Jim Zerfas is going deer hunting. He isn’t happy about chronic wasting disease showing up in Illinois, but he isn’t shelving either his bow or his shotgun. He plans to pursue deer with bow and arrow–for the third time this fall–on the weekend, and with his gun later in November.
“It’s a shame that it’s gotten to Illinois,” said the Elk Grove Village resident, responding to last week’s announcement by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources that a deer in Winnebago County, near the Wisconsin line, tested positive for the neurological illness.
“I’m a little surprised,” Zerfas said. “I thought it would take another year or so, maybe three or four more years.”
But there should be little astonishment that CWD has made its first inroad into Illinois. Once Wisconsin revealed earlier this year that the fatal brain condition had invaded its herd, it was only logical to believe that the disease would spread here.
Although inevitable, it was still sad news to hear that a landowner just east of Roscoe, only a few miles south of Wisconsin, saw a doe exhibiting classic signs of wasting disease Oct. 23, and shot it. Laboratory tests indicated the deer had the disease.
We all hoped CWD would not surface in Illinois for some time. But we don’t know how it got here. We don’t know how the deer got to Roscoe either.
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As DNR spokesman Tim Schweizer put it: “They don’t carry papers. It’s unfortunate that we found it, but there’s no evidence where it came from.”
The landowner who killed the deer saw it acting suspiciously and was fearful it would interact with his sheep, according to department spokeswoman Carol Knowles.
The agency has asked everyone in the woods to report signs of deer acting erratically.
Chronic wasting disease has been known to scientists for about 35 years, but its spread to the Midwest is recent. Deer afflicted with the disease become emaciated, walk unsteadily and salivate excessively before death. There is no documented case of the disease being transmitted to humans.
The state took samplings of deer killed for five years, always with negative results. Last year, said Paul Shelton, program manager for forest wildlife, the department tested 260 animals. Before this positive result came back, Shelton said the agency planned to step up the program and test 3,500 deer this year.
He said the increased effort was directly attributable to the presence of the disease in Wisconsin, where officials plan to shoot 25,000 deer in hopes of eradicating CWD in their state.
In recent months, Illinois officials have issued guidelines governing the state’s 750,000 deer. Reminders urged hunters not to eat the deer’s brain and spinal cord, typically not consumed anyway, and to use gloves in handling and cooking venison.
On July 30, an emergency rule banned the importation of hunter-harvested deer and elk carcasses, except for boned meat, antlers attached to skull caps, hides, upper canine teeth and complete taxidermist mounts. Skull caps must be cleaned of brain and muscle tissue.
Department officials are trying to calm hunters.
“Don’t panic,” Knowles said.
DNR director Brent Manning said he will hunt this fall and eat any venison he harvests.
Could this be an isolated case, a solo Wisconsin deer with wanderlust? Manning considers it unlikely. The disease seems to be highly contagious among deer. Yet it is too early to suggest that Illinois is suffering an epidemic.
Illinois has been prudently proactive in its approach to CWD over the years, so it was not caught off guard by the arrival of the illness within state lines, and already had a testing system in place to rev up. Before the Roscoe deer was discovered, officials planned to test 250 deer each in Winnebago, Stevenson and Jo Daviess Counties, Schweizer said, and 65 deer in each of 33 other Illinois counties. Now, Schweizer said, any hunter who bags a deer in Winnebago County can have it tested.
Manning said the timing of the discovery might be helpful, since so many hunters will be in the field.
Manning isn’t the only Illinois hunter who still hopes to have deer meat on the dinner table this fall. Schweizer said he has spoken to a number of hunters and none said they are canceling hunts.
Zerfas, the Elk Grove hunter, is among them.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “But it will make me a lot more aware of my game.”
Hunter awareness is precisely what IDNR is after.