Skip to content
Hawaii has not found CWD, and its rules are written around keeping it out

Hawaii CWD Testing and Deer Carcass Rules

Hawaii's wildlife agency publishes nothing at all about chronic wasting disease, so there is no testing to do and no carcass rule of its own to follow.

Not required
Is a sample required
no standing collection published
No state rule
Carrying a carcass in
No published restriction
See the agency
What the test costs
no turnaround published
Not reported
Found in wild deer
no zone drawn
The answer

Is CWD testing required in Hawaii

No mandatory sampling published

Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources, Division of Forestry and Wildlife publishes neither a sampling requirement nor a standing collection programme for a hunter's own deer, and handles the disease through reporting and the rules on what may be carried across the state line.

How to submit
Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources, Division of Forestry and Wildlife takes submissions through the route set out on its own sampling page.

Advertisement
Driving a deer into Hawaii

What may be carried across the Hawaii line

This is the rule a hunter is most likely to miss, because it is written by the state being entered rather than the state the animal was taken in. Reading the regulations of the state hunted in cover to cover does not surface it. Nationally, 42 of the 50 states restrict what crosses and 27 refuse an intact carcass from anywhere at all.

No published restrictionNothing on the state line, which puts the whole question back on the state the animal was taken in.

Hawaii publishes no rule of its own on carcasses arriving from another state, which leaves the rules of the state the animal was taken in as the ones that apply.

The state wildlife agency publishes no carcass import restriction of any kind; bringing an animal or an animal product into Hawaii is handled by a different state department, whose rules are not recorded here.

Where the state stands

CWD in Hawaii: status, zones and baiting

Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources, Division of Forestry and Wildlife reports no detection of the disease in Hawaii's wild deer herd.

Hawaii draws no management or surveillance zone, which means its rules apply the same way in every county. Several states added a first zone within a season of a first detection, so a zone boundary is the part of a state's rules most likely to change.

A green steel dumpster stencilled DEER CARCASS mounted on a single axle trailer in a sandy pine clearing, with a hoist gantry beside it and a pile of soil behind
The disposal end of the same trip, parked in a pine flatwood with a gantry to hang a deer from. Forty one states publish a rule about what happens to the bones and the head after the meat comes off, and in most of them it reads the same way: landfill, or back on the property where the deer was taken, and nowhere else. It is the part of the law that applies whether or not anybody ever asks for a test. “Deer carcass disposal”, The Bushranger, CC BY-SA 4.0

Hawaii CWD questions

Advertisement

CWD rules in other states

CWD rules in every stateHow the 50 states differ on sampling, cost and what crosses a state line.Venomous snakes by stateWhich species a state actually has, and where the range maps put them.Burn permits by stateWhether a permit is needed today, and who issues it.Firewood permitsWhat a cord off public land costs, and which forests still sell one.Hawaii tick activityThe weather driven tick index for Hawaii, updated daily.

Hawaii read September 23, 2026 from Game Mammal Hunting, Division of Forestry and Wildlife, linked above. Carcass rules, zone boundaries and sampling requirements change between one season’s regulations and the next, and a state can add a rule mid season after a new detection, so the DOFAW document linked above is the one that governs. Every state is on the CWD testing hub.