Game Commission Designates Warren County A Chronic Wasting Disease Management Area

On June 4, the Game Commission announced it is designating Warren County as a Chronic Wasting Disease Management Area after a captive deer tested positive for the disease at a hunting preserve.

CWD affects members of the deer, or cervid, family, and the disease is always fatal to the deer and elk it infects. 

When a new CWD-positive is detected in either a wild or captive cervid in Pennsylvania, a Disease Management Area (DMA) is established. This reduces the risk of the human-assisted spread of CWD.

Within DMAs, it is unlawful to:

-- Remove or export any cervid high-risk parts;

-- Use or possess cervid urine-based attractants;

-- Directly or indirectly feed wild, free-ranging deer (it is already illegal to feed elk regardless of DMA location); and

-- Rehabilitate wild, free-ranging cervids.

For deer hunters in DMAs – especially those who live outside the DMA – it’s important to plan your hunt and know ahead of time what you’ll do with the deer you harvest. 

Since high-risk cervid parts can’t be removed from a DMA, successful hunters can’t transport whole deer outside the DMA. Hunters can take deer they harvest to a processor within the DMA, and the processor can properly dispose of the high-risk parts. 

Hunters can also dispose of high-risk parts in trash that is destined for a landfill or quarter the animal and leave the high-risk parts at the kill site. 

The meat, antlers (free of brain material) and other low-risk parts then can be transported outside the DMA.

Deer hunters getting taxidermy mounts also must take their harvests to a taxidermist within the DMA, or otherwise on the list of approved processors and taxidermists for the DMA in which they harvested the deer available at the CWD webpage.

The Game Commission offers free CWD testing within the DMAs. Hunters should deposit the heads of deer they harvest in one of the head-collection containers the Game Commission provides within DMAs. 

Antlers should be removed from bucks before the double-bagged head is placed in a collection container. Hunters then are notified of the test results.

While CWD never has been documented in humans, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends never eating the meat of a CWD-positive deer.

For more information, visit the Game Commission’s Chronic Wasting Disease webpage.

[Posted: June 4, 2021] PA Environment Digest