JACKSON — Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks is starting to see more test results come in from the 6,781 samples they have collected this season. Until recently, deer program coordinator William McKinley said they did not have the testing kits needed for the MSU Veterinary Lab in Pearl to conduct testing. 

During the LDWF commission meeting in early February, State Veterinarian Jim LaCour explained some states had issues with inventory of the testing kits used to detect CWD. Mississippi was one of those states and had a 1,500 case backlog due to the short supply. 

“They finally came in so we will likely get a lot of results this week,” McKinley said “25 percent of our total samples are pending.” 

Since the new supply of kits came in, Mississippi detected two more cases of CWD one in Benton County and one in Marshall County to bring the season total to 65 cases. Mississippi has detected 199 cases of CWD since first detection in 2018. 

Today is the final day of deer season in Southeastern Mississippi so CWD sample collection will slow down. Hunters reported harvests of 2,939 which is less than half of the CWD samples collected this year according to Game Check on the MDWFP website.