MADISON, Wis. – The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) confirms a wild deer tested positive for chronic wasting disease (CWD) in Winnebago County in the town of Nepeuskun. This positive is also within 10 miles of the Waushara County, Green Lake County and Fond du Lac County borders.
The deer was a three-year-old doe, reported sick and dispatched by the local sheriff’s department, and is the first confirmed wild deer CWD-positive detected in Winnebago County.
The DNR and the Winnebago County Deer Advisory Council will be hosting a public meeting on Tuesday, April 25, 2023, from 6-8 p.m. DNR staff will provide information about CWD in Wisconsin, local CWD testing efforts and disease surveillance options being considered. The meeting will be held at:
Omro Town Hall
4205 Rivermoor Rd
Omro, WI 54963
As required by state law, the DNR enacts a three-year baiting and feeding ban in counties where CWD has been detected and a two-year ban in adjoining counties that lie within 10 miles of a CWD detection.
This recent detection of CWD in Winnebago County will renew a three-year baiting and feeding ban in the county, as well as renew a two-year baiting and feeding ban in Waushara County, Green Lake County and Fond du Lac County.
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.
More information regarding baiting and feeding regulations is available on the DNR webpage.
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 Wisconsin DNR began monitoring the state’s wild white-tailed deer population for CWD in 1999. The first positives were found in 2002.
More general information about CWD can be found on the DNR’s CWD webpage