By Jessica Domel
Multimedia Reporter

Deer hunters in more than a dozen Texas counties will be required to make an additional stop before heading home from the hunt this year.

“Hunters need to be aware that we have chronic wasting disease (CWD) zones in some new areas in the state,” Alan Cain, Big Game Program director for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD), said. “There will be mandatory sampling requirements for hunter-harvested deer and carcass movement restrictions in those zones.”

Hunters in CWD containment and surveillance zones will need to stop by a check station to get their white-tailed deer, mule deer, elk or other CWD-susceptible species tested within 48 hours of harvest.

“They can only leave the zone with a quartered carcass, or they could leave with a whole head as long as they’ve stopped by the check station and received a head waiver that allows them to take it to a taxidermist,” Cain told the Texas Farm Bureau Radio Network.

New CWD zones were approved by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission this year as a result of positive CWD detections in wild and captive deer.

There are new zones in the following areas:

There’s also a new CWD zone in Bexar County near Hollywood Park that was implemented as a result of CWD in a free-ranging deer. That zone doesn’t impact hunters, but it is in place to restrict movement of deer carcasses by trappers or rehabilitators.

In addition to the new CWD zones, there are several that remain in place from previous hunting seasons.

There are zones in the following areas:

The zones are an effort by the department to monitor and curb the spread of the fatal disease.

“It is certainly safe to hunt in the zone. In fact, we need hunters,” Cain said. “Hunters are one of the best ways to help manage CWD. We need hunters to harvest deer. Obviously, if you let numbers get out of hand, and CWD is present, it just means there’s more hosts on the landscape potentially for that disease to spread throughout the population quicker.”

If a lower deer density can be maintained in an area, the hope is CWD will infect fewer free-ranging deer.

“To be clear, we do have those areas where chronic wasting disease was only detected in a captive deer breeding facility in those counties,” Cain said. “The disease isn’t outside of those facilities at this time, but we have zones in place in those areas to allow us to collect some samples around where that positive detection was to determine whether the disease is outside of that facility or not.”

Hunters who bring their deer to a CWD check station to be tested for the disease will receive a confirmation number they can use to later look up the status of the test online.

“People ask whether it’s safe to deer hunt or safe to consume deer. There’s no records of anybody ever being sick from eating a CWD-positive animal, but just as a general precaution, whether it’s CWD or any disease that a deer can have, we don’t recommend hunters eat sick animals,” Cain said. “That’s just a good food safety practice.”

Hunters are encouraged to use common sense precautions when handling and processing any CWD susceptible species.