Saskatchewan is aiming to better understand Chronic Wasting Disease, and to do so they're once again asking hunters for their help.

The Saskatchewan government runs an annual program where they ask hunters to provide samples that they can use to study Chronic Wasting Disease.

That's a fatal neurological disease that affects members of the deer family, which causes a wasting-away type illness in the animals, often causing them to die within two years.

Wildlife health specialist with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Health Dr. Iga Stasiak says that the program has been long-running, and they're looking for some more help.

"We rely on submission from hunters from across the province. Hunters submit the heads of the harvested deer and elk for testing. Those heads are delivered to our processing lab outside of Regina. We extract brain and lymph node tissue for testing through that program."

This year the study is targeting a few areas which include the eastern part of the province.

"This is an annual program, it's something that we've done for quite some time. There are some regions of the province that we are predominantly targeting and interested in. this year that include zone 2W, 9, 10, 35, and 37. Along the Manitoba border, as well as zone 50 and 55 in the boreal transition zone."

"We are particularly interested in eastern Saskatchewan, so along the Manitoba border. This is an area where we're seeing an incursion of CWD, so infection rates are still relatively low and we're wanting to track that. As well, we're also worried about the disease moving north into the boreal forest."

Getting the data is especially important for research that will go towards tracking and predicting population numbers.

"It's important for us to have areas that we're going to be monitoring over the long term where we have really robust data and really good numbers. That's why we're targeting these areas, so we can use them to monitor to see what's happening over time and that we have an adequate sample size to do that."

More information on where people can drop off their samples for the study can be found on the Saskatchewan government's website.