Washington CWD Sampling Stations See More Traffic On Rifle Deer Opener
The number of harvested big game animals checked at far Eastern Washington chronic wasting disease sampling stations on opening weekend of the state’s general rifle deer season continues to rise, according to stats released by WDFW today.
“We collected 181 samples this weekend during the modern firearm opener at 10 check stations throughout Region 1,” reports spokeswoman Staci Lehman in Spokane.
On 2023’s opener, 105 samples were taken, up from 95 in 2022, when WDFW began boosting efforts to test for the always-fatal deer family disease following discovery of an outbreak in Idaho’s lower Salmon River country in fall 2021.
Whether it’s a function of increased awareness about CWD with this summer’s confirmation of the disease in a dead Spokane whitetail and the importance of testing to determine the scope of the problem or improved hunting conditions, or both, is hard to say, but it would be a step in the right direction on both fronts.
Pics of a lot of nice bucks are popping up on social media following the weekend.
Lehman reports 41 animals sampled in WDFW’s District 1, Northeast Washington; 39 from District 2, the Palouse and Channelled Scablands, and 83 from District 3, the Blue Mountains and foothills.
Another 18 came from game management units in Region 2 adjacent to Region 1.
Sampling involves removing the retropharyngeal lymph nodes from the base of the skull near the spine and windpipe. The nodes concentrate the malformed prions that cause CWD. Hunters can dig them out themselves or take their harvest’s head and 3 inches of neck to check stations or set up an appointment with WDFW.
“Species collected included 95 mule deer, 78 white-tailed deer, 5 elk, and 3 moose,” Lehman says of opening weekend results. “Other species harvested including turkeys, ducks, and cougars were also checked.”
The arrival of CWD in Washington, while always expected, has brought with it a number of new rules that may take awhile to fully sink in with hunters, especially one that bars taking whole carcasses from any 100-series game management unit to other parts of the state.
“They can only legally export meat that has been deboned in a 100-series GMU; skulls and antlers (with velvet removed), antlers attached to the skull plate, or upper canine teeth (bugler, whistlers, ivories) from which all soft tissue has been removed; hides or capes without heads attached; tissue imported for use by a diagnostic or research laboratory; or finished taxidermy mounts,” says Lehman. “We had a few instances of people not being aware of that this weekend.”
It was only announced on August 23, just ahead of the start of archery season. WDFW crews spent time in September putting up flyers on those new rules in “all the outhouses in the Tucannon Valley,” as well as elsewhere on the northern flanks of the Blue Mountains, according to a Wildlife Program weekly report.
Other new rules require all deer, elk and moose taken in GMUs 124, 127 and 130 – Mount Spokane, Mica Peak and Cheney – to be tested for CWD. The use of scents that contain or are derived from cervids – the deer family – and feeding game in the same units was also banned.
For more on WDFW’s CWD rules and response, including the locations of sampling stations, and more, see this web page.
Lehman says that so far for the “surveillance year,” which began July 1, WDFW has collected 520 samples, of which 333 were from harvested big game and 144 from roadkills.
‘We collected 101 samples from GMU 124 where we detected CWD. CWD has not been detected in any of the samples tested so far by the lab, which is 118,” she adds.
Rifle deer season continues through October 22 for mule deer in all of Eastern Washington and for whitetails everywhere but in eight northeast corner GMUs, where it continues through October 25. In Western Washington, blacktails are open through Halloween. There are late hunts in November as well.
Where opening weekend was sunny and warm with highs in the 60s and 70s across much of the state, weather conditions are expected to shift abruptly in the coming days, with rain and wind expected and a chance of snow at higher elevations on Wednesday and Thursday.
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