Concerns over creating water hole

[j-bird]

This has been on my mind now for a while and I want you guys thoughts.

EHD has become more and more of a concern for many of us. EHD hit various parts of IN 2 years in a row and has really increased hunters awareness of it.

I know the EHD is passed to the deer via a biting midge and it happens in the late summer.

My question is this - do our man-made water holes help with EHD or potentially make it worse?

I see the water holes helping spread the deer out and keep them from keying in on only a few water sources. However I can see us potentially increasing the potential locations for these midges by creating these water holes?

What do you guys think?

 

[kabic]

The midge live in the muddy bank. ..water holes made out of tubs or have plastic\ rubber liners should not have muddy banks.

 

[wiscwhip]

Even if you keep an inch or two of mud on top of the rubber liner, as long as the mud wasn't too thick, the midges would freeze out in the winter time. They naturally burrow deeper than that to survive winter freezes.

 

[dipper]

Ehd is a much bigger issue for u guys south. I think waupaca county had one dead deer in 2012 when these other places had herds wiped out

 

[j-bird]

EHD was nearly unheard of in Indiana until roughly 2012 or so - at least on a large scale basis. We had 2 years back to back where it struck different areas and in some cases rather hard. One year it seemed to hit the norther part of the state the hardest and the following year it hit the southern part harder. Ever since then it has been something many more people watch out for. I think EHD had a much bigger impact on our heard than did the record deer harvests. I don;t the the DNR had any real idea just what the EHD impact was. They really didn't seem to care either. They wanted more dead deer and they got it, just not in a way we thought it would happen.

I was just curious - I didn't want to be making things worse. I do know that the deer seem to favor drinking from water that isn't moving in my area. My property has 2 nice sized streams on it, but the deer prefer drinking from water puddles and the like if given a choice.

 

[Steve Bartylla]

Honestly, I don't think it makes a lick of difference either way. I've had EHD & BT lay waste to properties that didn't have even a small body of water within a 1/2 mile or more (think about what an epic journey a midge traveling a 1/2 mile would be. I've had other properties with cow ponds surrounded by mud flats not get barely touched, when properties several miles away were getting hammered, only to get hammered the next year, but not fare any worse or better over the long run than grounds without stagnate water sources and mud flats.

It takes a very rare set of circumstances for a property not to have any mud puddles on it at all during wet periods. I don't think one can do anything of value either way to stop it or to encourage it, if they wanted to. It's Mother Nature imposing her will, and one rarely is ever able to even beat her in the short run, doing so in the long run is near impossible.

As a side note, silly example, if you're ever bored, look up how the core of engineers tried to alter the flow of the Mississippi to create a straighter shipping lane some time. Long story short, after stupid amounts of $ was spent and almost unfathomable levels of effort, it reshaped itself back to essentially what it was before the project began. I'm not saying this is anything remotely close to a direct comparison. I'm just saying that when we fight Mother Nature, she almost always eventually comes out the winner.