If her name doesn’t ring a bell for many people, her work certainly will. Batten is the wildlife health program supervisor for the state Department of Conservation. She is the field general in Missouri’s battle with chronic wasting disease.
All of my previous conversations with Batten have started with a telephone call or email from me to her. Why, pray tell, was she calling me?
I had a fairly good idea of the answer before she confirmed that John Winkelman, the hunter on her list to call, was the same outdoor writer she had talked to frequently in the past. I shot a pretty nice buck with my bow the weekend before firearms season in southern Jefferson County and submitted a sample in the voluntary CWD testing program.
As a courtesy, she was calling to tell me that my deer had tested positive for chronic wasting disease. With more samples to test and confirm, my deer was one of three new cases found in Jefferson County this year. In Ste. Genevieve County, four more deer have tested positive so far. With more than 20,000 tests complete, 28 new cases have been identified statewide.
Looking at a map of the previous positive test results from rural Festus, I knew I was hunting in an area with increased potential for disease detection. None of the little gray boxes actually reached the farm property where my tree stand hangs, but I was in the neighborhood.
Because my voluntary submission was ahead of the thousands of bits collected in the mandatory sampling days of opening weekend, I was surprised that my conservation number continued to say “pending” when I looked online for results a month later.
It’s protocol for the state biologists to call hunters when they get a positive result. Everyone else finds out by checking on the department website. Batten said the conversations she has with hunters include questions and answers about next steps. Reactions range from “no big deal” to frightened heartache.
My reaction was somewhere in between. I was disappointed that all the work that follows the shot had gone for naught, but I was glad that I hadn’t done anything with the meat except store it in the freezer waiting for the results to arrive.
There is no evidence that the disease can cross species from deer to humans, and the butchering I did never included cutting into the spinal column or skull where the disease lurks. But I don’t want to be the test case that proves cross-transmission is possible. Many times over the past few years, as an advocate for testing, I have said I wouldn’t eat or feed deer to my family that had not been tested.
Batten asked for a more specific location of the spot that had marked my lucky day. The map of southern Jefferson County now includes new shaded areas marking positive cases. Proximity to previous positive tests is not a prerequisite for infection because mature bucks often travel significant distances, Batten said.
Chronic wasting disease is a deadly infectious disease that eventually kills all animals it affects. Hunters can help manage the disease by getting the deer they harvest tested. More information about testing options, and the map showing positive case locations, is available at mdc.mo.gov/cwd.
The next step for me is disposal of the meat I have in my freezer. Batten said I could discard it in a landfill or through municipal trash pickup, but she also offered to have the department pick it up for incineration.
The state also could offer a replacement tag, she said, but I declined since I still have a couple of unfilled permits left. Now it’s time to get back to work with the remaining days of archery and alternate methods hunting. I’m going to miss those butterflied buck chops.
John Winkelman is Marketing Director for Liguori Publications near Barnhart, Mo., and the Associate Editor for Outdoor Guide Magazine. If you have story ideas to share for the Leader outdoor news page, e-mail ogmjohnw@aol.com, and you can follow John on Twitter at @johnjwink99.