Outdoor News Daily

New Hampshire’s white-tailed deer population once again showed no evidence of chronic wasting disease (CWD), based on monitoring data gathered during the 2009 hunting season. New Hampshire Fish and Game Deer Biologist Kent Gustafson recently received results from a federally certified veterinary diagnostic laboratory that indicate that all the deer tissue samples taken during last fall’s hunting season tested negative for CWD. A total of 439 tissue samples were tested.

Chronic wasting disease is a neurological disorder that is fatal to white-tailed deer, mule deer, elk and moose, but the World Health Organization has concluded that there is no evidence that people can become infected with CWD.
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The state Natural Resources Board has approved revisions to proposed overwinter population goals for white-tailed deer, raising this management benchmark to a statewide target of nearly 800,000, which is a Correction — 8 percent increase over current levels.

The board, meeting in Madison March 16, approved increases in population targets in 43 of Wisconsin’s 131 deer management units. The new goals were developed at the request of the Assembly Natural Resources Committee after the committee heard testimony on hunter dissatisfaction with the number of deer seen and harvested during the 2009 gun deer season. The legislative committee did not accept a previous proposal to raise population targets in 13 deer management units.
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On March 8, 2010 the National Park Service (NPS) announced the Preferred Alternative of using Direct Reduction by Firearms, which incorporates the use of certified volunteers to reduce the elk population in TRNP. The following is a list of common questions and answers related to this announcement. These questions and answers are the North Dakota Game and Fish Department”s (NDGFD) interpretation of the Preferred Alternative based on discussions with the NPS, Governor Hoeven and Senator Dorgan.

Who is the lead agency for implementing this Preferred Alternative?
The NPS is the agency responsible for managing TRNP and this management action. Therefore, the NPS will be the lead in developing and implementing any actions intended to reduce elk numbers in the park.
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Hunters registered 329,103 deer for the 2009 deer hunting seasons. This includes a total antlerless harvest of 191,715 and antlered (buck) harvest of 134,156. The grand total includes 3,232 deer recorded as unknown.

The closely watched total buck harvest for all archery and gun seasons was down 3 percent compared to 2008.

The 2009 archery buck harvest was up 19 percent over 2008 at 41,402 making it the fourth best archery buck harvest in history. Archers accounted for 31 percent of the total buck harvest in 2009. This was up from the 2008 archery buck harvest which accounted for 25 percent of the total buck kill. Gun buck harvest declined by 11 percent last year from 103,845 in 2008 to 92,754, the 29th highest gun buck total on record.
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