Whitetail south of Crookston tests 'suspect' for chronic wasting disease
Nov. 15—A whitetail from Deer Permit Area 661 in the Red River Valley near Climax, Minnesota, has tested as "suspect" for chronic wasting disease, but a confirmed diagnosis won't be known until results from additional testing are available.
If confirmed positive, the deer would be the second to test positive in the area southwest of Crookston for the brain disease that's fatal to deer, elk and moose.
According to Erik Hildebrand, wildlife health supervisor for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, the suspect deer was a yearling doe shot during the opening weekend of firearms deer season. The hunter shot the deer about nine miles north of where an adult buck unexpectedly tested positive for CWD in the fall of 2021.
Hunters in DPA 661 and other 600-designation deer permit areas — known as CWD "management zones" — across the state were required to submit lymph node samples from deer they shot Nov. 4-5, the opening weekend of Minnesota's firearms deer season. The DNR created DPA 661 (formerly 261) as a special CWD management zone in 2022 after the buck near Climax tested positive the previous fall.
Hunters to date have submitted 116 samples for testing from DPA 661, Hildebrand said Wednesday, Nov. 15. Of those, 90 have come back negative, he said, and results from another 25 are pending.
Confirmation usually takes about a week and a half, Hildebrand said, and results from the suspect deer may not be available until after Thanksgiving.
The North Dakota Game and Fish Department is sampling for CWD across the river in Unit 2B, a vast area that follows the Red River roughly from Grand Forks to south of Fargo, and portions of southeast North Dakota as part of a voluntary hunter-harvested surveillance program.
The news of a suspected CWD-positive case across the river in Minnesota ups the urgency for hunters to get their deer tested, said Dr. Charlie Bahnson, wildlife veterinarian for the North Dakota Game and Fish Department in Bismarck.
"We're really hoping, essentially, that we can get a good number of deer tested to put that finding in context," Bahnson told the Herald. "We're hoping to test a lot of deer and, hopefully, not detect (CWD) but basically just get a better understanding of what the disease situation is on our side of the border."
What the CWD-suspect deer near Climax means for hunters and future surveillance efforts remains to be seen. The DNR did conduct two late hunts in the Climax area after the confirmed positive case in 2021, but it only generated about 30 samples the first hunt and 20 samples the second, the DNR's Hildebrand said.
Plans are in the works to talk with local DNR staff this week, he said, and perhaps follow up with area landowners, depending on whether the deer ultimately tests positive, to explore options for harvesting additional deer for surveillance.
"That's still undecided at this point in time," he said. "We have to get our confirmation first."
The DNR submitted "just shy of 9,000" lymph node samples to a lab in Wisconsin on Nov. 7, the Tuesday after Minnesota's firearms deer opener, and results are coming in about twice a day Hildebrand said.
For up-to-date results on CWD surveillance to date,
check out the DNR website
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