CARTHAGE, Mo. — The Missouri Department of Conservation is hosting mandatory Chronic Wasting Disease sampling stations in several counties across the Show Me State as part of opening weekend for firearm deer season.
One of those being Jasper County, where officials say they are collecting deer lymph nodes, brought in from local hunters as part of a continued search for CWD.
According to the MDC, CWD is a deadly and infectious disease in deer and other members of the deer family that eventually kills them and has no cure.
Jasper County has been recently added to the list of testing due to a positive case found in Barton County, just last year.
With well over 1 million deer in Missouri, officials say, it’s important to get harvested deer checked.
“Wildlife are owned by the people here in Missouri. So this is their they’re animals and we want them to be healthy. And, you know, there’s been a long heritage and a long family tradition of hunting in the four state area. So it’s very important for them to have a healthy deer population to get out and enjoy for the future of hunting,” said Kevin Badgley, MDC Shoal Education Center Manager.
MDC officials tell us, the two-day sampling site in Jasper County is expected to see over 8-hundred deer by the time it wraps up, and expects well over 20,000 samples collected across the state of Missouri.
The results will be available in about 2 weeks and hunters will be contacted only if there is a positive result.
