Q. The firearm season to hunt deer in Illinois began today. Do hunters in La Salle County need to bring their deer to a check-in site or can they report their harvest over the phone or online?

A. While hunters in most counties can register their harvest online or by phone, those in nine counties, including La Salle, must bring their deer to mandatory check stations to allow biologists to check deer for signs of chronic wasting disease.

The sampling will help biologists to determine areas of infection and prevalence rates of the disease. While not believed to be contagious to humans or livestock, CWD is known to spread from animal to animal among deer and elk. The disease affects the brain of the infected animal, causing it to become emaciated, display abnormal behavior, lose coordination and eventually die.

Illinois expanded its CWD surveillance effort in 2002 following the discovery of the disease in neighboring Wisconsin.

La Salle County hunters should bring their deer to Buffalo Rock State Park, off Dee Bennett Road, three miles west of Ottawa.

The other counties requiring hunters to bring in their deer for check-in are Boone, DeKalb, Grundy, Kane, McHenry, Ogle, Stephenson and Winnebago.

Hunters who participate in the CWD sampling can check the status of their deer through the Illinois Department of Natural Resources Web site at http://dnr.state.il.us/cwd/. Hunters who provide samples from deer that test positive are notified by the IDNR.