Deer carry chronic wasting disease slowly; people move it quickly. Across the country, records comparing where CWD is found at captive deer farms and in wild herds reveal overlapping locations without identifying how it was transported. Fifty-eight percent of counties where a captive facility has a detection also have CWD in wild deer. An infected facility is known in the remaining forty-two percent, or sixty-nine counties, but wild CWD has yet to be detected there. Those counties give testing and attention a place to focus.
KEY FINDINGS
- USGS documents 269 CWD detections at captive facilities in 166 counties across 22 states, compared with 593 counties where wild CWD has been detected across 36 states.
- In captive-CWD counties, wild CWD is also present in 58% (97 of 166). There is considerable overlap between the maps, partly because captive facilities operate in states where CWD is already common among wild deer.
- A nationwide watch list consists of the other 69 counties, where an infected captive facility is known but a wild case has yet to be confirmed. Texas (19) leads, followed by Minnesota (9), then Wisconsin (5).
- Pennsylvania shows why caution is needed: Bedford (17) and Fulton (11), along with Blair (8), have captive detections inside the state's now-established wild-CWD area.
ITwo ways to travel
Deer spread it slowly; shipments move it fast
With deer doing the moving, CWD advances slowly. For areas with white-tailed deer, one recent analysis put yearly spread at about 5 km to 7 km (3 miles to 4 miles). Farms in the captive-cervid industry ship live animals to other farms, including across state borders. When a disease affecting a slow-moving animal that stays near home repeatedly appears in isolated pockets well away from any front, the locations alone cannot establish that captive-animal shipments caused those detections. National records comparing captive with wild detections cannot tell what share of the CWD map came from deer and what share came from people.
IIWhere the maps overlap
Locations of captive and wild detections overlap
The layers line up over much of the same ground: of 166 counties with a detection at a captive facility, 97 also have wild CWD, or 58%. Correlation cannot trace the path of infection, and wild disease may have arrived first in some counties. Still, that concentration is evidence in itself. Most counties where deer were farmed and CWD was detected among penned animals now face the disease in their woods as well.
IIIThe watch list
Sixty-nine counties have infection in a captive facility with no confirmed detection in the wild
Watch the counties where the maps do not match: a facility is known to be infected, but no wild CWD case has been recorded. That group contains 69 counties. Texas, Minnesota and Wisconsin make up 33 of them. Texas has 19; Minnesota has nine; Wisconsin has five. Wild CWD could appear in these counties, but this page does not estimate the chance of that happening.
Swipe table to see every column
| State(s) | Captive-only counties, no wild case yet |
|---|---|
| Texas | 19 |
| Minnesota | 9 |
| Wisconsin | 5 |
| Louisiana | 4 |
| Utah | 4 |
| CO · IA · MI · PA · SD | 3 each · 15 |
| ID · KS · MT · OH · OK | 2 each · 10 |
| KY · NY · WV | 1 each · 3 |
The map's greatest value is in counties with an infected captive facility and no recorded CWD detection in the wild. They show where to look before a report makes the news.
IVThe limits of the signal
Counties ordered by risk, without a chronology or final judgment
Two limits matter when reading this list. First, “no wild detection” does not establish that the herd is free of CWD. It may simply reflect too little testing, and the amount of surveillance differs enormously from state to state. Second, detecting CWD in a captive facility near disease in wild deer does not establish that the facility caused the wild cases. Either direction of spread is possible. The list does identify counties to watch using a physical risk factor: a captive facility with an infection. Maps recording detections in wild deer leave that risk factor out. Use the list to direct testing and attention, not to forecast what will happen on a particular date.
Consider Ohio. Mandatory sampling is part of an active surveillance zone spanning nine counties in the state's northwest. Those boundaries form a geographic buffer around counties that already have confirmed cases in wild deer; captive-facility risk did not drive the response. Holmes and Wayne are the two Ohio counties on this list with detections only in captivity. Both lie beyond the zone's boundaries, and mandatory sampling applies within the zone. Ohio's surveillance map addresses a different question from its captive-risk map. A hunter checking just the official zone could not know that the other map exists.
NOTES AND SOURCES
- Source for both county lists: USGS ScienceBase CWD distribution, using the captive-facility layer alongside version 3.0 of the wild layer, current through April 2025. The captive count refers to detections at facilities, not a tally of infected animals. For wild CWD, the count refers to counties where a detection has been recorded.
- State and county together define a match. The resulting overlap is 58.4%: 97 out of 166 counties with captive CWD are also on the wild-detection list. County names were reviewed for close matches; Rio Grande and Grand in CO, for example, are different counties and were kept apart.
- Counties qualify for this watch list when a captive facility has a detection but county-level records contain no wild detection. That missing detection cannot establish that CWD is absent in wild deer. Both the true disease status and the level of surveillance shape the record.
- Dates of detections at facilities differ, as does the completeness of state reporting. Read the list as an ordering of risk, without treating it as a sequence of events.
- Ohio DNR administers a nine-county sampling zone called the Disease Surveillance Area, current for the 2025 to 26 season. It covers Allen, Crawford, Delaware, Hancock, Hardin, Marion, Morrow, Union and Wyandot. The USGS wild layer already records a confirmed wild detection for five of those nine counties. The captive-facility detections recorded for Ohio, in Holmes and Wayne, fall beyond the zone's boundaries. Sources: the hunting-regulations GIS service from Ohio DNR and the USGS layers for wild and captive detections cited above.
Fully Drawn Research is an independent data analysis desk, not affiliated with any state wildlife agency, transportation agency, mapping provider or outfitter. Figures trace to USGS public CWD distribution data, retrieved June 2026.
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