Searching for fatal disease, Game and Fish pleads for deer samples

Posted 11/7/19

There were so many Game and Fish hunter check stations running on Monday that Corey Class had to go looking for a traffic sign before he could open his post on the east side of Lovell.

Class is …

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Searching for fatal disease, Game and Fish pleads for deer samples

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There were so many Game and Fish hunter check stations running on Monday that Corey Class had to go looking for a traffic sign before he could open his post on the east side of Lovell.

Class is the wildlife management coordinator for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department in the Big Horn Basin. He and every available hand are working to get samples from harvested deer in their search for chronic wasting disease (CWD). The department is running as many as seven check stations in the basin in a desperate attempt to track the fatal ungulate disease.

“With this new CWD effort, certainly we have more check stations this year than we’ve had in a long time,” Class said. “To be successful, we absolutely need help from hunters.”

The department is prioritizing 2-year-old or older mule deer bucks. They still want samples from does, and even white-tailed deer are on their sample list, he said. But business at Powell-area stations is slow. That’s despite multiple efforts to educate area hunters on the need to test their deer — including a partnership with Northwest College that makes it much easier to have deer tested in town.

Despite the extra outreach, the department hasn’t had enough samples to figure out the disease’s prevalence in the Powell area.

“CWD sampling in these focus areas is very important for our management in understanding how the disease is moving across hunt areas and within herd units,” he said, adding, “There’s certain things we absolutely need the public’s help on, and these samples are one of them. We absolutely need the public’s help to be successful. That partnership between us and hunters is always critical, but even more so it’s paramount for this CWD effort.”

The Game and Fish is trying to get a better picture of CWD in hunt areas 121, 122 and 123, Class said.

In Hunt Area 164, southwest of Ten Sleep, prevalence of the disease runs as high as 40 to 50 percent, Class said.

“Prevalence in the Basin has been increasing over the past decade,” he said, “and it’s moving north.”

Department biologists found CWD in Hunt Area 47 — immediately north of 164 — for the first time last year.

The department released an interim report from the Chronic Wasting Disease Collaborative Process in October. The executive summary from the working group’s introduction is ominous.

“Chronic wasting disease is a classic ‘wicked’ situation: extremely contentious and extremely complex,” said the report. “The Wyoming Game and Fish Commission communicated its desire that the agency reduce the prevalence of CWD in Wyoming’s wildlife herds. However, the presence of CWD in Wyoming’s ungulate herds may require big changes (e.g. modifying harvest structures), which might conflict with public interests.”

The group, facilitated by the University of Wyoming’s Ruckelshaus Institute, has scheduled additional public meetings in December. The closest to Powell is scheduled at the Worland Community Center Complex on Tuesday, Dec. 3, at 6 p.m.

After the public meetings, the group will meet once more before a final report is issued to Game and Fish commissioners in the spring. The preliminary report by a 32-person working group warns in part that, “CWD could have cascading ecosystem effects on our landscapes and result in loss of wildlife. … This disease could reduce the potential for hunting for future generations.”

That’s why the Game and Fish sees it as critical to collect samples from deer harvested in the Powell area.

“One of the tough parts is, no matter how many places we put out check stations, a lot of hunters out here are local and they take [their deer] home, missing the stations,” Class said. “It’s tough for us to have a station near everybody’s house — especially for those who harvest deer on their own property.”

If hunters don’t pass a check station, they can contact the Game and Fish, which will “line them up with somebody who can take a sample for them,” Class said.

To schedule a sample removal at NWC, hunters can call 307-754-6018.

Class added that it isn’t all bad news for the area’s mule deer herds.

“We feel like were seeing quite a few fawns this year. It’s pretty encouraging,” he said. “If we can get a mild winter, we might get a population increase for the first time in five years.”

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