DNR targets Baraboo Range for CWD samples

By Capital Newspapers staff reports

Hunters can help state game officials control the spread of chronic wasting disease in the Wisconsin deer herd by having adult animals tested for the brain disease, particularly in the Baraboo Range area to the east and south of Baraboo, state game officials say.

As the popular nine-day gun deer season kicks off in the dawn hours Saturday, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources officials are hoping hunters will provide them with at least 300 deer from the Baraboo Range area east and north of Baraboo to be tested for CWD, said Don Bates, a DNR biologist working on controlling the disease. The area designated the Baraboo Range Monitoring Area is the farthest north CWD has been found in wild deer in Wisconsin, a sort of frontier from which the disease may be spreading, he said.

"In the October (antlerless deer) season we picked up maybe 40 samples from the monitoring area," he said. "To my knowledge, we haven't picked up any new (CWD) positives.

"We're hoping that everybody that shoots an adult deer within that monitoring area will provide a sample to us," Bates said. "We're not interested in fawns ... because fawns, they're just not old enough to detect the disease in."

In recent years the DNR has found several deer with CWD in the area around Devil's Lake State Park and one at the border between Sauk and Columbia counties north of Durward's Glen, he said. In a pocket near Devil's Lake, 4 to 8 percent of deer had the brain illness.

According to the DNR, CWD is a fatal brain disease that infects members of the deer family. It has been detected in wild deer or elk herds in 11 states and two Canadian provinces.

CWD was first identified in Wisconsin in deer shot in western Dane and eastern Iowa counties.

In Sauk County, 9,595 deer have been tested and of those, only 26 animals have been found to have CWD, according to DNR figures updated Wednesday. Statewide, 142,877 deer have been tested and of those 1,005 have had CWD.

While they have set the goal of testing 300 deer from the area, Bates said testing a larger number would give a more accurate measure of how far CWD has spread in the area.

"We simply need more samples to monitor for the disease and find out what the prevalence (of CWD) is in the area," he said. "We aren't doing any sharpshooting this year, and we're having to get our sample numbers through the normal hunting season."

Baraboo Range CWD monitoring boundary

• East from Highway 12 along Highway 33 to Interstate 90/94

• South along 90/94 to Highway 78, then west along highways 78 and 113.

• Back along Spear Road to Highway 12.

CWD sampling stations

Sauk County

• Viking Express Market, 935 Eighth St. (only Saturday and Sunday)

• West Baraboo Gander Mountain store, Highway 12

• Lakeside Country Store, intersection of Highway 78 and Highway 12, Merrimac

• Woody's LLC, E5016 Highway 14, Spring Green

Columbia County

• Blystone Repair Service, 1201 West Highway 33, Portage

• R & G Travel Mart, 611 Frontage Road, Wisconsin Dells

CWD, hunting and other Department of Natural Resources information online at www.dnr.state.wi.us.