CWD Sampling Continues In Eastern WA As Late Rifle Buck Hunt Wraps Up

With the sampling year not even half over, Washington wildlife managers report collecting samples from more than 1,500 deer, elk and moose for chronic wasting disease testing since July 1, nearly twice as many as the entire previous surveillance period.

More than two-thirds of those have come from hunter-harvested animals, and one from last month’s opening weekend of rifle season led to the confirmation of the second case of the always fatal deer family disease in a Spokane County whitetail buck late last week.

Overall, WDFW says that 1,187 samples have been collected from hunters’ kills this season, including 119 at check stations last Saturday and Sunday during the final weekend of the late rifle whitetail buck season in Northeast Washington. That latter figure is up from 2023’s 106.

While it might also signal a rebuilding whitetail herd, earlier this year, WDFW instituted new testing requirements in their “initial response area,” or IRA, encompassing Game Management Units 124 (Mount Spokane) – where CWD was first confirmed in a dead whitetail doe – and neighboring GMUs 127 (Mica Peak) and 130 (Cheney). WDFW spokeswoman Staci Lehman in Spokane said 690 samples have been collected from hunter kills in the IRA so far, including 395 from GMU 124, 156 from GMU 127 and 139 samples from GMU 130.

By comparison, at this same time in 2023, 423 hunter-harvested animals had been sampled by WDFW, which was up from 314 in 2022.

So far this surveillance year, which began July 1, WDFW has collected 1,505 samples from the IRA, units elsewhere in Eastern Washington, roadkills and other sources. Between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024, 796 samples were taken, with 766 of those being testable.

Samples are comprised of the retropharyngeal lymph nodes, located between the spine and windpipe of cervids. The nodes are sent to the Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory at Washington State University in Pullman for testing. Turnaround time is about four weeks when there are a lot of samples to process, but it was five months between the time a sample from the first CWD deer was collected last February and testing in July due to the need to run 90-sample batches.

The idea behind all the sampling and testing is to detect CWD outbreaks early to help contain or at least slow the disease from spreading further into Washington, and sportsmen are a key part of that effort. Per Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks, should enough deer become infected, population declines are likely, with Wyoming seeing 21 percent annual declines in heavily infected mule deer herds, 10 percent in whitetails.

Even as the popular late rifle hunt wrapped up in Stevens, Pend Oreille and Spokane Counties yesterday, sampling will continue as other deer and elk hunts continue into next month.

“We still have the late archery and muzzleloader seasons that continue into December, so will continue to get samples for a little while besides from roadkills and people reporting sick or dead animals,” notes Lehman.

CWD is caused by a malformed prion that causes neurological problems that always lead to death of an infected animal. It can be passed to other deer through contact with bodily fluids such as snot, saliva, blood, pee and poop, or through the dumping of infected carcasses or parts, thus new WDFW carcass transportation rules for deer, elk and moose taken in 100-series units.

New research suggests that CWD may not be transmissible to people, but the standing advice is to not eat the meat of an infected animal and to take precautions while processing any that you kill.

For more on the disease, Washington collection stations, how to submit samples, other CWD rules, and more, see this WDFW page.