Some hunters ignore deer-head requests

WAUSAU, Wis. -- State wildlife officials over the weekend sought a grim bounty -- the heads of 50,000 deer -- to determine how far chronic wasting disease has spread among the herd.

But many hunters were choosing not to part with their trophies Saturday.

In what the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources described as the largest wildlife disease survey ever conducted, the department set up 200 collection sites where wildlife experts sawed off the heads of deer brought by hunters.

"There has never been anything like this in the history of wildlife management in Wisconsin or really anywhere," said Rick Weide, a DNR wildlife biologist at a Wausau collection site where he inspected animals, including a 3-year-old whitetail buck that Darlene Svacina shot Saturday.

The deer lacked signs of infection such as pus around the eyes and antlers and a lack of meat around the ribs, but it will take several weeks to conduct more definitive tests on the deer's brain tissue.

"I am thinking the disease is not up this far north, but I want to be sure," Svacina said. "We are just going to cut him up at home, put him in the freezer and wait for the test results to come in for this area."

Chronic wasting disease creates sponge-like holes in a deer's brain, causing it to grow thin, behave abnormally and die. Experts say there is no evidence the disease can infect humans.