Plain Talk With Rob Port

In North Dakota, game and fish officials have the authority to restrict bait hunting in order to protect animals from diseases like chronic wasting disease. And that's what they've been doing. When a case is found in the deer population, they ban the use of bait for hunting in an area 25 miles around it. This has a very vocal faction of the hunting community incensed. Many of them insist that chronic wasting disease is a hoax, or at the every least an exaggerated threat, and they want state officials stripped of the ability regulate bait hunting. There are three versions of bills to do that before lawmakers in Bismarck. Brock Wahl is a fifth-generation North Dakotan and chair of the North Dakota Backcountry Hunters and Anglers organization. On this episode of Plain Talk, he told co-host Chad Oban and I that while regulation of bait hunting hasn't been perfect, it is necessary, and it is protecting state deer populations from CWD. "It's undoutable that this is making a difference," he said. As for the opponent