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Mississippi has produced some giant bucks and even a world record. Here are the top six deer on record in Mississippi by category.
Brian Broom
CWD Response plan actions taken
A tissue sample from a young buck in Pontotoc County tested positive for chronic wasting disease.(Photo: Stephen Kirkpatrick/Special to Clarion Ledger)
Mississippi’s second case of chronic wasting disease has been confirmed after tissue samples from a buck tested positive for the disease for the third time.
According to the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks, a 1½-year-old male deer was exhibiting unusual behavior and was reported to authorities on October 8 by a resident of Pontotoc County near Ecru. The resident reported the deer was attacking a dog and had no fear of humans. After firing two shots in the air in an attempt to make the deer leave, the resident then shot and killed the deer.
Sample tissue from the deer was taken to the Mississippi Veterinary and Diagnostic Lab in Pearl where it was tested twice for CWD. Both tests yielded positive results. Sample tissue was then shipped to the National Veterinary Sciences Laboratory in Iowa for an additional test which also proved to be positive.
With confirmation of the disease, MDWFP has enacted its CWD Response Plan for the area. The department established the Pontotoc CWD Management Zone which includes Pontotoc and Union counties as well as all portions of Lee County west of US 45.
New regulations within the zone make it unlawful to:
• Provide supplemental feed for wildlife
• Establish mineral sites or supplement existing mineral sites
• Transport certain parts of deer outside of the zone
• Trap wild hogs without a free permit from MDWFP
News of the deer came with a few surprises; one being its location. It was found roughly 150 miles from where the first known case in Mississippi was discovered in Issaquena County earlier this year.
Another fact that surprised some was the deer’s age. According to the CWD Alliance, the minimum time span for a deer to exhibit clinical symptoms is typically 15 months from the initial infection. This would suggest the Pontotoc County buck had the disease his entire life.
Russ Walsh, executive director of the MDWFP Wildlife Bureau, said the disease is more commonly associated with mature bucks, but is not unheard of in younger deer.
“It’s possible, if not likely, he contracted it as a fawn,” Walsh said. “In other states there are certainly younger deer that have CWD.
“It’s not necessarily unusual. Once it’s entrenched in an area you have deer of all ages with it. It wouldn’t be unusual to see deer (with CWD) in all age-classes in a CWD-endemic area.”
At this point, Walsh said there is not enough information to determine the prevalence of the disease in the area.
“There’s no way for us to say until we get more samples,” Walsh said. “We just won’t know until we get into the sampling process.”
Unlike the Issaquena zone where tissue samples were collected through the department’s active shooting operations, Walsh said tissue samples in the Pontotoc zone will be collected through hunter-harvested deer. Freezers will be placed at four drop-off locations in the zone where hunters can leave deer heads for testing.
While hunters are highly encouraged to provide tissue samples, Walsh said reporting sick deer is very important. The fact that over 14,000 deer in Mississippi have been tested for CWD since 2002 and the only positives came from reports of sick deer underscores that.
“It really speaks to the importance of hunters and landowners reporting sick deer to us,” Walsh said. “They are a huge asset in monitoring for CWD.”
A public meeting to discuss CWD at the North Pontotoc Attendance Center is scheduled for Thursday, November 8 at 6:00 p.m. Presentations by MDWFP staff will be on the status of CWD and planned monitoring activities. Biologists and law enforcement officials will be available to answer questions.
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