Welcome to the Arkansas Wildlife Podcast, the official podcast of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.

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It's Arkansas wildlife.

The podcast for all things outdoors in the natural state.

Welcome to the Arkansas Wildlife Podcast.

I'm your host, Trey Reed, and joined today by a couple of our colleagues from our research.

And what is the new name of our of your division called Conservation Support, research and conservation Support.

Corey Graves, chief of that division.

And AJ Riggs is our wildlife health biologist.

And, we're going to be talking about a pretty important topic today, something that we've been dealing with in Arkansas for a little over a decade now, and that's chronic wasting disease, initially detected in early 2016 up in Newton County.

And, really has been that's the core area, Newton County, Searcy County, Boone County, that that area there.

But it has been detected in other counties, including a couple new counties this year, Grant and severe Grant County, obviously in the in the heart of, south Arkansas's, high density deer population, a lot of deer hunting going on down there.

So we want to, kind of revisit this topic to let our hunters know what's going on, resources at their disposal and, where we are as an agency in managing chronic wasting disease in our dear heart.

So, first of all, thank you all for being here.

Yeah.

Thanks for the invite.

I guess let's start.

We recently wrapped up a pretty extensive essay.

Pretty an extremely thorough research project up in Newton and Searcy counties.

Contracted the University of Georgia to come in for five years.

Look at what the means to that deer herd up there, especially where we have those really high prevalence rate.

Almost 1 in 4 deer we found up there, are infected with CW d. So, Corey, starting with you, what do you what what did we learn from that?

Yeah, it was the largest project our agency has ever tackled.

And it began in 2020 and it ended in 2025.

And we did partner with the University of Georgia at Athens, the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study, and Colorado State University.

So it was a multi-year, multifaceted approach, a lot of horsepower behind this project.

And, basically, the long story short is there's that can cause population declines.

We're seeing that in Newton County.

We have pockets in Newton County that the deer density is 1.5 deer per square mile.

So put that in context.

That's 640 acres.

And you got a deer and a half.

Wow.

In that I mean that's a non Hannibal population.

But that's what we're seeing in that urban area.

And we're also see one of the conclusions is that deer do die of, approximately 34% of our study deer, which is over 400, died of nothing but CW alone.

So we may had a deer.

When we captured that animal, we we pulled a, sample from the animal.

So we knew whether or not that animal was positive or not.

And if we had a mortality event, we had collars on these animals.

We had radio telemetry, GPS telemetry.

But if that animal died and we and it had CD, but it maybe died of a vehicle collision, then we didn't put it in the bucket, we put it in the vehicle collision bucket or it was predated.

You know, coyotes took a lot of our phones, but, if we could not find anything else, the lab could not make any kind of other disease diagnosis.

We put that animal in a seaweed bucket.

Only and 34% of our mortality events was in that seat of the only.

I think something important to point out there is that, anybody that's dealt with seaweed or observed deer that that it affects their behavior and TWD definitely could contribute to some of those other causes of mortality.

But what you're saying, and unless it was just seaweed, not not a collision, not maybe he slow or she slow because of because of the disease and then it more susceptible to predation or something.

Yeah.

That still didn't count I didn't count okay.

That didn't count.

Like if that deer had pneumonia, if that deer had hemorrhagic disease, if that deer had some kind of an abscess to deer had anything else, then they put it in that other bucket.

So removing all those other causes of mortality, 1 in 3 deer in that area down from CWG in the study area.

That's right.

That's pretty significant.

That is significant.

So our population there we look at it's called lambda.

But you want a 1.01.0 says that your population is stable.

And it gives us an idea to project forward.

And our lambda up there in that area, Newton in Searcy County is 0.86.

So it means we're losing 14% of our deer herd annually in that, in that, in that study area.

And so we have to stop that.

And one of the things that came out of this study is that we need to protect an additional 20% of our females, because if you want to grow a population, you got to protect more females.

Sure.

You know, deer management is not rocket science, right?

I wish it was because I was nearby for long, but, it's mostly mouth management is the number of mouse on the landscape and the number of boys and girls and the age structure, and that's all you're really focused on.

So we had to protect additional 20% of females in that area to get the population stable.

Right.

Just not where the bleeding all starts to stop the decline.

That's right.

And so you'll see a different bag limit this year in Deer Zone two.

Yeah.

What's going to ask you what what are the what are the ramifications that we just went through a regulations process in the, in the spring.

And so new deer regulations in that area up there.

What are those.

So hunters will notice a more conservative bag limit for deer zone too.

Especially with the firearm bag limit.

We, actually have like, doe days now for our modern gun.

And all that is because we're trying to stop the bleeding.

We're trying to get that population stabilized to growing again.

And, and it's always a result of this five year study.

Any other, you know, big findings out of that that are notable to to talk about here before we move into like kind of some of our other management strategies statewide, there are some, interesting things that we found, you know, that, one of the things is that a female doe, whether she's positive or negative, will still have fawns.

And it's it's interesting in that their survival of those fawns is the same, pretty consistent.

And it's like the female, she may be in such a horrible condition.

Her body is is that's horrible due to this disease.

But her mothering instinct is still strong in that she is up to her last day.

She's going to protect that fawn, and she may get to where her body could not, weighing the fawn or produce enough milk, but she still was the mother that she needed to be, and we thought the opposite.

For years.

We thought that maybe that a positive doe could not be the mother she needed to be, and therefore that affected fawn survival.

We did not see the difference.

We also saw, because we monitor these fawns, we actually put, devices inside the female that when the fetus was born, we knew immediately and our researchers went out on the ground like, yeah, that sends a signal out, and they go find that we were we can catch the phone right here by within an hour.

We were looking at the phone, and so we were able to put, GPS collars on fawns and transmit our tracked fawns, coyotes.

A lot of our phones, we knew that going in.

We have about a 30% survival rate on fawns.

That's consistent with the South.

You know, I don't know what a southern state would do if we had, fawn survival up in the 90% deer run, and we.

We'd have more deer and we needed probably, you know, that's how that the biology of those animals is they flood the system and.

But 30% of them are olive.

Yeah.

You're going to lose about 70% of them.

Was that the most surprising thing to you as a former deer biologist and guys kept up with deer for a long time, or was there anything else?

Yeah, I think just the overall impact of this disease, which was staggering to people that it can't this disease does have an impact when you have a high prevalence and we're talking 50% plus prevalence.

So 65% of our adult males up there are positive.

And so when you have that amount of seed on the landscape and it's that prevalent in a population, we are seeing population declines, survivability.

You just don't survive.

You life is already hard.

It's even harder when you have a fatal neurological disease.

I should probably take a moment here.

If you're unfamiliar with sort of the background of chronic wasting disease, we don't have time to dive into all of that here.

So I would encourage you to check out Ofcom's.

There are a lot of great resources across the internet where you can learn more about this disease, how it started, what it means.

Some other research projects are around the country.

So, I would encourage you to avail yourselves of of that.

Again, Ofcom's for a lot of information, a lot of things we're going to cover today.

You can get a little bit more detail there.

Let's move outside of that, that, area where we first detected it.

Where else is it now?

And what is the I mean, we don't see the higher prevalence rates like that once you get outside of that area, correct?

Yeah.

That's correct.

And, you know, AJ and the team has developed a very strong surveillance program.

And it's just like with a, you know, with an illness that we we get a human illness, we want to detect it early.

That's why our doctors encourage us to do our annual checkup because they want they want to scan you for something early.

And that's the same way with this disease, is we want to find it early.

And, so they've developed AJ and, Doctor Chris model and, Doctor Catherine Love.

Our wildlife health team has designed a very strong surveillance, program so we can detect that disease at a early level.

And, and so that's what's why we're able to find these other samples, like in Grant County and Severe County.

Is that our.

That's our tribute to our surveillance program.

AJ, what what what is that?

Surveillance.

And I know that it's probably there's a lot to it.

But but what does it look like in general terms in simple term.

We know, for white males that the disease is more susceptible in box than it is in dose.

And so, that allows to us to, develop, surveillance point system and, that and several other factors, that was very specifically tailored to the, Arkansas through the USDA was, research projects.

And so we have developed specific point systems for each county that we strive to reach every year.

And that allows us to, know that we're, surveilling those counties at a certain level and confidence as to, if the disease is there or not there.

What what is the, you know, practically what does the testing like, look like?

I mean, because, I mean, we we it's largely voluntary, right?

There's nothing mandatory.

Hunters don't have to give us a sample from their deer to be tested, but they can if they want to.

And it doesn't cost anything.

Correct.

Yeah.

There's one caveat to that.

Elk testing is mandatory, but for whitetail.

So it is completely voluntary.

And the, the, the point that 98% of our population, of our samples collected every year, we normally get somewhere between 7500 and 9000 samples, 98% of those are hunter harvested samples.

So they're coming to us in some form or fashion wanting their animal tested.

And we provide that opportunity free, door to a whole bunch of avenues, in my opinion.

We have, a taxidermy network that, allows for, us to get our hands on those older age class males where the disease is more likely to be detected first.

And we also have a freezer network that where there's at least one freezer across in every county across the state.

And we still like over 100 of those.

There's 102 of those.

Okay.

Yeah.

I bet that keeps you kind of busy retiring deer season dies, and we provide all the information about the taxidermists and the freezers on our website that you've already mentioned.

There's an interactive map so you can find the one that's closest to you.

And then, at the bottom, there's a PDF in case your computer doesn't want to keep up with the interactive map.

Obviously, again, that information is available to AGF, MWD.

But tell us what what is 100 need to know if they're going to go out this deer season.

And they want that piece of mind to know that their animal is is not detected for CW.

D how do they do that?

Well, there's just having that piece of mind in general.

But there's also the recommendations from the Center of Disease Control and Prevention to have your deer tested.

If you're hunting in an area known to have CWG.

And so we've got the other part of the question.

Sorry.

No, I mean we'd like what is that.

Just like if a hunter wants to do that well walk us through what they do that if you're taxidermist is in a partnering taxidermist then the easiest thing to do is to utilize one of our freezers.

Most of them are available 24 hours a day.

Not all of them.

And all you do is show up at a freezer with the deer's head cut off.

4 to 6in of neck is preferred.

Antlers removed.

If it's a buck and you will put it in a bag that we provide and fill out a tag that we provide and use a zip tie to put all that together in our freezer.

Those freezers are checked, will say by monthly, and at the very least, and, those samples get submitted to a lab that's right here in Arkansas.

Our turnaround time is somewhere around 3 to 4 weeks.

It's for one Hunter drops that, drops that deer head off.

Within 3 or 4 weeks, we're going to contact them and say, well, the contacting isn't, isn't, direct unless it's a positive.

That's what I was getting that, you see my number on your phone, then it's probably because you have a positive, but, the there's a portal that's developed and there's information about that portal, where you check your deer at.

Okay.

So all the instructions you can find, again, ascomycetes at the freezers when you get the tag, there's actually a QR code at every freezer.

Okay.

Cashier.

So they have direct access to our website.

At that point, I'm asking kind of pointed specific questions about the testing, because we do have a couple of new counties, this year.

And as I alluded, one of those is Grant County, where we kill a lot of deer, you know, one of our probably top ten counties, I'm thinking probably every year.

I haven't looked lately, but I, it's typically.

I'm, I'm one of those more productive counties.

Would.

What is the main thing that people in grant and severe counties, those two newer counties, in the southern half of the state, what do they need to know going into this deer season?

Yeah.

You're right.

I mean, there's a mass migration of four wheelers and hunter orange and.

Yeah, it's the orange clad army I call them every year.

You know, I live in Monticello.

And, when I moved there, they said, you know, make sure you get your baloney and bread before deer season starts and milk and the right.

I mean, they'll buy at Walmart.

But in Grant County, and in all of our counties, we do have a carcass transportation law.

So they need to be mindful of that.

So an entire carcass cannot come out of that county.

You can bring in.

You can bring out of it cleaned, Debo meat cleaned antlers, clean skull plates, finished taxidermy products.

But basically the bone, the meat before it comes out of the county and leave all the remains back in the county, because we know this disease through science, can be transmitted through the carcass and infected carcass.

And so you don't want to, live in Prairie County and go hunt, hunting Grant County and then and unintentionally, unknowingly take a positive deer and take that whole animal and throw it out on your property.

You don't want to do that.

No more antler restrictions for the bucks.

So the three point rule has been removed.

Now if you're hunting club.

I was just meeting with the hunting club the other day.

They decided they still want to follow the three point rule and that's completely fine.

Do that.

But you don't have to anymore.

It's it's completely voluntary and I what's the rationale behind that strategy?

I mean, I already mentioned that bucks are seem to be more susceptible.

Is that why that is being implemented.

Yeah.

You know the three point rule was designed and it does a very good job of protecting yearling and getting those deer to be older.

Yeah.

Two and a half.

And we also know through our research at a yearling, male in Arkansas will travel about 10 to 11 miles.

That's what he does.

We know that through our GPS collars.

And so if that if that yearling male a year and a half old male is positive, he's going to carry that ten miles.

So this gives the opportunity for hunters to take those yearling males, and minimize that movement of the disease.

And that's what you try to do is you, you know, we have two big goals with management.

One is the flat line prevalence, stabilize that, but also contain it.

We don't want it to move.

And we know these yearling males can move it.

And so that was one of the ideas is don't protect those individuals that have the likelihood of moving the disease.

And then again, probably one of the biggest ones that I'm hearing about right now and it's, it I understand it.

Everybody's ox gets gaudy with this disease.

And this is one that that hits you in the tenders.

But you cannot bait, from unless it's from September the 1st to December 31st.

You can bait deer, but other than that, you cannot feed deer.

And so that's a big change for people, especially hunting in South Arkansas, is that now the corn cannot come out or whatever product you're putting out until September the 1st of December 31st.

And what again, give you an opportunity, Corey, to explain the rationale behind that.

Yeah, we know that, you know, baiting can congregate deer.

And, we know they're also social animals and they're going to groom each other and they can transmit it from dear to dear.

This disease does transmit that away.

And we understand that we cannot stop biology, but we can control things that we can control.

And one of them is minimizing the, the baiting and feeding.

And we also know from genetics that when you have a corn pile there, you're intermingling family groups.

So typically when you see a herd of out there that's aunts, sisters, nieces, they're all keen to each other.

But bait corn will bring different family groups together.

And so if one family group has a disease, it's more than likely other family groups will will contract it and leave with it.

So it's just that intermixing is what we're really trying to avoid.

And it's an artificial, human induced congregation of deer, whereas those family group interactions are not.

And I get, you know, Aiken production persimmon trees, I get they're all attractants, but they're not 365 over and over and over again.

And that's where the baiting and the artificial feeding really is risky to us.

And it's all about trying to minimize risk.

And I it seems to me like when this, baiting and feeding regulation, which went into effect in those affected counties in northwest Arkansas immediately, but it's still kind of new for some of those counties in South Arkansas where it was still allowed because before it was detected there.

But it it seemed like it's a up a pretty decent compromise.

It like it's not being totally taken away.

You could still do it to, to be, you know, potentially increase your hunting success during the season.

And that's what we want.

We want people to continue hunting.

We need deer removed, and we want hunters to do what hunters do.

And that's one of the thing about Arkansas hunters.

They are very efficient at removing animals.

I've never seen anything like it.

Like we all have.

You know what?

300,000, deer hunters, whatever that number is that we release on opening weekend with modern Guns, and they do some damage.

I mean, they can they can remove deer.

And so we want that.

We need that.

And so we want deer hunters to do what they do and continue hunting, continue removing deer, enjoy the deer.

We're going to help you do that, by providing free testing throughout the season.

But we want to make it as easy as we can for our hunters.

What is, you know, looking toward the future.

I mean, because that's what I mean.

Obviously as, as, biologists that are working with our species, I mean, we, we want people to hunt.

We want people to enjoy this resource.

It is literally our mission to to provide that opportunity as a game and fish commission, as a state agency.

What's the future look like?

I mean, I mean, it's a pretty, pretty, pretty disheartening, news.

It's good to know, like you said, what we learn from the research project up in north central northwest Arkansas.

But, it's kind of daunting.

I mean, when you're.

If we don't do something, if we don't protect those dogs, as you said we're doing in zone two, that that that populations ultimately, if we don't do anything, it it's going to go away.

I mean, so maybe an age like, maybe those were a little bit of a drastic term that I said there, but what, what what does the future hold?

I mean, I mean, at those high, parent prevalence rates, and the 50% that Corey quoted is, is not across the entire county, there are in isolated pockets.

So to take away some of that really bad news, but at the disease is naturally going to increase its apparent prevalence and then the population is going to crash, and then they're going to come down to a new normal.

If we don't do anything, it will come down to a new normal.

The the problem is, is that that new normal is not what hunters anticipate or won't out there.

And so what we're trying to do is catch the disease early so that it doesn't ever and slow the progression of the apparent prevalence rate so that it never gets to that tipping point or to that higher point.

And we see the population impacts.

Yeah.

Extinction is never been mentioned.

Yeah.

And I didn't mean to like say it like that.

But like I said it'll be the deer density to be lower than what you like.

And the age structure will be lower than what you like.

And, this is going to be hard to go out and kill a deer.

I mean, there's the bottom line, but, we're working on I mean, there's a lot of science happening and a lot of research happening, trying to solve this issue like it's it's a nationwide issue.

It's not just us for sure.

Right now.

I think there's 35 plus states in the nation that has this disease.

And you are seeing population declines in some other states.

It's not just us.

But there's a lot of effort right now going into trying to address it on the landscape.

And, there's work like, we're we're actually involved in a study on some environmental work, like, what can we do to the environment to help this disease?

For another tool in the toolbox is why, you know, to address it.

There's some genetic work, a lot of genetic work being done where we've actually participated in some of that, work.

And one of the first things we did was, work with the University of Arkansas to kind of look at some genetics.

And our dear here in Arkansas, we know a lot about the genetics here.

And, it's pretty cool when you look at what we know about a whitetail in Arkansas genetically.

And so there's, there's a lot of movement right now trying to address this issue.

What's what's the take home message for for our deer hunters out there?

You mentioned 300,000 people will hit the woods on the opening day of modern gun deer season.

That may be an underestimate, but, when you count all the kids that don't have to have licenses that are going to deer camp with with their families and everything, but what it's a big deal.

I mean, more people deer hunting Arkansas than anything else.

You know, we're the duck capital of the world, but there's still not as many duck hunters as there are deer hunter.

It is the it is, it is.

It is the thing that more people do than anything else.

So what's the take home message to them?

You just continue what you do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We want people to hang on, of course, because, you know, dear, dear, going to do two things.

They're going to eat and they're going to breed, I can promise you that.

And we've got to interrupt that breeding to keep that population at a level that we need that.

So we need hunters to do that interruption.

Right.

Sure.

So and that's with or without CW.

That's right.

I mean, they're they're just doing that.

So we want hunters go out and enjoy it.

We have some passionate people out there and they love it.

They love the resource just as we do.

And so we want them to continue hunting.

We want them to continue to enjoy the meat, the venison, but also be more alert.

So be be sensitive to what you're seeing off your deer stand.

And how are deer acting and what they look like.

We get all sorts of camera photos right now.

You know, there's all motion cameras in all there were.

But we want people to be more alert to this disease and be more mindful of this disease.

And even when it comes to practices of baiting a feeding or like, how can I do that safely to minimize my risk, I can still put corn on the landscape, but maybe do it in a whirly bird feeder instead of just piling it on the ground.

Or that's a strategy that's minimizing your risk.

And then get them tested.

We want to provide that service to you for free to have your peace of mind.

So go ahead and take advantage of that.

Free testing.

I think a testing now what is like $35 a piece.

Yeah.

So we're paying that for the hunters.

But to keep everybody in the stands is our main goal with this disease is just keep you engaged, keep you active and keep you enjoying the resource Well, thank you all, both for being here.

Thanks for the hard work you're doing on a, a difficult assignment.

No, no, no doubt about it.

And thanks to our hunter for, staying the course and getting out there and continuing the deer hunt.

That's all the time we've got for this episode of the Arkansas Wildlife Podcast.

Again, you can learn more about chronic wasting disease at ABC.com slash CW d. We'll talk to you next time.