Two Drumheller Firefighters came home from the National FireFit Championship with more than personal bests and medals.

They come home with a 2016 FireFit event for the valley.

Duane Bolin and Merv Smith are avid competitors. They competed in both individual and team events at nationals in Kitchener, Ontario on September 19 and 20.

Duane ran a personal best of 1:53 in his individual event, Smith finished with a 2:10, a season best. In the two-man relay, they ran a 1:53 in the wildcard round.

In the team event, on competition day, they ran a 1:56 in the two man, which placed them second overall in the category. 

“The team we lost to, we beat them twice this year,” said Bolin laughing. “They had the race of their life and beat us by a second and half.”

They also came home with the okay to host a regional Fire fit competition in 2016.

“We have a good relationship with the organizers and we see them every weekend we compete,” said Bolin. “We got to know them really well when we hosted it in 2011. They loved the venue, it is unique how we had it beside the World’s Largest Dinosaur, it is a perfect fit.”

In 2011 Drumheller hosted about 120 in the individual events from across Canada.

The Drumheller event next year has the potential for even more as Bolin explains this will be a regional contest on the weekend before nationals, which will be hosted in Calgary.

“We’re hosting on September 10 and 11. The following weekend is being hosted at Spruce Meadows. The good thing is how nationals work is there are three wildcard days before the actual tournament,” he explains. “With Drumheller being the week before we might get a lot of the national top end competitors to come to Drumheller the week before knowing they can race Saturday and Sunday, and then pop into Calgary and race the rest of the week.”

“We might get a lot of the top end athletes from out east. They will come out early and make a week holiday of it. We could get a really good showing.”

He says they typically cap events at about180 individual competitors.

‘I think we could reach that max,” said Bolin adding that the community has the capacity to host this size of event.

“It could be more beneficial to the town with more people staying at hotels and using restaurants,” he said. They are in the initial planning phases. It appears this could be the same weekend as the Dinosaur Valley Half Marathon.

“I don’t think we will conflict, I think we will compliment each other,” he said.  

With hunting season less than a month away, deer hunters are reminded of the seriousness of Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD).

The Alberta Government has added Wildlife Management Units (WMU) on the northwest and southwest sides of Drumheller to the list of mandatory testing for CWD. 

CWD is a brain disease that mainly deer and white-tailed deer contract. It has been around for a number of years, District Fish and Wildlife Officer Jeff Zimmer told The Mail, and has begun to spread west from Saskatchewan. 

“It continues to spread, to the point where now most of the zones around Drumheller, have a monitoring program in place. What that means is that in the zones around Drumheller it is mandatory that people submit their deer heads for testing,” Zimmer explained. 

He mentioned that once a person has shot a deer, they are required to submit the head for testing. During hunting season a special freezer will be set up in Drumheller for hunters to drop off their deer heads. Each of the heads must have a green CWD label filled out and attached to them. Once they are submitted, Zimmer said the heads are sent to Edmonton for testing. 

Zimmer added that if a hunter’s deer comes back with a positive result, the person will be notified.

Last year, 86 heads out of 4,000 tested positive for CWD. Zimmer continued by saying that if results did come back positive, it is up to the person if they want to bring the meat to be disposed of or keep it. 

Zimmer said tests have been conducted in the United States on people who have eaten meat from deer who tested positive for CWD and have found no transfer to humans so far. 

Zimmer also says it is mandatory for hunters to submit deer heads, but is voluntary to submit elk and moose heads. He said if hunters are concerned with submitting trophy heads, there are ways to work around that. 

“The biologist will actually take the whole head, test it and then send the head back to the hunter,” he said. 

He added it has been found that deer who tend to have CWD often stay around ditches or in urban areas because there are less predators.

“The important thing with CWD is that we are trying to isolate it to certain areas,” Zimmer said, explaining that often in the spring people will pick up orphaned fawns and take them to the rehab centre near Innisfail, which is outside Drumheller's WMU.  

“Unfortunately, because we are in a Chronic Wasting Disease zone now, we can’t take any injured deer out of the zone,” Zimmer explained. 

For more information on CWD and submitting deer heads, visit www.mywildalberta.com or contact Zimmer at the Drumheller Fish and Wildlife Enforcement Branch at 403-823-1670.