PORT GIBSON — Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks reported the third positive detection of Chronic Wasting Disease in Claiborne County this weekend. The third positive was found around 1.5 miles northeast of the county’s initial positive. 

Chronic Wasting Disease is a 100 percent, always fatal disease caused by an infectious prion. The disease spreads as healthy deer come in direct contact with infected deer who shed prions and or indirectly with prions shed into the environment most often through bodily fluids.

Claiborne County’s positives are about four miles from positives found across the river in Louisiana. All 27 detections in Louisiana have been in Tensas Parish. 

The area has had high sampling efforts over the years and five new positives have been found in Tensas Parish to date this season. More could be expected in the next few weeks according to Louisiana Deer Program Manager Johnathan Bordelon. 

Claiborne County has had strong sampling efforts as well with a total of 1,127 samples. Warren County to the north has submitted 2,355 samples yielding nine positives. 

Mississippi State University researchers found CWD prions in a scrape in Claiborne County back in 2023. The discovery was a canary in a coal mine before a positive deer was found in 2024. 

The latest positive in Claiborne County brings the state total to 417 since first detection in 2018 and 98 this hunting season. Mississippi is inching closer to a record number of 110 positive detections set in the 2023-2024 hunting season. 

Benton and Marshall Counties make up a bulk of the CWD positive detections in Mississippi. MDWFP reports there have been 219 positive detections in Benton County, 146 in Marshall County, 10 in Alcorn and Tippah Counties, nine in Warren, four in DeSotto, three in Issaquena, Claiborne and Tishimingo Counties, two in Panola and Tate Counties and one positive detection in Harrison, Lafayette, Pontotoc, Tallahatchie and Tunica Counties. 

Submitting samples for CWD testing is easy. All a hunter has to do is preserve the head with at least six inches of the neck and attached while turning it into a 24/7 self-serve sample cooler. Antlers may be removed before dropping off the sample. 

At the self-serve cooler, like the one at Copiah County’s MSU Extension Office, hunters fill out a card reporting sex of deer, date, County of harvest and contact information. Hunters can also turn in samples through participating taxidermists.