More than 1,500 deer tags will be available starting Tuesday morning for emergency hunts designed to assist the Idaho Department of Fish and Game’s effort to determine the prevalence of chronic wasting disease.
The tags, divided among 35 hunt areas, will be offered to Idaho residents on a first-come, first-served basis and sold only at Fish and Game offices. Individual tags will be tied to either private or public lands likely in game management units 14 and 15 and parts of 11A, 13, 18 and 23.
All deer taken in the special hunts must be tested for the disease. Fish and Game officials will collect samples from deer heads at check stations near the hunt areas or at regional offices in Lewiston and McCall.
Tags will sell for $10 and are limited to one per person on public land. Private land owners can choose people they wish to receive tags but the agency, not the landowner, will issue the tag.
The hunts are scheduled to end Dec. 19th, but if success rates are high, the hunts could end early. They could also be extended if success rates are low.
Hunters can keep the meat of the deer they kill and those with buck tags can keep the antlers. However, they must quarter or debone the animal at the kill site and present the head to a check station or regional office within 24 hours. The tags will come with special carcass-handling instructions that must be followed and the GPS coordinates of kill sites must be recorded.
Two mule deer bucks harvested during October in the Slate Creek drainage near Lucile in Idaho County were the first ever to test positive for Chronic Wasting Disease in Idaho. (Lewiston Tribune, IDFG)
