Is it Baiting that Spreads CWD? [News]

Nipawin Journal
February 08, 2006
By Robert Arnason
Photo: Nipawin Journal

It's a question that has provoked many kitchen table arguments in Saskatchewan - is hunting deer with bait, right or wrong? For Ken McDaid the answer is clear. Crystal clear. "Shooting a bear with its head in a barrel or a deer with its head in a pile of grain, that's wrong," said McDaid, who farms south of Chitek Lake. "To me, that's not hunting."

McDaid is president of the Fair Chase League of Saskatchewan, an organization with a mission of fairer hunting and a ban on baiting in our province. Since their inception in 1994, most of their letters and phone calls centred on a single point - baiting is unethical.

But recently their argument has changed. "We started out on ethics and then got into this disease thing," said McDaid, who is a hunter but prefers to walk the forest while searching for game. "When you start artificial feeding and bunching them up, that's when disease becomes a problem." The Fair Chase League and McDaid are convinced baiting of deer is connected to the rise of Chronic Wasting Disease in Saskatchewan.

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