Outdoor notes: Ten more deer test positive for wasting disease.

The Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism has announced chronic wasting disease was found 10 of 640 deer tested last fall and winter.

CWD is fatal to members of the deer family, and primarily lives in the bones, brains and glands of infected deer. It’s never been transferred to humans or livestock.

According to Shane Hesting, Wildlife and Parks wildlife disease coordinator, the positives came from Rawlins, Scott, Decatur, Norton, Meade, Hodgeman, Kearny and Gray counties in western Kansas. A whitetail from Pawnee County, in central Kansas, also tested for the disease. That brings the total of tested deer with the disease to 74 of more than 25,000 tissue samples since sampling began in 1996. Kansas’ first positive in a wild deer was in 2005. Since then, the disease has progressively moved south and east.

The closest to Wichita was from Stafford County several years ago, about 90 miles away.

Hesting said federal grants allowed biologists to sample deer from southwest and south-central Kansas this year. Most were shot by hunters. Taxidermists, agency staff and some meat processors take the tissue for sampling. The deer from Rawlins and Decatur counties, in northwest Kansas, were tested because they appeared ill. The deer from Norton County, also in northwest Kansas, was submitted to testing by the hunter who shot it.

The biologist said about 68 percent of the deer that have tested positive for the disease since 2005 have been from Decatur, Norton, Rawlins and Sheridan counties.

Chronic wasting disease was first diagnosed in the area along the Colorado-Wyoming border in the 1960s, but spread little for about 20 years. Now, it’s found in more than a dozen states, as far east as New York. Biologists think the spread has been accelerated by the movement of captive deer, and by hunters shooting an infected deer in a western state, then discarding the bones in their home state.

Outdoors show in Mulvane – The Kansas Rack and Reel Show will be held July 31-Aug. 2 at the Kansas Star Arena in Mulvane. Marcus Montgomery, show co-director, said it’s their first show at the arena, but they plan to follow the format they’ve used the past 18 years for shows in Oklahoma, Texas and Arkansas.

“Basically we’re kind of a fun family festival,” he said. “We try to have a little bit of something for everyone.”

Montgomery said one of the main draws should be about $75,000 in hunting and fishing trips given away as door prizes. The trips, for one person, include grouse hunting or fishing in Michigan or fishing in Ontario. Other attractions include a pop-up 3-D archery target range, a people’s choice trophy deer contest and a display of some of the world’s largest shed deer antlers. There will also be a kids trout pond.

“We’re guaranteeing them to catch a fish,” Montgomery said. “They can stay there and fish as long as they like until they catch one.”

The show will also feature about 80 vendors, selling everything from small fishing lures to large hunting blinds and out-of-state trips.

“It’s really focused around being a retail show,” Montgomery said. “Nearly every vendor there has something to sell there.”

For more information go to www.kansasrackandreelshow.com.

This story was originally published July 18, 2015 at 5:03 PM with the headline "Outdoor notes: Ten more deer test positive for wasting disease.."