CWD Confirmed in Two More Marathon County Deer

Thursday, February 16th, 2023 -- 12:00 PM

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) confirms two new chronic wasting disease (CWD) positive detections in wild deer in Marathon County.

These two CWD positive test results are from a 2-year-old hunter-harvested doe during the gun deer season in the Town of Ringle, and a 4/5-year-old hunter-harvested doe during the December antlerless deer season in the Town of Elderon. The first CWD positive wild deer in Marathon County was detected in 2019.

The department will provide more information about the recent CWD-positive detections in Marathon County, local CWD testing efforts and disease surveillance options for the fall deer hunting season during the annual County Deer Advisory Council meeting this spring.

State law requires the DNR to enact a ban on the baiting and feeding of deer throughout the county and any additional counties that are within 10 miles of a CWD positive farm-raised or wild deer detection. Following state law, the DNR has renewed a three-year baiting and feeding ban in Marathon 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 indirectly by leaving behind infectious prions in their saliva, urine, blood and feces.

More information regarding baiting and feeding regulations and CWD in Wisconsin is available here. 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 DNR began monitoring the state's wild white-tailed deer population for CWD in 1999. The first positives were found in 2002.

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