By Alabama Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources
Under new regulations, hunters who harvest white-tailed deer, mule deer, elk and moose in CWD-affected states are not allowed to bring the whole deer carcass back to Alabama.
Any deer body part that contains spinal or brain tissue is specifically banned from Alabama.
“Alabama’s late to the dance, but we’re at least there now,” said Chuck Sykes, director of the Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Division.
“We have now joined 36 other states with similar regulations. It’s been prohibited to bring live deer into the state for some time now. The intent of that regulation was to help prevent the potential to spread diseases,” he said. “A dead deer can transmit diseases just like a live one. So this was just logical. We finally did something that should have been done a long time ago.”
To be in compliance with the new regulation, hunters who harvest a deer in a CWD-affected state must debone the meat, cape the deer and cut off the skull plate with the antlers attached. That skull plate must be thoroughly cleaned of all brain material before it is imported into Alabama.
CWD is a disease similar to Mad Cow Disease in cattle and scrapie in sheep that affects deer, elk and moose. It is a form of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy that starts to debilitate the affected animal and results in death.
Adjoining states have not had any confirmed CWD cases, but the disease has been confirmed in Arkansas, Texas, Missouri, Ohio and numerous other states and parts of Canada. States with confirmed cases of CWD have been severely impacted by the disease.
Some states with confirmed CWD cases have set up CWD containment zones where every deer harvested in those zones must be taken to a check station.
“Not only is that interfering drastically with what hunters are used to doing, but look at the budget drain it is causing the agencies that are having to devote all this time and manpower to check all those deer,” he said. “We don’t want it here. The only way to stop it is to never let it cross the border. This is one more step to help that.
“Remember, this is just from states with confirmed CWD cases. If you go to Mississippi, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky or Florida, you’re fine. If the state has CWD, you can’t bring the whole deer back.”
Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries (WFF) has been testing deer since the 2001-2002 season and none of the more than 5,000 deer sampled have tested positive for CWD. “We sampled about 300 deer from the wild last year,” Sykes said. “All captive cervids over a year old that die, by regulation, have to be tested for CWD.”
—By David Rainer