Outdoor Pursuits

For more than two decades, Alberta’s hunting community has fought tooth and nail against one of the clearest threats to our wild deer, elk, and moose herds: the game-farm industry and its high-fenced pens. We watched chronic wasting disease (CWD) leap from captive cervids into wild populations like a slow-motion wildfire. We read the science. We buried our heads in our hands when positive cases started showing up in wild herds near known game farms. And when the idea of “Cervid Harvest Preserves” (CHPs)—pay-to-slay petting zoos for rich trophy hunters—was first floated years ago, we roared so loudly that the government backed down. Discussion forums like outdoorsmenforum.ca lit up for months. Petitions circulated. Letters flooded MLAs’ offices. We won... or so we thought.

Fast-forward to 2025 and the Alberta government has quietly resurrected the corpse of Cervid Harvest Preserves on game farms. Same high fences. Same canned hunts. Same guaranteed trophies for the highest bidder. Same middle finger to every fair-chase hunter who has ever glassed a ridge at dawn, rattled in a whitetail, or called in a big bull elk. The betrayal stings worse because we have already paid the price for this industry’s negligence, and now they want us to pay again.

Let’s not mince words: game farming in Alberta has been an unmitigated disaster for wild cervids. Since CWD was first detected in a captive elk in 1996, the disease has marched headfirst into our free-ranging herds. Every peer-reviewed study points the finger squarely at game farms: unnatural densities, nose-to-nose contact across fences, escaped animals, sloppy carcass disposal, and the movement of live animals between farms.

A 2019 paper in Ecological Applications found that wild deer within 15 kilometres of known CWD-positive game farms were significantly more likely to test positive. By 2024, CWD had been confirmed in 39 of Alberta’s 87 wildlife management units. Hunters are now forced to submit heads for mandatory testing in huge swaths of the province. This isn’t some theoretical risk anymore—it’s happening in real time, and every single hunter with a tag is living with the consequences.Yet, instead of finally pulling the plug on an industry that never should have been allowed in the first place, the government is doubling down. They’re green-lighting the one thing we killed dead a generation ago: domestic, pay-per-shot hunts inside game-farm fences. They call it economic diversification for rural Alberta. We call it legalized poaching with a credit card. Make no mistake, these are not hunts. They are executions. Hand-reared, corn-fed, sometimes drugged or tranquilized animals released into pens and then shot by clients who couldn’t track a bleeding elephant through fresh snow.

The “trophy” is guaranteed, which is the antithesis of everything ethical hunting stands for. Fair chase? Gone. Hunting skills? Irrelevant. Respect for the animal? Laughable. All that remains is ego and a taxidermy bill. Worse, these operations will further tarnish the public image of hunting at the exact moment we can least afford it. Anti-hunters already paint us as bloodthirsty barbarians. Now imagine what the image of hunting will be when they hear the words “hunting in Alberta.”

Recruitment and retention of new hunters will be hurt, as many will think twice when their kids or grandkids associate hunting with fenced shooting galleries instead of wind-burned cheeks and earned success. And spare us the tired argument that “it’s just on private land.” CWD doesn’t respect fences or property lines. Every new CHP is another potential prion factory sitting in the middle of a wildlife travel corridor. The risk isn’t hypothetical; we’ve already seen captive animals escape during floods, fence breaches, and from plain old negligence. We had a clear path forward years ago that everyone (except the game-farm lobby) agreed upon—buy out the remaining farms at fair market value and convert the land to public access or conservation easements. Turn a liability into an asset. Give hunters back the ground that was fenced off decades ago. End the disease vector once and for all. Instead, the government is choosing short-term political points with a tiny handful of game farm owners over the long-term health of Alberta’s wild herds and the integrity of our hunting heritage.

With CWD already endemic in Alberta’s wild cervid populations, the Alberta Wildlife Federation (AWF) warns that CHPs could exacerbate the spread to wild herds, livestock, and grain industries. They argue the government should shut down the farmed cervid industry entirely, following other jurisdictions, instead of propping it up. The AWF advocates for science-based wildlife management with stakeholder input, not industry bailouts that could erode public trust in hunting (supported by over 70% of Albertans).

To every MLA who voted for this, to every bureaucrat who drafted the regulations, and to the Premier who let it happen: you have spit in the face of Alberta’s fair chase hunters. You have chosen the profits of a few over the passion of many. You have ignored two decades of science, sacrifice, and grassroots opposition.

Alberta’s wild cervids—and the fair-chase hunters who pursue them—deserve better than this betrayal. CHPs are a backwards step for conservation in Alberta, not a step forward.

For the previous Outdoor Pursuits article, click here.