By MIKE CORN

Hays Daily News

OBERLIN -- Mud and skittish deer were proving to be something of a stumbling block for wildlife officials who were hoping to start testing the Decatur County deer herd for further evidence of a fatal disease.

But as the eight employees of the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks were trying to determine their course of action early Tuesday evening, they were approached by outdoors enthusiast Royal Fisher.

He wanted to know more about chronic wasting disease -- the always fatal disease discovered in three Decatur County deer this year.

That discovery prompted KDWP to initiate the sampling process that got under way Tuesday. The plan is to kill 25 to 50 additional deer, all of which will be tested to determine if any are suffering from CWD. Currently, it's impossible to test for CWD in a live animal.

Fisher, who said he is a deer hunter, wanted to know more about the disease. That's because a friend of his was among the three who shot a deer that ultimately returned a positive test.

"They probably had eaten most of it before they got the results back," he said.

Fisher killed two deer, a doe and a buck, but neither one was tested.

"It was right at the first of the bow season," he said.

With money from a federal grant, KDWP will be testing about 2,200 deer killed last season. But the list of people who can pull the samples wasn't released until just before the start of rifle season -- nearly 45 days after archery season started.

"I was just hoping," he said of making sure neither one of the deer he killed could have been infected with CWD. There is, however, no evidence the disease can be passed along to humans.

Despite that uncertainty, Fisher was in his element talking with Scott Baugh, regional wildlife supervisor for the western third of the state.

"I'm going to Colby next year to be a game warden," he said. "I'm a total nature freak."

Even though mud was the enemy Tuesday evening, wildlife officials were able to kill two deer -- both entered into a database for global positioning mapping. Both were then taken for processing back in Oberlin in a building offered to KDWP by the Kansas Department of Transportation.

Inside, big game coordinator Lloyd Fox and veterinarian Ruby Mosher waited for the arrival of the deer.

This is Fox's second go-round with the testing program for CWD.

Two years ago, Fox was running the lab in Cheyenne County, where the first free-ranging deer laden with CWD was discovered. That white-tailed deer was shot during the 2005 firearms season northeast of St. Francis.

In the Decatur County situation, all three were white-tailed deer and were killed along Sappa Creek northeast of Oberlin.

In addition, Nebraska wildlife officials got a positive result on a deer about 2 miles from the Decatur County line.

That discovery prompted KDWP to move up testing of samples from northwest Kansas.

Inside the KDOT lab, Fox showed students from Emporia State University and Kansas State University how to remove lymph glands and part of the brain stem for testing.

He and the students also worked through the process of boning out the deer, something that is different this time around.

In St. Francis, all of the animals killed were disposed of in the Cheyenne County landfill. This time around, the students will be butchering the animals and the meat will be made available to people who ask for it.

The carcasses remaining will be disposed of in the St. Francis landfill, a move prompted when Decatur County officials declined to allow the disposal of animals locally.

Farmer Jim Abbey, on whose land KDWP employees chased out about 50 deer, suggested they could bury the carcasses on his land.

He stopped by to see if the wildlife officials were having any luck.

"Deer were expensive last year," Abbey said. "They got about 10 tons of hay."

The deer heavily were concentrated last winter, primarily because of a late-2006 snowstorm that prevented the animals from food supplies other than hay bales in farmers' fields.

In one field alone, Abbey said, he had 73 cows and 75 deer.

The concentration of animals last winter is significant because Fox thinks the three Decatur County deer that tested positive this year might have been infected as early as last year.

"The only thing they could eat was these bales," Abbey said of deer a year ago.

Special-projects coordinator Mike Corn can be reached at (785) 628-1081, Ext. 129, or by e-mail to mcorn@dailynews.net.