Researchers ask hunters to refrain from shooting deer with radio collars

UW–Madison researchers are asking south central Wisconsin deer hunters participating in the fall hunt to refrain from shooting animals with radio collars. The collared animals have been part of an intensive survey of deer behavior and movement and research results from the study promise scientists and wildlife managers better insight into how chronic wasting disease (CWD) is spreading across Wisconsin’s landscape.

As many as 173 deer have been fitted with the collars to facilitate intensive radio telemetric studies of deer movement over the landscape. The deer are mostly located in eastern Iowa and western Dane counties, near Arena, Spring Green and Mount Horeb. In particular, bucks fitted with radio collars are important to learning more about how CWD spreads among wild deer.

“The key for understanding transmission across the landscape is the bucks,” says Nancy Mathews, a wildlife biologist in the UW–Madison Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. “We really need the males, so if people can refrain from shooting them it will help us continue an important study aimed at understanding how deer behavior affects the transmission of this disease.”