EHD looks bad in the Midwest

[Rhino]

Hello everyone...been a while since I checked in.  I came home Wednesday from our initial stand prep trip to Missouri along with setting cams out for the 1st time.  Late start this year.  Before arriving, our neighbor/ranch manager called us to inform us he'd found 2 dead deer.  One on us and another on a neighbor east of him.  Get's worse!  While preparing stands around the whole property (~1,350 ac.) we've now found a total of 10 does and fawns (2 fawns appeared to be coyote kills), a 145 class 8 point, a big 10 point, and a young 8 point.  Some were mostly decomposed, some where recent.  The day after we found the big 8 we passed by it again and ~25 yards away was a doe that had died in our tracks since the prior day.  While going from one stand to the next, anytime we caught the scent of a rotting animal we looked for the source.  There were 4 we couldn't find due to shifting winds.  It's looking real bad up there. 

We called the local game warden to report the die offs.  He'd already gotten reports of over 80 dead deer in the county.  He said they figure about 10% get reported.  They are really concerned this year since he confirmed that usually EHD die offs start around mid August.  He started getting reports in mid July.  As many of you know the midge that transmits the EHD virus is a problem until at least mid September.  We'll probably be returning around the 2nd week of September to finish preparing our remaining stands and make our initial run on the cams.  We'll see then how many more new ones we find and hope to see some good healthy bucks on cams.

To make matters worse, here in Mississippi we've found over 20 dead deer so far this year.  Most have been near where the flood waters from the Mississippi river have been falling.  The flood waters didn't start falling until mid July here.  We only had about 120 acres on us that flooded but neighbors to the north, western, and southwestern sides had close to 20,000 acres under water.  Lots of deer migrants were on us since most of our place is high ground.  Our summer food plots located closest to the flood water areas have been getting hammered.  I can't say if it's EHD here too or excess stress to the deer herd and available food source.  Whatever it is I've never seen die offs like this in Mississippi before.  I hope y'all aren't seeing the same problem.

[wtnhunt]

Good to see you back around Al.  Sorry to hear the high number of dead deer, that is a shame.  Dunno here if there has been an above average number of die offs or not.  There have been plenty of buzzards around circling the bottoms though.  Weather has been another of those years that we saw way above average precipitation making for horrible issues with parasitic insects, might be a reason for the rise in ehd.  

[Ravin R10 man]

THAT SUCKS  AL

[fly]

First I've heard of EHD Al. No one has had any die off in IL (east of the St Louis area). Generally EHD is bad in drought years and this past summer was not that. However, the biting bugs were as terrible as they have ever been  - wonder if that might be the reason.

[Rhino]

Fly...the bitting midge is the bug that carries the EHD virus.  Glad to hear you haven't had issues E of the river.  Fingers crossed is not a wide spread problem this year.