Minnesota DNR officials are asking landowners in a portion of southeastern Minnesota within roughly 10 miles of where a Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) positive wild deer was found to assist with the agency’s disease sampling efforts.
Landowners who accept shooting permits will be allowed to take deer themselves or authorize additional shooters to take deer. There will be no tradtional special hunt because all the land in the surveillance area is private land that cannot be hunted without permission.
Population estimates indicate there are 6,500 deer in the CWD survelliance area, which stretches from Wanamingo, Zumbrota and Zumbro Falls southward to Kasson, Byron and Rochester. DNR, working with landowners, will harvest 900 deer within the survelliance area, 500 of which will be taken within a roughly five-mile radius of the confirmed CWD-positive deer. Each will be tested for CWD.
A deer feeding ban covering Dodge, Goodhue, Olmsted, and Wabasha counties will become effective Feb. 14. The feeding ban includes a wider area because the potential extent of the CWD infection is not known and one of the most probable mechanisms for CWD spread among deer is over a food source that concentrates animals.
