After another year of intense testing, DNR officials found no signs of Chronic Wasting Disease on 1,200 tested deer in a heavily surveyed area of southeastern Minnesota. Furthermore, samples from 2,300 deer statewide tested negative for CWD.

Area 602, surrounding Pine Island, has been heavily tested since 2010, when the first deer tested positive for CWD in Minnesota.

Deer also were tested as a precaution in east-central Minnesota, because the disease was discovered in nearby Wisconsin, and in the north metropolitan area, because a captive herd in North Oaks tested positive. All those tests came back negative as well.

In fact, one of the only strange cases came from Mower County last fall when a deer tested positive for rabies, the first ever in Minnesota, according to the Minnesota Department of Public Health.

According to DNR area wildlife manager Jeanine Vorland, a Mower resident reported a strange-acting deer. DNR officials found the deer shortly before it died and had it tested for rabies in October.

The DNR will continue its surveillance of Zone 602 in 2013, but other areas will be left alone until risk is shown. If deer test positive for CWD anywhere near Minnesota borders, the DNR will begin testing as a precaution, said Lou Cornicelli, DNR big game coordinator.

Yet like the deer that tested positive for rabies, most sick deer display the same symptoms, regardless of the disease.

“Symptoms of CWD are symptoms of just about anything,” Cornicelli said.

Cornicelli mentioned an influx nationwide in epizootic hemorrhagic disease; however, Minnesota recorded no results of that disease, either.

“Every other state has been having this big die-off from EHD, and we didn’t have anything.”

While tests continuously show negative results in Minnesota deer, that doesn’t necessarily mean diseases aren’t present. Still, Cornicelli credits the Board of Animal Health with doing a good job of monitoring imported and exported animals, along with hunters for reporting strange behavior, even though that has turned up negative testing results.

“That’s how you get things done, and we’ve had really good luck whenever we had to do surveillance,” he said.