The Missouri Department of Conservation has concluded its 2016-2017 sampling and testing to find chronic wasting disease (CWD) in free-ranging deer.
MDC tested more than 25,500 deer during the season in its CWD Management Zone, with the cooperation and support from hunters, private landowners, and taxidermists.
It found nine cases of the deadly disease: one in Adair, three in Franklin, one in Jefferson, two in Macon, and two in Saint Clair counties.
The management zone also includes Linn, Livingston, and Putnam counties.
MDC will expand its management zone from 29 counties to 41 counties in the fall, due to the detection of CWD in hundreds of deer in northwest Arkansas near the Missouri border.
MDC plans to have mandatory CWD sampling during the opening weekend of the fall firearms deer season November 11th and 12th.
Hunters harvesting deer in the mandatory sampling counties those days will need to present their harvests at an MDC sampling station.
Those sampling counties will not include Livingston.
MDC will also offer voluntary CWD sampling opportunities throughout the 2017-2018 deer hunting season at participating taxidermists and designated MDC offices.
A map of the mandatory CWD sampling counties and sampling stations will be available online this fall on the MDC website and printed in MDC’s “Fall Deer and Turkey Hunting Regulations and Information” booklet.
This year’s findings bring the total number of free-ranging deer in the state confirmed to have CWD to 42.
MDC has sampled more than 77,000 deer for the disease since it began testing in 2001.
