More than 300 wild deer and elk will be shot around two Alberta farms where a single elk and deer were confirmed to have chronic wasting disease.
Alberta Sustainable Resource Development wants to increase its search for the disease in wild game in the Gibbons and Bon Accord area and the Fort Assiniboine area where CWD was found on the two different farms, a government News release
news said.
The 300 animals will be shot in two blocks of approximately nine townships each. Sustainable Resource Development staff will shoot mainly adult deer and a few elk. While hunters turned in heads of wild animals from the recent hunting season to the department for testing, there weren’t enough heads to have a statistically valid survey that could conclude whether there is CWD in the wild deer and elk population.
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The hunt will be from mid-February to the end of March on private property with landowners’ consent.
More than 3,000 wild and 6,300 farmed deer and elk have been examined since 1996, with only one farmed elk and one farmed white-tailed deer confirmed with the disease.
The majority of samples from wild deer and elk were obtained from animals shot during the fall hunting season and a special spring hunt near the Saskatchewan border in 2001.
