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1. AGFC Proposes Regulations To Manage Deadly Disease In Deer & Elk [AR] By Zuzanna Sitek 5NewsOnline.com May 20, 2016 LITTLE ROCK (KFSM) - The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission approved general hunting regulations Thursday (May 19) and outlined proposed regulations to manage the spread of chronic wasting disease (CWD), which has been found in dozens of deer and several elk in Northwest Arkansas. The CWD-focused proposals include: * Prohibiting the use of scents and lures that contain cervid urine, effective January 1, 2017, * Allowing deer and elk hunting with the use of bait Oct. 1 to Dec. 31 statewide, * Prohibiting the feeding of wildlife statewide, with exceptions for bird feeders and other types of feeding that do not concentrate deer, * Removing the three-point rule and increase the bag limit from four to five deer and the antler-less bag limit to three with firearms in deer zones 1 and 2, * Liberalizing deer season on Bearcat Hollow, Buffalo National River, Gene Rush, Ozark National Forest, Piney Creeks, Sweden Creek Natural Area and White Rock WMAs, * Requiring all elk harvested to be submitted for CWD testing, * Prohibiting the rehabilitation of deer statewide, * Establishing a CWD management zone in counties with known positives and those close to known positives, * Establishing a private land CWD management program in the CWD management zone to allow landowners to take additional deer off their property to reduce deer density and slow the spread of the disease, * Prohibiting the transport of certain portions of cervid carcasses outside the CWD management zone. This will allow only deboned meat, cleaned skull plates, hides, teeth and taxidermy products to be transported out of the CWD management zone, * Allowing button bucks to be checked as antlerless deer in deer zones and WMAs within the CWD management zone, * Establishing a core elk management zone of Boone, Carroll, Madison, Newton and Searcy counties, and allow hunters to harvest any elk found outside these counties during deer season, * Increasing the private land antlerless elk quota in the core elk management zone from 24 to 40, * Creating a non-commercial hunting enclosure permit for high-fenced facilities, and require those facilities to submit CWD samples for all deer that die within the respective facility, allow annual inspections, and maintain accurate deer harvest records. There would also be a moratorium on the issuance of new permits after July 1, 2017. Full text:
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