Michigan hunters will face more restrictions on bringing in harvested deer from out of state. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources has tightened the rules to combat the spread of chronic wasting disease (CWD).
The contagious and fatal disease attacks the central nervous system of deer, causing them to slowly lose weight and die.
Chad Stewart is the Deer Management Specialist with the Michigan DNR. He said hunters can only bring meat into Michigan from parts of deer known to NOT carry CWD. So they’re not allowed to bring in the brain or spinal cord.
“It’s a central central nervous system disease so we are basically restricting hunters from bringing those parts of the deer or elk or moose back into the state.”
Stewart said the state is extending deer restrictions to include all states, not just the ones with known cases of CWD.
“What our big concern is that hunters going out of state could unintentionally bring back a carcass infected with CWD. Certainly that could occur in places with known CWD but that could also happen in states that haven’t identified it yet.”
Stewart said Arkansas is a good example of a state where the disease wasn’t known to be present until recently.
“Arkansas found chronic wasting disease in December of 2015 and once they started looking they found it in one out of four, one out of three animals locally. Previously hunters could have gone from Michigan down to Arkansas, shot a deer, and legally have brought the entire thing back in.”
Currently, the fine for bringing in a whole carcass from out of state is 500 dollars - but a bill in the state house could raise that to two thousand dollars.
The bill had unanimous support out of the house and only 38 nay votes out of the senate.