No baiting allowed for Rusk county during deer season

A farm-raised deer on a deer farm in Washburn County, has tested positive for chronic wasting disease (CWD). This positive result is within 10 miles of the Rusk, Barron and Sawyer county borders, so new baiting and feeding bans go into effect in Rusk, Barron, Sawyer and Washburn counties, Thursday, Oct. 5.

State law requires that the DNR enact a three-year baiting and feeding ban, in counties where CWD has been detected and a two-year ban in adjoining counties, within 10 miles of a CWD detection.

It is illegal to hunt over an area previously used for legal baiting and feeding, until that area is completely free of bait or feed for 10 consecutive days.

Baiting or feeding deer encourages them to congregate unnaturally around a shared food source, where infected deer can spread CWD through direct contact with healthy deer or by leaving behind infectious prions in their saliva, blood, feces and urine.

CWD is a fatal, infectious nervous system disease of deer, moose, elk and reindeer/caribou. It belongs to the family of diseases known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) or prion diseases.

The DNR asks deer hunters in the ban counties to help with efforts to identify where CWD occurs on the landscape, by having their deer tested for the disease. The collection of CWD samples is essential for assessing the presence of CWD in the deer population across the state.

In addition to submitting samples for CWD testing, hunters are also encouraged to properly dispose of deer carcass waste, by locating a designated dumpster, transfer station or landfill location. Proper carcass disposal helps slow the spread of CWD, by removing potentially infected deer carcasses from the landscape.

The Wisconsin DNR began monitoring the state’s wild white-tailed deer population for CWD in 1999. The first positives were found in 2002.