Texas hunters helping with the statewide chronic wasting disease monitoring effort this fall may do so by taking their harvested deer to a location where Texas Parks and Wildlife Department wildlife biologists will be collecting tissue samples for testing.
Hunters may take the deer, or the head of the harvested deer.
A list of collection sites and times is available online at www.tpwd.texas.gov/cwd.
In addition to those established locations, biologists will be having localized sampling at various sites throughout the season to meet sampling objectives.
For more information, call your local wildlife biologist at tpwd.texas.gov/landwater/land/technical_guidance/biologists).
TPWD has been conducting surveillance on hunter-harvested deer and road-kill deer since 2002, with a goal this year to collect samples from at least 8,000 throughout the state during the 2015-16 season.
The general deer hunting season begins on Nov. 7.
This sampling effort provides TPWD with confidence CWD is not in the free-ranging deer populations at a significantly prevalent rate – if at all. Read more in the weekend Bowie News.

Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. (Logo provided by the TPWD, used with permission)