LOYD STAR — A young man was able to harvest a special buck last weekend. Mississippi’s special velvet season was open from Sept. 13 to Sept 15 and was limited to legal buck only, archery only and all harvests had to be reported and sampled for Chronic Wasting Disease. 

Kiptyn Hudson of Lincoln County killed a nice buck using a crossbow Sunday afternoon alongside his P-Paw Jerry Freeman. All velvet season harvests had to be reported by 10 p.m. the day of harvest and sampled for Chronic Wasting Disease. 

Antlers look like they are covered in shiny velvet because sparse hairs grow straight out and are covered in oily secretions. Underneath this velvet, the antler is growing strong beneath another layer called perichondrium. 

What is CWD?

Chronic Wasting Disease is a 100 percent, always fatal disease caused by an infectious prion in deer and members of the cervidae family. CWD prions are shed into the environment in the bodily fluids of infected deer. 

Healthy deer can become infected by indirect contact with these prions in the soil or direct contact with an infected deer. Prions persist in the environment for a long period of time long after a CWD infected deer dies. 

Deer do not show symptoms of CWD until the later stages of the disease which could be 12 to 18 months after they become infected which is why it is important for deer to be tested. The Center for Disease Control reports there are no CWD cases in humans from eating positive deer meat but it doesn’t mean the disease can’t spread to humans. It is best to avoid eating meat of a CWD positive deer.

MDWFP has several videos about Chronic Wasting Disease. One shows hunters how to drop off a CWD sample, another video shows hunters how to pull their sample to drop it off and a series of videos produced by the Mississippi State University Deer Lab on CWD. 

Hunters harvested 285 bucks in 2022 and 223 bucks in 2023. One buck tested positive for Chronic Wasting Disease in Issaquena County in 2023’s velvet season. It was the first positive detected in the county since first detection in 2018. MDWFP reports a total of 318 CWD positives have been detected. Check back for more updates about how many samples were collected during the 2024 velvet season in the next few days.