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SPEAKER: Hunters across Minnesota will take their rifles into the woods early tomorrow morning. Most of them are probably hoping to shoot a buck with a giant set of antlers. But if the fatal deer disease CWD spreads in Minnesota, hunters might have to shift their priorities. Reporter John Enger traveled to Wisconsin to see how chronic wasting disease has changed everything for one deer hunter.

JOHN ENGER: There's a dumpster on the edge of Doug Darren's family farm in the driftless area of Wisconsin. It's lined with heavy-grade black plastic, and there's something inside.

DOUG DARREN: Yeah, it's a neck and a spine. By bagging it, I'm kind of keeping the smell down a little bit. And you're also containing those infectious agents.

JOHN ENGER: Chronic wasting disease was found in Wisconsin 16 years ago. It took till last year to reach Darren's farm. Since then, he's been working to slow the spread. He's tried a few different things most recently, dumpsters.

Researchers now know the mutated brain proteins called prions that cause CWD last for years long after a deer is dead. Hunters can't just leave guts and bones in the woods like they used to because they stay infectious for a long time. Darren raised money to put deer carcass dumpsters all over his area. He paid for this one himself to help out his neighbors, like the kid who brought over the first neck and spine of the year.

DOUG DARREN: He brought this down said, "My dad told me I need to start doing this." And I said, "great."

JOHN ENGER: It cost a few hundred dollars, but the biggest thing Darren's done to fight CWD is change the way he hunts. He leads me across the road to the family farmhouse, unlocks the door, and shows me a sombrero hanging on the wall. It's huge and gaudy, the kind of hat you have to wear at a Mexican restaurant when somebody tells the staff it's your birthday.

This is a very heavy sombrero. Yeah,

DOUG DARREN: There's a long story behind that.

JOHN ENGER: For years, Darren made his hunting buddies wear that sombrero when one of them missed a shot or killed a buck that was too young.

It's like a dunce cap essentially.

DOUG DARREN: Yeah. Well, what happened was there were some fellas hunting here with me.

JOHN ENGER: I won't get into the rest of the sombrero story, just know the hat came to symbolize bad hunting decisions. And Darren used to have strict thoughts on what that meant. Like, a lot of hunters, he managed the deer on his family's 300-acre farm for a certain type of hunt.

He and his friends took a few dogs for meat, but let all the young bucks go. That way, they'd grow up and develop big racks of antlers, pass on the superior genetics, and make the herd stronger. Then, near the end of their natural lives, Darren would finally take the shot.

And the strategy worked. The walls of his trophy room bristle with antlers. They hang so close, the tines weave together like tree branches. He points to one in particular, the largest rack I've ever seen. Beside it is a framed picture.

How big was that deer?

DOUG DARREN: Most guys stand behind him and make them look bigger. I'm standing in front of it.

JOHN ENGER: But after all these years and all those antlers, Darren says now it should have been him wearing the sombrero because only shooting massive bucks, he now knows, may help spread chronic wasting disease. Deer, he explains, behave differently based on sex and age.

DOUG DARREN: Think about it from the standpoint of like having a cold. If you go into a crowded bar and you go in there and you start dancing and hanging out and doing all these other things and it's a weird analogy--

JOHN ENGER: But let's go with it. An introvert might stay at the end of the bar all night and not infect anybody. But say there's an extrovert at this bar, a real life of the party type of guy and he has a cold. He'll dance all night, maybe take someone home, maybe drive to the next town and do it all again. Pretty soon, everybody's sniffling.

In the deer world, young bucks are those infected extroverts. They're most likely to spread the disease, and they like to travel. So now instead of letting them go while he waits for a big grandfather buck, Darren just kills the first buck that walks past his stand. They'll never grow massive racks of antlers, they won't give him bragging rights or an adrenaline rush, but they won't get more deer sick either.

For a hunter, the prospect of a giant buck is hard to leave behind. But as CWD becomes more common, Darren says, it's what more hunters might have to do. John Enger, Minnesota Public Radio News, Southwestern Wisconsin.