epizootic hemorrhagic disease

[dpmiller613]

Has anyone heard of this infecting deer in Tennessee or had any experience with it? It's starting to show up heavily in Upstate NY and they think it's a result of strong storms carrying the midges up from down South. Apparently in previous years the cold weather killed the midges that transmit the disease from deer to deer. This year we've already had over 700 dead deed attributed to this, EHD, with no way of knowing how many aren't discovered. I've had some experience with this in fish many years ago but this is the first time I've seen it in mammals. Of course DEC claims this has been around here since 2007, of course nothing was said until this year, you know, the mushroom approach, feed them horseshit and keep them in the dark. Seems like every time you turn around something else is killing the wildlife, first CWD now EHD.

 

[Pioneer1789]

Yes, EHD has been around here for a while. Had a bad outbreak of it in 17 or 18 if I remember correctly. It's around every year, but the worst years of it are cyclical depending on the deer herd's immunity and the biting midge population. I'm sure some other guys will chime in that remember a few more bad years than I do.

 

[1 good shot]

It's been around forever.
It seems to be worse in extended dry periods when animals congregate around water.
We had a really bad episode about 10 years ago. Its also called blue tongue disease

 

[mike243]

Blue tongue is a different disease if I am not mistaken , had a hard hit in the 90's and then a few years back here in E Tn

 

[mike243]

What is EHD/Blue Tongue?

Last fall I returned from a deer hunt in SW North Dakota where we were filming for Bucks of Tecomate. The location I was hunting had been hit the year before by Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease (EHD) and unknown to me I was going to be in for a crash course in what this fatal disease is. Although...

tecomate.com

 

[backyardtndeer]

Yes, there have been some significant die offs in Tennessee due to ehd. Think there were die offs reported near 60 percent in some areas.

Sure BSK will correct me if I am wrong, but think I had read years ago, that ehd and blue tongue are similar but are not the same disease.

 

[JCDEERMAN]

Agree with the other comments. As backyardtndeer stated, it happens minimally every year with significant die offs occurring every once in a while (about once a decade from my observations). We had a bad outbreak in 2007. In 2019, we had a 60-70% herd die off in our little pocket. That's rare, but it happens. We are still recovering from that. I'd say 2022 or 2023 we will be back up to par. Droughts in August-October can be brutal for deer

 

[1 good shot]

i just read up on the 2 and I was wrong.
apparently they are almost identical but ehd is much more common

 

[DRSJ35]

2017 killed massive amounts of deer here in east Tn. You could smell death everywhere. And it'll happen again till the end of time.

 

[HUNT4ONE]

Has anyone heard of this infecting deer in Tennessee or had any experience with it? It's starting to show up heavily in Upstate NY and they think it's a result of strong storms carrying the midges up from down South. Apparently in previous years the cold weather killed the midges that transmit the disease from deer to deer. This year we've already had over 700 dead deed attributed to this, EHD, with no way of knowing how many aren't discovered. I've had some experience with this in fish many years ago but this is the first time I've seen it in mammals. Of course DEC claims this has been around here since 2007, of course nothing was said until this year, you know, the mushroom approach, feed them horseshit and keep them in the dark. Seems like every time you turn around something else is killing the wildlife, first CWD now EHD.

Had EHD in sw Michigan in 2006. Wiped out over 50% of herd. Its brutal...saw irrigation ponds with over 40 dead deer in them..... the stench is unreal..... state needs to cut back kill quotas on hard hit areas....

 

[Snake]

Has anyone heard of this infecting deer in Tennessee or had any experience with it? It's starting to show up heavily in Upstate NY and they think it's a result of strong storms carrying the midges up from down South. Apparently in previous years the cold weather killed the midges that transmit the disease from deer to deer. This year we've already had over 700 dead deed attributed to this, EHD, with no way of knowing how many aren't discovered. I've had some experience with this in fish many years ago but this is the first time I've seen it in mammals. Of course DEC claims this has been around here since 2007, of course nothing was said until this year, you know, the mushroom approach, feed them horseshit and keep them in the dark. Seems like every time you turn around something else is killing the wildlife, first CWD now EHD.

We had a lease several years ago neighboring your Perry Co. lease , ours was in Lewis. Just before we let it go we were finding dead deer , quite a few of them and our kill rate had went down also .

 

[dpmiller613]

One of the members told me that a few years ago someone close had a bad die off. He also told me they lucked out and had little or no effect from it. Must be some bad crap from what everyone's saying.

 

[Grainger]

Had EHD in sw Michigan in 2006. Wiped out over 50% of herd. Its brutal...saw irrigation ponds with over 40 dead deer in them..... the stench is unreal..... state needs to cut back kill quotas on hard hit areas....

Oh, they are.

 

[BSK]

Yes, Blue Tongue and EHD are closely related but not the same. They are in the same family of diseases, sort of like SARS and Covid - different varieties of the same virus.

EHD is endemic to the Southeast, meaning it is around all the time, every year. But huge outbreaks that hunters notice only occur once every 4-10 years in any given location. Middle TN had the worst EHD out break I've ever seen in 2007. Some locations lost upwards of 80% of the deer population, although 30-50% were more common losses. Hickman, Perry and parts of Houston and Humphreys had another bad outbreak in 2019.

Big outbreaks always occur at the tail end of hot dry summers. This is when deer are concentrated around just a few remaining waterholes, where they can all come in contact with an infected population of the midges that transmit the disease. In August and September, these sick deer go to water to cool their fevers, and ponds and creeks can be loaded with dead deer. However, I've noticed die-offs are much heavier in low swampy ground. Often ridge-top properties see little die-off because there's so little stagnant water in these environments, and that is the environment the midges breed in.

 

[mike243]

2017 didn't hurt no where near the amount as 07 did or right in there, I drive lots of miles every day for work and any time I got of a interstate it was common to smell dead deer several times per mile, Chuck Swan was horrible to drive through to get to the dove fields . had some dead near the camp ground that would gag you when the wind shifted