Chronic Wasting Disease, a fatal and incurable illness that attacks the neurological system of white-tailed deer, has now been confirmed in Williamson County, putting the always-fatal disease within reach of Nashville's doorstep. Deer in Williamson County tested positive for the disease this year, joining a growing list of Middle Tennessee counties now grappling with the same problem.
Williamson County is not alone. According to News Channel 5 Nashville, deer in Dickson, Humphreys, Wayne, Lewis, and Decatur counties have also tested positive for Chronic Wasting Disease this year, a spread that Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency deer biologist Jeremy Denison and Southern Woods and Waters contributor Anthony Landreth have been tracking and sharing information about. The disease was first discovered in Tennessee back in 2018, when it turned up in Hardeman, Madison, and Fayette counties in West Tennessee, far from the Nashville area. Its arrival in Williamson, Dickson, and Humphreys counties this year marks a steady eastward creep the state has watched unfold over several hunting seasons.
Hoodline previously reported the first Humphreys County case in January, when it surfaced at the tail end of the 2025-26 hunting season alongside statewide testing totals. That single case has since been joined by confirmed detections in five more Middle Tennessee counties, according to the same reporting from News Channel 5 Nashville, underscoring just how quickly the disease's footprint has widened since the start of the year.
A Disease That Hides For Years Before It Kills
Chronic Wasting Disease causes tissue loss and carries a reported fatality rate of 100 percent once an animal is infected, though some deer do seem to show resistance to the disease. Part of what makes CWD so difficult to manage is that infected deer can carry it for a long time without looking sick. According to the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, infected white-tailed deer typically show no visible symptoms for 12 to 18 months, and sometimes up to three years or more, before emaciation or neurological impairment sets in.
That long asymptomatic window means a deer can look perfectly healthy while still spreading the disease. The agency notes that infected animals shed infectious prions in saliva, urine, and feces well before any outward signs appear, which is why visual inspection in the field is not enough to catch it. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention adds another layer to the problem: the misfolded prion proteins that cause CWD resist standard cooking temperatures, chemical disinfectants, and environmental degradation, meaning they can stay infectious in soil, water, and vegetation for years or even decades once deposited.
New Rules For Middle Tennessee Hunters
To slow the spread, TWRA has introduced new hunting protocols that hunters in affected counties are now required to follow. Denison has used his role to remind viewers about new hunting and fishing rules and regulations for this year, part of the agency's broader effort to address deer management as the disease moves closer to the Nashville metro area.
Those rules include tight restrictions on how hunters can move a harvested deer. Under TWRA regulations, hunters inside designated CWD Management Zones cannot export unapproved carcass parts, including whole carcasses, organs, or uncleaned heads, out of the zone. Only deboned meat, cleaned skull plates, antlers, and hides are permitted to travel beyond the zone boundary, a measure designed to keep infectious prions from hitching a ride into new territory. The agency also bans wildlife feeding within CWD Management Zones, prohibiting grain, salt licks, and mineral blocks that would otherwise draw deer into unnatural congregations where the disease can spread more easily through bodily excretions.
TWRA has also leaned on incentives rather than just restrictions. In counties where CWD has turned up, the agency's Earn-a-Buck Program lets hunters earn additional antlered deer tags beyond the standard statewide limit of two by harvesting antlerless deer and submitting them for testing, encouraging more surveillance samples from the areas where they matter most.
No Human Cases, But Testing Still Urged
No human cases of Chronic Wasting Disease have ever been documented, but the CDC still strongly advises hunters in CWD-positive regions to have harvested deer tested before eating the meat, and to avoid eating venison from any animal that tests positive or appears sick. It's a distinction worth noting: CWD diagnostic tests function as surveillance tools meant to track the disease's spread, not as certified food-safety tests in the way a restaurant inspection would be.
Since CWD was first detected in West Tennessee in December 2018, TWRA has collected and tested more than 100,000 white-tailed deer samples statewide, drawing on voluntary hunter submissions, participating taxidermists, meat processors, and drop-off freezers scattered across the state. That surveillance effort has only grown since Middle Tennessee counties started turning up positive cases this year, giving wildlife managers a clearer, if unsettling, picture of how far the disease has already traveled.
