SW Indiana - This looks very much like EHD...

[MilkweedManiac]

More info I found....

https://www.in.gov/dnr/fishwild/8541.htm

View attachment 26179

This seems at the very least a good plan for this year. Hopefully post-hunting season harvest data will be heavily analyzed.

 

[j-bird]

I am just glad to see the DNR doing something NOW before the season. Last time I remember EHD hitting us like this the DNR seemingly did nothing but sit back and watch. And we as hunters followed up the outbreak with a record level harvest. Different people in charge of the show now...

 

[spaniel]

I’m so glad to hear that! For what it’s worth, most losses here locally have been does. I’m not sure if it is coincidence or if herds are affected differently in regards to gender.

However, I still have not seen many mature bucks this summer, which is unusual for this area, so they might have been bedding and expired somewhere else. I’ll update the thread as deer season starts and I start collecting trail camera info.

I have a six camera Cuddelink system on mine. There are bucks that were appearing that are not now, but others that hold a pattern for a few weeks then disappear. I have only seen a couple deer that were perhaps a bit unusually thin. Overall looking ok, but my first year with the property, so no comparison.

 

[Lucky_P]

SCWDS has been tracking EHD since back in the late 1950s. It seems to run on a 9-yr cycle, with a 4- yr cycle superimposed on it.
As a veterinarian, I remember major epizootics in 1988 or 89 and in 2007 & 2012, when we saw sporadic cases of clinical EHD in the cattle population...in an 'on' year, nearly 100% of cattle get infected, but only a fraction of a percentage of infected cattle ever have any clinical disease.

 

[swat1018]

SCWDS has been tracking EHD since back in the late 1950s. It seems to run on a 9-yr cycle, with a 4- yr cycle superimposed on it.
As a veterinarian, I remember major epizootics in 1988 or 89 and in 2007 & 2012, when we saw sporadic cases of clinical EHD in the cattle population...in an 'on' year, nearly 100% of cattle get infected, but only a fraction of a percentage of infected cattle ever have any clinical disease.

What is the reason the cattle don't present the same as deer? A buddy claims he doesn't get EHD because cattle are run on much of their range where he hunts. I can't remember his rationale, maybe something to do with cattle mineral?

 

[Lucky_P]

I dunno, other than it's a deer pathogen. We can isolate EHD virus from cattle blood, pretty easily, at peak infection times, and after a big Epizootic most cattle will have antibodies to EHD virus, but we rarely see more than a sporadic individual cow affected, and a good percentage of them recover with supportive care.
Goats don't become clinically ill, either, though in some localities, there may sometimes be serovars of the closely-related Bluetongue virus, which can cause pretty severe disease in sheep, in addition to deer.
There's no reason that I can think of that the presence of cattle would prevent deer from becoming infected.