Pullis talks deer population, Chronic Waste Disease

BY ANDY KRUTSINGER

Mt. Pleasant News

Not much will change from last year during fall?s hunting season in 2016. Bag limits and possession limits are all staying the same, and for the most part, animal populations are just as they were last fall.

The deer population, which has dropped in recent years, is on a steady rise. The timing may have been lucky for the state of Iowa, though, with the recent fear of a spread in Chronic Waste Disease.

Chronic Waste Disease, otherwise known as CWD is a contagious disease that has been killing deer in the western plains, parts of Texas and New Mexico, southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois.

Henry County Conservation Director John Pullis says the fear of the spread of CWD has brought caution to the area. He says new rules in transporting deer state to state have been put in place.

?You can?t bring a whole carcass of an animal in from a state that has CWD,? he says. ?It has to be just the useable meat. It has to be a brain-free skull, so if it was a big trophy, you?ve got to cut the antlers off and just bring in the antlers and skull base.?

Iowa has only had CWD in free-ranging populations in Allamakee County, which is in the northeast most county in the state, bordering Wisconsin. While their case could be due to hunters bringing in the full deer, Pullis says it?s more likely that infected deer walked over state lines.

Davis County had a case of CWD in a captive facility, but it was easily snuffed out, as per usual in captive facilities.

Pullis says the disease is a little scary to think about, because of some evidence that the prion that infects the deer can live in soil.

Pullis explained that when Wisconsin had their outbreak of CWD, they depopulated the area to make sure it wouldn?t spread from deer to deer. They were surprised to find that once they repopulated the area, cases started to come up again.

?Their first notion was ?we didn?t depopulate far enough out? and now maybe that wasn?t the case at all,? said Pullis. ?Maybe the prion was still living there.?

In the past, Iowa has lost deer to a different illness called Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease, or ?Blue Tongue.?

Pullis says he knows some land owners that have lost upwards of 75 deer at one time. The deer would often be found dead around ponds, as they go towards water to cool off when they have the sickness.

?All (Blue Tongue) is, is a midge that infects the deer,? Pullis explains. ?When we don?t have a lot of rain throughout the summer, they ingest it (and) it essentially causes a fever and swelling of the head and neck.?

Because of the rain that the area has had this year, Blue Tongue shouldn?t be much of a problem, but even if it was; it is overall less dangerous than CWD because Blue Tongue can?t be transferred from deer to deer.

Because deer are very affectionate animals, they will tend to rub necks or lick each other when they are in a group. The more infected deer interact with others, the more likely the disease is to spread to different areas.

Deer populations in Iowa have been extremely low in the past few years due to a campaign by the DNR and state government to lower the deer population. Lately, however, the population has been starting to rise.

?By allowing more deer tags, it drove the population low,? Pullis says. ?If you look at the antler list quotas for each county, they?ve reduced those, and now the population is starting back up.?

However, according to Pullis, the DNR has done a good job of stopping the spread from getting into Iowa. For now, we are in better shape than some of our bordering states, such as Wisconsin, Illinois, South Dakota and Nebraska.

Other things to watch out for this hunting season are rising numbers of quail and pheasant populations. Quail and pheasant numbers have taken off due to the rain the state got this summer.

There also may be a few more foxes out and about in 2016. On the flip side, the coyote population has started to dip.