about 11,700 deer heads during the 2021-22
hunting season. CWD was detected in 261.
" While that may not seem like a big problem,
one main part of the state - the EstabThe
most up-to-date CWD information can
be found online at www.arcg.is/1G4TLr.
JANUARY 2023
21
lished Area - contains about 90% of those
detections, " Korman said. " We see increasing
sample prevalence in that area and evidence
of continued spread each year. "
Several CWD-positive deer showed up in
new places over the past year, too. Korman
said there was a new detection in Jefferson
County that resulted in the expansion of DMA
3 and creation of DMA 6 in 2021.
" This new detection was within 2 miles of
Pennsylvania's elk management area and is
the first north of I-80, " she added.
More recently, the Game Commission created
DMA 7 in April 2022, after the detection
of a CWD-positive deer at a captive facility in
Lycoming County. It takes in portions of Lycoming,
Northumberland, Montour, Columbia and
Sullivan counties.
The boundaries of a few other DMAs,
meanwhile, have changed since last season,
with the most recent of those impacting DMA
2 in southcentral Pennsylvania.
There have also been more people harvesting
multiple positive deer, Korman said. One
individual harvested four CWD-positive deer
in the 2021-22 season.
Anyone wanting to track the disease can
visit the Game Commission's CWD Results and
Surveillance page - updated weekly at https://
pgcdatacollection.pa.gov/CWDResultsLookup
- to get the latest results.
STAY UP TO DATE
http://pgcdatacollection.pa.gov/CWDResultsLookup http://pgcdatacollection.pa.gov/CWDResultsLookup http://www.arcg.is/1G4TLr
Pennsylvania Game News - January 2023

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