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EHD kill

muddy

muddy

Well-Known Member
This was one of my bucks I really wanted to make to next year. Found him in a water drainage in full velvet, he disappeared early August. He didn't do much from 3 to 4.5, know its the same deer as he has that one partially blind eye



 
I hate that muddy, EHD that is. I was out in my field one day in Aug and saw this nice 130 ish buck walking straight toward me. He went from a normal walk to PLOP down on the ground he went. H was just laying there lookng normal until his head started to droop. I found him about a week later 6o yards from that spot and he was in the creek.

I can remember as far back as 2005 time frame finding one dead from EHD in the Farmington area.
 
GOARMY said:
I hate that muddy, EHD that is. I was out in my field one day in Aug and saw this nice 130 ish buck walking straight toward me. He went from a normal walk to PLOP down on the ground he went. H was just laying there lookng normal until his head started to droop. I found him about a week later 6o yards from that spot and he was in the creek.

I can remember as far back as 2005 time frame finding one dad from EHD in the Farmington area.
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Thats crazy
 
Sorry it ended that way for you muddy. I understand how EHD is transmitted and it is linked to drought and the mud around watering holes but why has this disease just now taken Iowa by storm? I'm assuming there were years past where Iowa experienced droughts but I never heard about EHD then so why did this disease suddenly appear and do you guys think this will end or continue to raise havoc on the deer population?
 
Man it has been a devastating two years. I hate seeing bucks like this and bigger go down to this disease. It is so disappointing when you are trying to pass deer with hopes of improving the age structure of the herd. Sorry for you and everyone else who has to pay from the results.
 
loewmd said:
Sorry it ended that way for you muddy. I understand how EHD is transmitted and it is linked to drought and the mud around watering holes but why has this disease just now taken Iowa by storm? I'm assuming there were years past where Iowa experienced droughts but I never heard about EHD then so why did this disease suddenly appear and do you guys think this will end or continue to raise havoc on the deer population?
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EHD is not a new thing, we have experienced it before, but it has been awhile since we saw anything widespread. It's just that the droughts we had in 2012 and 2013 were way worse than we have had for quite some time.

Also, nowadays people have trail cams out all summer and often know the bucks that are around, so when they go missing now we usually know it. Back in the day, few people really had any clue what was running around around on the farms they were hunting until they saw them in person. So if a batch of deer disappeared via EHD before the hunting seasons began it wasn't really recognized the way it is now.

Going along with that, shed hunting is many more times popular today than say 15 years ago and back. Watch, there will be several posts here in the next few weeks about bucks that shed hunters will find dead, likely from EHD back in August or so. In the past, a lot of those deer were just never found because people weren't combing the timbers all spring trying to find cast antlers.
 
That is too bad. Not looking forward to shed season's dead head finds, but it appears EHD hasn't hit my area too hard. Did have a friend put a stalk on a 150 class buck last year and was able to get right up to it to find that it was really sick although we were unable to confirm that it was EHD.
 
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