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New Hampshire has not found CWD, and its rules are written around keeping it out

New Hampshire CWD Testing and Deer Carcass Rules

New Hampshire has never detected CWD, tests about 400 hunter killed deer a year through its own surveillance program rather than on hunter request, and bars cervid carcasses and parts from any jurisdiction where CWD has been found unless they are deboned meat, antlers, clean skull caps, upper canine teeth, hides or capes with no head, or finished mounts.

Not required
Is a sample required
no standing collection published
Restricted
Carrying a carcass in
No whole carcass from an affected state
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 New Hampshire

No mandatory sampling published

New Hampshire Fish and Game Department 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
New Hampshire Fish and Game Department takes submissions through the route set out on its own sampling page.

The Department collects approximately 400 samples from hunter-killed deer annually, which are submitted to a laboratory for testing.
Deer Diseases, New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, read September 23, 2026. Read it at the source
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Driving a deer into New Hampshire

What may be carried across the New Hampshire 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 whole carcass from an affected stateWhether the drive is legal turns on where the animal was taken rather than on how it was packed.

An intact carcass may not be carried into New Hampshire from a state or province where the disease has been found. An animal from anywhere else falls outside the rule.

Cervid carcasses and carcass parts may not be brought into New Hampshire from any jurisdiction where CWD has been detected, except for de-boned meat, antlers, antlers on skull caps stripped of all soft tissue, upper canine teeth, hides or capes with no part of the head attached, and finished taxidermy mounts.

What NHFG admits, in its own categories:

  • de-boned meat
  • antlers
  • antlers attached to skull caps from which all soft tissue has been removed
  • upper canine teeth
  • hides or capes with no part of the head attached
  • finished taxidermy mounts
NH Fish and Game prohibits the importation into the state of cervid carcasses or parts of carcasses from jurisdictions in which CWD has been detected (see map), except for de-boned meat, antlers, antlers attached to skull caps from which all soft tissue has been removed, upper canine teeth (a.k.a. buglers, whistlers or ivories), hides or capes with no part of the head attached, and finished taxidermy mounts.
Deer Diseases, New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, read September 23, 2026. Read it at the source
Where the state stands

CWD in New Hampshire: status, zones and baiting

New Hampshire Fish and Game Department reports no detection of the disease in New Hampshire's wild deer herd.

Baiting and feeding
No baiting or feeding ban published
NH Fish and Game began a CWD surveillance program for wild deer in the fall of 2002. The Department collects approximately 400 samples from hunter-killed deer annually, which are submitted to a laboratory for testing. To date, CWD has not been detected in any of the samples tested.
Deer Diseases, New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, read September 23, 2026. Read it at the source

New Hampshire 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

New Hampshire CWD questions

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CWD rules in other states

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New Hampshire read September 23, 2026 from Deer Diseases, New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, 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 NHFG document linked above is the one that governs. Every state is on the CWD testing hub.