New zones are likely in deer disease fight Expanded hunting seen in Walworth, Kenosha counties

By LEE BERGQUIST [email protected]

Posted: Jan. 9, 2004

Special hunting zones to fight chronic wasting disease and reduce the deer population are likely to be created later this year in parts of Kenosha and Walworth counties, a state Department of Natural Resources official said Friday.

Chronic Wasting Disease The first-ever finding of the disease in Kenosha County this week will complicate the state's efforts to control the disease, said Tom Hauge, director of the DNR's Bureau of Wildlife Management.

And Hauge said it could take a decade or more to wipe out the fatal disease that was first discovered almost two years ago in Dane County, and now extends some 130 miles, from Paddock Lake to Richland County.

Wisconsin is still in the early stages of its battle with the disease, he said. Michigan's outbreak of tuberculosis in the wild deer herd began in 1994, and officials there are still fighting TB, Hauge said.

"This is not going to be a quick fix," he said.

Creating zones will give the DNR more tools to reduce the deer population in a diseased area. Soon after Wisconsin in February 2002 became the first state east of the Mississippi River to have deer afflicted with the disease, authorities arrived at a deer-reduction strategy as the best way to fight the problem.

It's not clear by how much the DNR wants to reduce the deer population in Kenosha and Walworth counties.

Two zones west of Madison - where the disease first surfaced - are already in place. In one, the goal is to cut the deer population by about half; in the other the goal is as close to zero as possible.

Creating zones in Kenosha and Walworth counties would allow consideration of such options as lengthening the deer season, allowing landowners to kill as many deer as they want and requiring hunters to shoot a doe before earning the right to shoot a buck.

Before a decision by the seven-member Natural Resources Board is made, the DNR will hold public meetings. A decision is not likely to be made until April, Hauge said.

"I would be very surprised if they didn't do something," said Sen. Neal Kedzie (R-Elkhorn), chairman of the Senate Environmental Resources Committee.

"Like it or not, we are going to have to deal with this disease."

David Ladd of Dodgeville, chairman of the Big Game Committee of the Wisconsin Conservation Congress, which advises the DNR on hunting and fishing matters, said the agency has done a good job so far.

"But it sure screws up deer hunting when they keep hammering us with these long seasons," Ladd said.

"I have concerns about a single deer here and there, and I hope they don't get down to a strategy of trying to get the deer population down to zero on those places, too."

Two distinct disease areas The finding of the positive deer near Paddock Lake means that chronic wasting disease is ranging across a broad swath of southern Wisconsin.

Hauge said it was "disturbing" to learn about Kenosha County, but he said most of Wisconsin shows no sign of this disease. Two years of tests have not yet found infected deer in the northern two-thirds of the state.

Thus far, the testing of 53,493 deer has produced 269 positives, according to state figures.

And rather than viewing chronic wasting disease as one vast problem, Hauge said the DNR sees Wisconsin as having two distinct areas of infection.

"It is not a continuous ribbon of CWD," Hauge said. "It does appear to look as if two different things are going on."

The first area, which began near Mount Horeb, covers parts of Dane, Iowa, Sauk, Richland, Grant and Green counties. The disease appears to be centered in western Dane and eastern Iowa counties and spreads outward, Hauge said. A total of 263 positive deer have been found in that area since early 2002.

Then, there are large blocks of land with no cases of chronic wasting disease, Hauge said.

The second area of infection covers parts of Walworth, Rock, and now, Kenosha counties.

The picture there is less clear. So far, only seven deer have tested positive, including four cases in Rock County and a deer that escaped from a Walworth County game farm for six months that the DNR does not officially count.

More than 800 deer have been tested in Rock County, but far fewer have been tested in Kenosha and Walworth counties, so Hauge said more deer must be tested to get a more accurate reading. For now, officials are only beginning to understand the extent of the problem.

The DNR is lumping three northern Illinois border counties into the area. Winnebago, Boone and McHenry counties in Illinois have reported 29 positive cases of chronic wasting disease, and Hauge believes those cases could be related to Wisconsin.

Illinois authorities are taking steps to reduce the deer population along the border, but officials there have said the state is not taking as aggressive a tack as Wisconsin.

Hauge noted that Illinois lacks as ardent a deer hunting culture as Wisconsin, and authorities had time on their side.

"We had a really monumental, emotional start to CWD in Wisconsin, and they had the benefit of watching from the sidelines and starting with a low-key rollout," Hauge said.