Lone Star Outdoor News
By on in Texas Hunting
Nearly 300 tissue samples were collected from hunter harvested deer and elk from the Trans Pecos ecoregion during the 2013-14 season to test for Chronic Wasting Disease.
Over the last two hunting seasons upwards of 600 deer and elk have been tested for CWD, thanks to the cooperation of hunters and landowners who have participated in the state’s hunter check stations.
“Undoubtedly without the hunter check stations, and hunter and landowner participation, we would know very little about the prevalence of the disease or where it exists,” said Mitch Lockwood, Big Game Program Director with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
To date, 617 deer and elk have been tested through the CWD check stations and strategic sampling that occurred during the summer of 2012; 215 were in the Containment Zone, 172 were in the adjacent High Risk Zone, 57 were in the Buffer Zone, and 173 were outside of the CWD zones. Forty five of the samples tested from the Containment Zone were from deer harvested in the Hueco Mountains.
“Additional sampling is necessary to develop more confidence in the geographic extent and prevalence of the disease, but the fact that CWD has not been detected in Texas outside of the Hueco Mountains of northern El Paso and Hudspeth counties is encouraging,” said Lockwood.