Deadly Deer Virus is Spreading

If you’re a deer hunter or lover, make it a New Year’s resolution to learn more about Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease (EHD).

For decades, when such species-specific conservation organizations as Ducks Unlimited, The Mule Deer Foundation, and other groups did their best to help the wellbeing of a species, whitetail deer hunters took the constant expansion of whitetail herds as a given. Not any more.

Whitetails as a species are by no means threatened, yet EHD can drop a local population by 75% seemingly overnight. As the photo above shows, carcasas are often found near water, and for good reason.

Patrick Durkin does a great job of covering the basics of this disastrous disease for Whitetail Journal.

As Scott Moran headed home after guiding elk bowhunters in Colorado in mid-September 2012, his thoughts shifted to bowhunting early-season whitetails in southeastern Wisconsin. He had good reason to be eager about his whitetail hunts. He and several neighbors east of Madison control a 1,200-acre square, much of it woodlots and wooded marsh surrounded by agricultural fields. Further, as a member of the Quality Deer Management Association for more than a decade, Moran works with his neighbors to maximize the deer herd’s potential by controlling the doe population and passing up younger bucks.

Soon after reaching home, however, Moran got bad news from a neighbor — he had found dead deer in and around a nearby pond.

Could the deer have died from a hemorrhagic disease? They knew dead deer near water in late summer and early fall often means bluetongue or epizootic hemorrhagic disease. They had also heard forecasts that 2012 could be a record-setting year for these diseases, which are so closely related that experts simply lump them as hemorrhagic diseases, or “HD” for short.

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