Pennsylvania Game News - August 2019 - 9

rates in the "Southern Farmlands" region
stayed at 1 percent from 2002 through
2006, with the DNR averaging 25,858
CWD tests annually.
After lawmakers slashed CWD funding in 2007, the agency tested only 7,192
deer in the Southern Farmlands. CWD
prevalence in the region rose to 2 percent
in 2007 and 3 percent in 2010.
In November 2010, with help from
"Sportsmen for Walker" groups opposing
CWD management, Wisconsin elected
Scott Walker governor. Walker told audiences he was tired of sitting in a stand
without seeing deer, and promised to
appoint a "deer trustee" to evaluate the
DNR's deer program.
Walker never hunted until eyeing the
governor's race at age 40 in 2007, but
bought deer licenses every year from then
through 2017. He never registered a deer.
Nor did he urge hunters to test their deer
for CWD during his eight years in office.
His administration slashed CWD funding
to an average of $1.14 million annually
from 2012 through 2018, basically half
of its $2.21 million average from 2008
through 2011, and a quarter of its $4.8
million average from 2004 through 2007.
In 2011, the Legislature outlawed earna-buck. In 2012, Gov. Walker appointed
James Kroll, of Texas, as the state's "deer
czar." By 2014, at Kroll's recommendation, the governor's DNR appointees
imposed a "passive approach" to CWD.

RATES ESCALATE
Meanwhile, CWD only worsened.
In 2014, Dane, Iowa, Sauk, Rock and
Richland counties generated 312 CWD
cases from 2,926 hunter-killed deer, a
10.6 percent infection rate. Those counties in 2018 generated 899 CWD cases
AUGUST 2019

from 5,024 hunter-killed deer, a 17.9
percent rate.
CWD prevalence is worst from southcentral Iowa County northward to southwestern Sauk County and southeastern
Richland County. Rates in adult bucks
(age 2½ and older) in that area vary from
43 to 56 percent, while rates in adult
females vary from 23 to 35 percent.
Prevalence charts on the DNR's CWD
website illustrate the increases. They also
show disease rates flat or slightly rising
from 2002 through 2006 - as Batha and
Bates note - then escalating through 2017.
Data for 2018 aren't available.
Behind all those numbers are hunters
and their families.
Wade Anding, of Milwaukee, owns
and hunts land in Iowa County, and feels
beaten. All three bucks his group shot in
2017 and 2018 had CWD. One was so
emaciated its hair was falling out, and
Anding could put one hand around its
neck.
"This is the future of deer hunting in
Iowa County and western Dane County,"
Anding said.
Likewise, Tyson Hall, 36, of Cross
Plains, Wisconsin, killed three bucks the
past two years; two in Richland County
and one in Iowa County. All three carried
CWD.When his bucks tested positive for
CWD, he gave the venison to a friend
to use as cat food. "I won't eat it, and I
definitely won't feed it to my baby boy,"
Hall said. "With a possible 30- to 40-year
incubation period for the disease, it's not
worth the risk."
Doug Duren, 61, of Cazenovia, helped
increase CWD monitoring by providing a self-serve kiosk and dumpster for
carcasses on his family's farm. He said
hunters left at least 50 CWD samples at
his kiosk, and dumped over 175 boned9

Pennsylvania Game News - August 2019

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