The National Veterinary Service Laboratory reversed a previously positive test for chronic wasting disease on a white-tailed deer from the Kerr Wildlife Management Area research facility.
Texas Parks and Wildlife Department said in a Jan. 19 release that additional testing at their facility did not confirm a suspectpositive case of Chronic Wasting Disease in a 14-month-old captive male white-tailed deer at the research facility.
The determination came after TPWD staff killed all deer in the research facility prior to receiving confirmation from NVSL and collected post-mortem samples in November, which resulted in no additional detections.
The decision to kill the deer in the facility has come under question, as the department
has previously waited until confirmation of findings before requiring others, particularly deer breeders, to destroy their herds. Individuals who support the research told Lone Star Outdoor News the premature decision that TPWD said was made “in an abundance of caution” destroyed 40 years of ongoing research with no indication of when or how it can resume, a devastating result for the researchers.
The sample from the 14-month-old buck was collected in October during antemortem testing of all captive white-tailed deer as part of ongoing research at the Kerr WMA. Samples were submitted to the Texas A&M Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Lab, working in conjunction with the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Lab, to address an influx of sample submissions in a timely fashion. The sample was processed by WVDL, and the staining observed by their staff was confirmed by TVMDL via digital images of the slide. As required by federal regulation, WVDL forwarded the sample from the Kerr WMA as a suspect positive for CWD to NVSL for confirmatory testing.
October’s ante-mortem testing followed a previous presumptive positive RT-QuIC (real time quaking-induced conversion) test result from a doe in early 2023. This RTQuIC detection spurred additional research investigations and amplification testing on additional deer, equipment, water, and feed sites within the facility. Although no confirmed detections were obtained from regulatory tests on any deer, the second round of RT-QuIC environmental evaluations at the facility did detect the presence of prions in some environmental samples.
The original test results from the research facility caused confusion for some Texas hunters, thinking drawn hunts on the attached Wildlife Management Area wouldn’t go forward.
Ryan Reitz, the WMA’s project leader, said the scheduled hunts did indeed go forward. “We had a good success rate with some really nice bucks taken,” he said. “We tested all of the deer taken as we have done for several years. The only change was we required carcass removal restrictions — people quartered their deer before leaving.”
