Chronic Wasting Disease Found in Arkansas Elk

They will probably kill every deer and elk in the area. The AGFC has already stated that they plan to kill 300 in a 5 mile radius. If anyone hunts in Newton county they better start looking for a new place.

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This is going to change deer hunting as we know it, and we may never see an Elk in Arkansas again.

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Virtually all of best whitetail hunting states have CWD. Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, and Iowa all have positive tests and they are the go to states for whitetail. It's also been found in Saskatchewan and Alberta.


Arkansas needs to take the approach of Illinois and keep the population way down in the CWD area. By doing so Illinois has kept the CWD rate at 1%.

Although I would prefer not to, I have no problem getting rid of the elk. Most land owners in the area hate having them here, hunting opportunities for them are very limited, and they appear to more susceptible to CWD. The luxury of having a small elk herd is not worth the risk to the whitetail herd.

devastating news to the hunting industry.

Now the questions to ask is how. Are there environmental factors, genetics and natural mutations from a small pool of individuals in the species, how does a massive kill off affect the ecosystem, and is there any way to prevent the spread or resurgence to whitetail herds across the state.

I'm super curious to learn if migratory animals brought this here or if there's genetic defects stemming from the original animals that were introduced here.

Hopefully they"ll issue more than 1 elk tag per year..

I don't think they know. Some have speculated that one of the elk brought in may have had it, but others have dismissed that.

So, I'm not sure if anyone knows how this got here.

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sure this is a stupid question, but how did this disease spread?

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It's not completely known. It is generally found in spinal tissue and the brain, but it appears to be able to be spread through saliva, urine, and feces. The ground can become contaminated when carcass remains are disposed of as well.

Although Arkansas has strict laws about bringing in carcasses from out of state (meat must be deboned and only a cleaned skull plate with antlers can be brought in) that would be my first guess on how the disease has shown up. A lot of hunters from that area of the state travel to Missouri ( a CWD positive state) to hunt. I find it highly unlikely that it could have come in with the Elk that were moved into the state 30 years ago and remained undetected until now.

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Isn't the difference between those states and ours, is that that are known for bigger bucks, but lack the quantity

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Outside of the gulf coastal plain Missouri, Kansas, and Iowa have a similar deer density to Arkansas.