Huge Bummer!


Rhino

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As many of you know from reading some of my deer tales from this past season we were hit pretty hard by EHD this past season. I had been getting a big 17 point on cams from the time we started running the cams in mid July until my last pic of him on Sept., 13th. My buddy had made up his mind to pursue the other 17 point NT (the one we had called in the tracking dog to recover). I chose to go for this 180 class 17 point.

Target_Buck.jpg

From opening day through the season I kept cams running in the area but never caught him on cams again. By early November I was very concerned he had died from EHD too but I kept hunting his turf in the hope I was wrong. During the gun season I was convinced he had fallen to EHD. Last Thursday we went to Missouri to loosen stands. I told my buddy (Ernie) while we were there I wanted to search for this buck. I also told him another big 9 point that was in the area disappeared around the beginning of Sept. too. While loosening one of my stands Ernie checks around close and I hear him hooler "Al...I'm so sorry but I found him" Ernie walks back with the head of this buck he found in a small thick area ~75 yards from my stand. A few of his tines had been chewed on along with his left main beam. I couldn't help be feel bummed out spending so much time trying to get a crack at this buck that apparently died before the season opened.

17_point_RT.jpg

After we finished loosening all our 46 treestands we took up the search for the 9 point. Low and behold at the end of making a thorough search of his home turf...we found him too. He was across a creek ~100 yards from another one of my stands. Bummer...2 of the top end bucks in that area taken out by EHD.

Buck_5_01_RT1.jpg

9_point_RT.jpg

Besides these 2 bucks one of our neighbors killed the 2nd biggest buck in this part of the property...scored a little over 164 as an 11 point. There was another 10 point in the area that looked to be a low 150's class buck. Those were the top 4 bucks hanging around there.

In all, we found 15 deer that had died from EHD in this 350 to 400 acre part of the property. 2 other bucks (an 11 point posted in a prior thread) and another 11 point a little smaller than him also fell to EHD. The rest of the deer we found were does & fawns. We also found 5 deer (2 small, young bucks) on the other 1,000 acres of the property.

Needless to say...I'm not sure what to expect catching on the cams in this part of the property this year. Time will tell when we crank up the cams in mid July.

Edited by Rhino
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So sorry Al. You all put a lot of time and effort in to get trophy bucks and then EHD takes out your years of management. EHD hit hard in mid-western IL and knocked out a lot of mature deer. It's been 3 years now and a lot of passing on does and little bucks so I'm hoping we see better numbers and bigger bucks this fall. I also hope for a lot of rain this summer.

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Sad to see. EHD can devastate a deer herd and many years may pass before it recovers. We had a Blue Tongue outbreak here last year and maybe a dozen or so deer did not make it in our neighborhood, although not the quality of bucks you lost. We actually watched several deer suffer for days before they succumbed to disease. Drought and above average temperatures concentrated deer near water/food sources which potentiated the spread of disease. The best one can hope for is a quick recovery of the herd and possibly a better genetic tendency to withstand pestilence of all kinds.

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