MOUNT AIRY, N.C. — The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission confirmed its first positive case of chronic wasting disease in a deer this past March.

The agency met in April to discuss some of the next steps being taken to help isolate the issue and improve detection.

Brandon Johnson is locked and loaded for the upcoming deer season. Johnson is an avid outdoorsman who has been hunting for the past 27 years. This year's deer season is going to look a bit different, however, due to a CWD-positive case discovered in Yadkin County, which is only a hop, skip and a jump away from Johnson's home in Surry County.

“To be honest with you, I never even heard about the disease until about two years ago,” Johnson said.

CWD stands for chronic wasting disease, and just as it sounds, it's not good for deer or hunters alike. The disease is caused by abnormal proteins and can be spread through direct contact between deer and environmental contamination.

“Say a hunter is baiting with apples for example. A deer comes in and eats half of an apple and say he leaves half of the apple there and a deer comes in and eats another half of the apple. I’m sure it could be spread that way and infect the second deer that comes and feeds,” Johnson said.

Wildlife experts are considering a lot of changes, one being the placement of bait. 

“It’s going to change a lot of ways of locating and harvesting deer,” Johnson said.

If a deer is found in one of the two established surveillance areas, it will need to be tested for CWD before harvesting. 

“Rather than harvesting a deer and going straight to the shed and start skinning it, we’re probably going to have to start taking the deer to a checking station and getting them tested for the disease, so it’s going to change a lot of the normal hunting ways for us,” Johnson said.

For Johnson, that changes things for not only him, but his family.

“Personally, I love to hunt and my family eats the wildlife that I harvest. Meat is getting so high in the grocery store, we eat a lot of meat throughout the year," Johnson said.

On top of feeding his family, Johnson is the co-founder of the nonprofit Carolina Outdoors, which focuses on youth and disabled hunts.

“Basically, it’s a bunch of mutual friends that grew up together. We have a mutual passion and love the outdoors, love hunting, love fishing, anything basically to do with the outdoors,” Johnson said.

Each week, Carolina Outdoors goes live on Facebook to talk all things hunting, and this is a topic that's going to be weighing heavy in conversation between Johnson and his buddies in the upcoming months.

“That is something that we will definitely probably be addressing. It’s going to change the way us and hunters do a lot of things, so it’s definitely going to be in deep discussion,” said Johnson.

It's a discussion that will shed light on the seriousness of this matter for current and future hunters.

The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission said they have been preparing for a situation like this for decades. Just last year, a CWD-positive case was found in Virginia, just 33 miles from the North Carolina border.

A CWD public forum will be held the first week of May to learn more about North Carolina's response.

For more information on the Carolina Outdoors nonprofit, click here.