Louisiana Dept. of Wildlife & Fisheries · live watch

Louisiana CWD Zones & Deer Areas

Centered on Garley Tactical Overwatch, LLC — Franklin Parish. CWD zone boundaries pulled directly from LDWF's own published GIS layers, not approximated. Statewide Deer Hunting Area rosters & season calendars are built in below the zone data, so any future CWD zone anywhere in Louisiana slots into the same map without a rebuild.

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Address search calls the free U.S. Census geocoder from the page itself. In this sandboxed preview that outside request is blocked, so use the lat/lon fields to test — once this runs on your own site the address box will resolve on its own.

This location sits outside the mapped zone. Plotting LDWF's own published CWD boundaries against it, freshly re-pulled from their live GIS services: it falls roughly 3.8 miles outside the current Control Area / Buffer Zone line, about 5.8 miles from the pending Sept 20 expansion area, and about 9 miles from the nearest Enhanced Mitigation Zone. Under the rule's plain wording — "only within the CWD Management Zone" — that means this specific tract is very likely not eligible for the velvet season, even though Franklin Parish overall does contain zone acreage closer to the Tensas line. Still confirm with LDWF before hunting; see the note on data precision below.

What actually makes a CWD Management Zone

It isn't a fixed shape drawn once — it's assembled fresh around every confirmed positive case. When a deer tests positive, LDWF's Declaration of Emergency draws two nested rings from that detection site: an inner Enhanced Mitigation Zone (roughly a 5–10 mile radius, all baiting/feeding banned) and an outer Buffer Zone (roughly out to 15 miles, baiting allowed only by mechanical/electronic broadcast). Both rings get snapped to "identifiable landmarks — roads, waterways or parish lines" so hunters have a line they can actually find on the ground, rather than a bare compass radius. Each new positive case anywhere in the state adds or grows a ring the same way (that's how the current shape ended up as several overlapping rings around Tensas, Catahoula, Concordia & Ouachita). Legally, the zone is created and expanded by LWFC Declaration of Emergency, then made permanent through the Notice of Intent rulemaking process (the Sept 20, 2026 expansion is one of these). A zone comes back off the books only after three consecutive sampling seasons with the positive rate under 2.5%.

Open today · Sept 12–20

New velvet buck archery season

LDWF's official 2026–27 regulations are explicit on where this applies: "Only within the CWD Management Zone" — not the surrounding parish, not Deer Area 1 or 6 at large. "Special archery seasons in Deer Areas 1, 2 & 6 are limited to private lands located within the CWD Management Zones." Being in one of the parishes below is necessary but not sufficient — your specific tract has to sit inside the mapped zone line.

Legal buck: one hardened antler broken through the skin, or velvet antlers 3″+ long · bucks only.
Carcass rule: boned meat, quarters, antlers & cleaned skull plates may leave the zone; whole carcasses may not — tag parts with your name & harvest info.
Testing: free voluntary CWD sampling available at harvest.

confirmed cases

3.8

mi outside zone

parishes touched

Zone legend — plotted from LDWF's own GIS data

Enhanced Mitigation ZoneAll baiting, feeding & supplemental attractants banned. Real boundary, LDWF ArcGIS layer.

CWD Buffer ZoneBaiting allowed only by non-stationary / mechanical or electronic broadcast methods. Real boundary.

Current CWD Control AreaThe live, most-current outer boundary — supersedes the two fills above where it extends past them.

Proposed expansion (NOI)Becomes rule Sept 20, 2026 — west of the current line, near La Salle/Catahoula.

● Parish seatNamed towns for orientation.

Detection clusters

Show official zone boundaries

Shade affected parishes (approximate)

Statewide deer hunting areas

Show Deer Hunting Areas (click any parish for its season dates)

Or look up a Deer Area by number

Outline this area's parishes on the map

These are the real LDWF boundaries, freshly re-pulled from their public GIS services (the same data behind the Outdoor Explorer) — I checked LDWF's full catalog of CWD-related feature layers (current, historical, and pending) and confirmed the entire state has exactly one CWD cluster right now, mapped here in full: the Control Area, Buffer Zone, Enhanced Mitigation Zone, and the pending Sept 20 expansion, including a small detached area north of the main cluster near Bastrop/Morehouse Parish that an earlier pull of this map had missed. There is no CWD zone anywhere else in Louisiana as of this data pull. Two caveats remain: the Enhanced Mitigation/Buffer split is keyed to LDWF's Sept 18, 2025 zone-type layer, and every shape is simplified (~1–1.5 km tolerance) to keep the file small, which is the source of any small discrepancy in the distance-to-boundary figures. For a hunt/citation-grade answer, cross-check the LDWF Outdoor Explorer or call LDWF directly.

Real roads load automatically. The map calls in live street/road tiles (OpenStreetMap data via CartoDB) the same way any normal webpage would. The one place that can't reach them is this chat's own hosted preview — its content-security policy blocks outside map tiles the same way it blocks most outside content, so this specific in-chat view falls back to a plain lat/lon graticule with parish-seat towns labeled. Download the file below or drop it on your own site and the road basemap just works, nothing to change.

Drag to pan · scroll or pinch to zoom · click a parish, town or ring for details