POYNETTE, Wis. — There are just a few days left until the start of Wisconsin’s gun deer hunt, and the state Department of Natural Resources is making a plea to hunters to get their deer tested for chronic wasting disease, or CWD.

The DNR has a CWD processing center in Poynette, where every sample collected by a hunter goes to be processed and sent off for further testing. Thousands of samples go through the center each year.

Kevin Wallenfang is the manager of the center. It’s a small but mighty operation. He has a team of five people working to process every deer sample. They closely track each one.

“This is where everything gets connected to the hunter, where that deer specifically gets connected to the hunter through our database,” Wallenfang said.

The workers take out the lymph nodes of the deer and send them to a lab to be tested for CWD, which is increasingly threatening Wisconsin’s deer population.

“The deer hunting culture in Wisconsin is huge, and there is no denying that CWD has affected that culture,” Wallenfang said.

CWD is a fatal, neurological disease that spreads fast among deer. While there’s no hard evidence that it impacts humans, health officials do not recommend eating meat from deer that test positive for the disease. Testing is not mandatory statewide.

Erin Larson is a deer herd health specialist for the DNR.

“The risk is not zero,” she said. “It is a personal decision on if you want to consume deer from a positive deer.”

The prevalence of deer with CWD varies by location. Larson said it seems to be more of an issue in southern Wisconsin. However, at least half of all counties in the state are affected by the disease.

“We’ve had a little over 200 positives [this year], and we’ve sampled just over 3,000,” Larson said. “So, we certainly will likely see more positives as the season continues.”

Hunting is credited with helping stop the spread of the disease.

“One of the main things is we want to encourage hunters to keep hunting,” Larson said. “The more deer reduction that we can see in some of these areas that have very high deer densities is helpful because there’s less deer-to-deer contact.”

Still, the DNR said it wishes more hunters would bring their deer in to be tested. The number of deer samples being processed at the Poynette center is down compared to this time last year.

“It’s a hunter service to make sure that if people want to have their deer tested, they can do that,” Wallenfang said. “They know that they’re feeding their family healthy venison.”