Newsday.com: West Virginia's first case of wasting disease found

On the finding of a 2-year old male CWD-positive deer in West Virginia:

"'It's possible that it's just one deer,' [West Virginia DNR's assistant chief for game management] Johansen said." (Newsday.com)

This seems highly unlikely that the one and only CWD-positive deer was hit by a vehicle.

However, it does illustrate that CWD surveillance strategies in areas where CWD has not been found should focus on those individuals that are most likely to be positive: road-kills, clinically ill animals (as recently happened in Alberta), older bucks. This strategy increases the odds of finding a positive animal. Alberta's discovery of a CWD-positive deer through clinical surveillance is another example.