Waupaca County now has baiting, feeding ban

The discovery of chronic wasting disease in a wild deer in Shawano County has caused the state Department of Natural Resources to enact baiting and feeding bans in Waupaca and Shawano counties.

The DNR has confirmed a deer tested positive for CWD in the town of Germania in southwestern Shawano County. The location, near Tigerton, is within 10 miles of Waupaca County.

State law requires the DNR to enact a ban on the baiting and feeding of deer in counties or portions of counties within a 10-mile radius of a wild or farm-raised deer that tests positive for CWD.

Baiting and feeding were already banned in Shawano County due to a prior CWD positive detection in a farm-raised facility in 2017.

The CWD-positive deer is an adult doe harvested during the 2020 gun deer season and tested as part of the DNR’s disease surveillance efforts. This is the first wild deer detection in Shawano County.

The DNR will continue surveillance near the detection location.

CWD is a fatal, infectious nervous system disease of deer, moose, elk and reindeer. The DNR began monitoring the state’s wild white-tailed deer population for CWD in 1999 and the first CWD-positive deer showed up in 2002.