Updated 11/5/19

As Muzzleloader season kicks off deer season in Giles County this Saturday, the wildlife agency will be offering free testing for Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) in nine counties including Lawrence and Marshall.

More than two dozen Tennessee deer have tested positive for CWD this deer season and the number is only expected to go up.

The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency says the disease is a major concern, as they step up testing efforts.

According to Barr Cross with TWRA, the disease attacks the brains of infected animals and is 100 percent fatal for them, but there is a lot of unknown about the disease as if it could infect people.

“We want people to come in and voluntarily allow us to take samples from their animals. If they harvested a buck and they don’t want to mess up the mount we are working with taxidermist who will actually pull the lymph nodes for us and it’s just an effort really to get as many samples as we can to ensure that we are going to find this disease so that we can actually contain,” Cross explained.

TWRA will also set up CWD testing across Middle Tennessee opening day of gun season November 23rd.