MADISON, Wis. -- An audit released on Thursday finds the state's multimillion-dollar efforts to slow chronic wasting disease, or CWD, in Wisconsin's deer herd aren't working.

TALKBACK: Have Thoughts On CWD Fight?

The Legislative Audit Bureau's report said that the Department of Natural Resources has spent more than $32 million battling the disease since it was discovered in Wisconsin in 2002.

The DNR has been working to thin the deer herd in areas where the disease has been found. Those efforts include increasing the length of hunting seasons, requiring hunters to shoot a doe before a buck, banning baiting and feeding deer in 26 counties and using sharpshooters to kill more deer.

The audit finds the number of deer in the special CWD zones has actually increased from about 26 deer per square mile in 2002 to about 38 deer in 2005.

The report also said that 651 free-ranging deer statewide have tested positive for CWD. All of those deer were found in the southern part of the state with roughly 90 percent in Dane and Iowa counties.

The report comes as deer gun hunting season begins on Saturday.

The annual hunt draws 600,000, and the Department of Natural Resource's wildlife chief said the economic impact of the hunt is in the multimillion-dollar range.

"It generates that because, mainly because we think of it as a healthy resource, but if it becomes sick and this disease spreads across the state, then certainly economically we're going to feel the impact," said Tom Hauge, wildlife management director at the DNR. "Wisconsin has a lot at stake with this disease."

So far, there is no evidence that the deer disease is dangerous to humans, WISC-TV reported.

"And yet the health experts tell us that you shouldn't eat a CWD-positive deer," Hauge said.

"It's always in the background that there might be something worse than what we have right now, where this disease can jump to another species other than deer, elk, moose. Maybe it would be a domestic animal or maybe a human or something of that sort," said Jerry Davis, a wildlife biologist and outdoor writer.

Experts said that CWD is a horrible, deadly disease for deer.

"Over a two- to three-year period, it turns a healthy animal into basically a walking bag of bones," Hauge said.

Davis said he supports the DNR's strategy of dramatically reducing the deer herd, and he estimated that 45 deer have been harvested on his 100 acres of land in the Disease Eradication Zone since the outbreak in 2002.

But others have been reluctant to embrace the "eradication" word.

"Some of the initial responses, where people equated trying to eradicate the disease to eradicating the deer herd, really went down the wrong way," Hauge said.

Members of the Quality Deer Management Association, many of them landowners, are still at odds with the DNR's goal of reducing herd numbers to three to five an acre.

"I think that was the problem with the buy-in earlier from the land owners and the hunters," said Joe Brunker, Midwest regional director of the Quality Deer Management Association.

Some see the DNR's plan as unrealistic and a surefire way to kill the hunting tradition.

"The DNR and us both don't know exactly where people are going to continue to hunting with deer levels that low if the tradition is going to be able to continue," Brunker said.

"The choices we make will have consequences. They'll have consequences certainly for the little kids, and our success or failure will be what they inherit," Hauge said.

To date, there are no tangible victories in a battle that has so far cost more than $32 million.

Five years ago, there were more than 30 deer per mile in the Disease Eradication Zone. Currently, that count remains about the same, WISC-TV reported.

"They're saying it hasn't worked so far, and yet what would it be if they had done nothing?" Davis said.

Testing indicates that the disease has been more or less contained.

"It is a sacrifice to eliminate or to reduce considerably (the herd) and maybe take away much of your hunting opportunity for the enjoyment of somebody 10 years from now, 20 years from now, or even 50 years from now," Davis said. "We're sacrificing in hope to save the deer hunting tradition in Wisconsin."

DNR Secretary Scott Hassett said he plans to seek public input next spring on how best to proceed in the CWD fight.

For now, most hunters are hoping for a bountiful harvest, particularly in the CWD zone, so that more radical measures might not be needed.

Hunters Say Change Afoot For This Season

A leader of one hunting group said that many hunters will face changes this year for the tradition-steeped gun hunt.

Ed Harvey of the Wisconsin Conservation Congress said that hunters received the changes in return for promising to trim the size of the burgeoning deer herd by shooting enough does and young bucks to check its growth.

Harvey said that hunters should be feeling a lot of pressure if they want to keep the changes.

What looms if enough antlerless deer aren't voluntarily killed is more state regulations requiring hunters to do it, he said

The nine-day season opens just before sunrise on Saturday. More than 600,000 hunters are expected to take to the fields and woods.

The DNR estimates the whitetail herd at up to 1.7 million deer -- about the same as a year ago.

The agency said that if hunters don't kill enough antlerless deer this fall, an October hunt will be revived next season and more areas of the state will require hunters to shoot an antlerless deer to qualify to shoot a more coveted buck.

Many hunters said that they dislike both ideas.