The Department of Natural Resources (DNR) on Monday unveiled an aggressive plan to kill about 1,200 deer in a newly declared, 370-square-mile zone in southeastern Minnesota to thwart an outbreak of chronic wasting disease.

The herd reduction in Fillmore County will start Dec. 31 with a 16-day hunting season, followed by supplemental shooting by private landowners under special permits. If those two harvest methods leave the DNR short of its lowering goal, sharpshooters could be brought in under contract, the agency said.

The disease management zone is within a 10-mile radius of Preston, but the emergency also will affect residents throughout Fillmore, Houston, Mower, Olmsted and Winona counties. People in those counties will be banned from feeding deer because it's one of the most probable mechanisms for the spread of CWD, the DNR said. Whitetails come in close contact when they congregate over food sources.

"One simple step that anyone can do to help prevent the spread of disease is to stop feeding deer," said Lou Cornicelli, the DNR's wildlife research manager.

The actions, including the suspension of antler point restrictions that have fostered the growth of regal-sized bucks in the southeast, are in response to the DNR's detection of two CWD-positive deer shot by hunters a mile apart from each other, a few miles west of Lanesboro.

Those test results from a 2,800-sample DNR surveillance program this fall in the region south and east of Hastings marked only the second recorded outbreak of CWD in wild deer in Minnesota. The state's first CWD emergency was 10 years ago when one CWD-positive deer was shot by a hunter near Pine Island, also in southeast Minnesota.

Cornicelli said the DNR is borrowing heavily from its Pine Island disease management response, where special hunting and a wider feeding ban reduced deer densities and lessened the opportunity for deer-to-deer contact. Such "spatial separation" is needed for the disease to "burn itself out," Cornicelli said.

The thorough harvest of deer in Fillmore County's scenic bluff country, including the shooting of small bucks that were previously off limits, will come as a blow to private landowners who hunt, their extended families and outsiders who have inherited, leased or purchased acreage in the area for deer hunting. In the case of Pine Island, it took years for the local deer population to bounce back.

The DNR has set a public meeting for Thursday at 7 p.m. to explain its latest strategy and listen to feedback. The event will be at the Fillmore Central School Auditorium in Preston.

Also in the works is an aerial survey of the deer herd in the disease management zone. Starting Tuesday morning, Cornicelli said, DNR crews will count deer from the air above certain areas of the zone to extrapolate an estimate of the population.

At this time, the agency wants to test 900 mature deer for CWD, Cornicelli said. That should be accomplished by having hunters harvest 1,200 deer because one-quarter of those animals are likely to be fawns, he said.

The special 16-day season will be conducted by allowing hunters to harvest deer using any unfilled tags from the 2016 season. Cornicelli said the DNR hopes to meet its harvest goal without hiring sharpshooters. He emphasized that landowner permission is needed for any hunting on private land.

Tony Kennedy • 612-673-4213