BCWF encourages local hunters to participate
The B.C. Wildlife Federation is encouraging local hunters to participate in targeted management hunt planned for January to help control Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) in deer.
The Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship has announced a targeted hunt in Cranbrook from January 5 to 31, 2026, aimed at reducing the risk of chronic wasting disease and increasing sampling to monitor its presence.
Two additional cases of CWD were confirmed this week, bringing the total to eight, six of them in deer harvested near Cranbrook.
Because the hunt will take place in the vicinity of Cranbrook and across both Crown and private lands, hunters should be familiar with the area before they participate.
“The hunt is in a relatively small zone with a significant portion being private land and community forests. Hunters interested in participating in the hunt should review all relevant maps so they know where no-hunting and no-shooting areas are” said BCWF Executive Director Jesse Zeman. “The Conservation Officer Service will be patrolling the area during the hunt to ensure compliance with all the rules and regulations.”
Hunters can review the hunt boundary here, can view private property layers here and both the map and layers can be viewed on the iHunter app.
Hunters in the designated Cranbrook zone will be allowed to harvest one additional deer, in addition to the regional bag limit of two. The additional deer will only be allowed to be harvested during the management period.
The hunt will allow the harvest of both antlered and antlerless mule deer and white-tailed deer. Hunters play an important role in efforts to contain CWD. Their sample submissions are crucial to disease detection and control.
The province estimates that fewer than one per cent of deer in the Cranbrook area are infected with CWD.
Thanks to investment and resources dedicated to the testing regime by the provincial government, processing times for CWD samples have improved considerably over the past year. We would like to commend the Ministry of Agriculture and Water, Land and Resource Stewardship for speeding up test result times. However, the testing facility in Abbotsford has been affected by flooding, which means that samples may be delayed for samples that have not been tested.
CWD is a fatal infection that affects species in the deer family (cervids), such as mule deer, white-tailed deer, elk, moose, and caribou.
“We continue to encourage hunters across B.C. to submit samples from every animal they harvest, so that the disease can be accurately tracked and contained,” said Zeman.