SHEBOYGAN, Wis. (WFRV) – The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has confirmed a second wild deer tested positive for chronic wasting disease (CWD) in Sheboygan County.

The deer was hunter-harvested in the Town of Lyndon and was a four to five year old doe taken during the 2022 gun deer season.

As required by state law, the DNR has enacted a three-year baiting and feeding ban in Sheboygan County, along with a two-year ban in adjoining counties that lie within ten miles of a CWD detection.

The previous state-issued ban in Sheboygan County was lifted in December 2022 because the designated time had passed without any new additional CWD-positive detections as required by state statute.

This recent CWD-positive reinstates a three-year baiting and feeding ban in the county, effective February 1, 223. This recent news will also renew a two-year feeding and baiting ban for Fond du Lac County.

Baiting and feeding encourages deer to congregate unnaturally around a shared food source where infected deer can spread CWD through direct contact with healthy deer or indirectly by leaving behind infectious prions in their saliva, blood, feces and urine.

CWD is a fatal, infectious nervous system disease of deer, moose, elk and reindeer/caribou. It belongs to the family of diseases known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) or prion diseases.

The DNR began monitoring the state’s wild white-tailed deer population for CWD in 1999. The first positives were found in 2002.