Modern firearm deer season begins on Saturday

Washington’s early modern firearm deer season opens Saturday, marking the start of the 10 days in October that rifle hunters have to fill their tags.

It also means the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife will be staffing check stations throughout the eastern region, from Colville and Republic south to Asotin and Walla Walla.

Biologists at the stations will be there to help hunters pull lymph nodes to comply with mandatory chronic wasting disease sampling. They will also be interested in hearing from hunters about what they have seen in the woods. What they learn over opening weekend will help them gauge how this fall’s outbreaks of blue-tongue and epizootic hemorrhagic disease have affected the region’s deer populations.

Outbreaks of the two conditions caused by biting gnats were reported throughout Eastern Washington and in parts of Idaho. Annemarie Prince, a WDFW biologist based in northeast Washington, said reports of sick and dying deer slowed down in recent weeks, and that cooler weather may have taken care of the gnats at least in the northeastern part of the state.

Prince will be at the check station in Colville. She said rain in the forecast should help hunters, and that deer numbers seemed good before the outbreaks, but that she is not sure how the weekend will go.

“I don’t know what this blue tongue outbreak is going to do to harvest,” she said.

Stopping at check stations is generally voluntary unless signs at the station say otherwise. WDFW Police Captain Alan Myers said enforcement officers plan to make one check station in Lincoln County a mandatory stop on Sunday this week.

Now CWD testing is mandatory for all successful elk, moose and deer hunters in the 10-county eastern region, it could be a busy weekend at the check stations.

Testing as many animals as possible helps WDFW track the spread of the always-fatal neurological disease, which was discovered for the first time in the state last year in a deer in North Spokane.

CWD is not known to infect humans, but health officials advise against eating the meat of infected animals. Samples are tested at the Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory in Pullman. WDFW tells hunters to expect results in four to six weeks.

So far, the agency is receiving samples at a good clip. Hunter Westacott, WDFW’s CWD surveillance coordinatoor, said about 300 had come in as of Monday from archery and muzzleloader hunters.

More than 1,500 samples were gathered last fall from hunters. Of those, more than 430 were collected at check stations, according to WDFW’s annual CWD report. The next most popular submission method was dropping off a sample at one of WDFW’s self-serve kiosks.

The check stations will be open again on Oct. 18 and 19 and also during the late modern firearm season.

WDFW will take CWD samples from hunters Monday through Thursday at the Spokane Regional Office and a small handful of other sites throughout the region. The Inland Northwest Wildlife Council collects samples for hunters by appointment. Hunters can also pull lymph nodes on their own and mail them in.

WDFW has a map of check stations and kiosks and instructions for submitting samples by mail available on its website at https://wdfw.wa.gov/species-habitats/diseases/chronic-wasting/cwd-testing.