EHD really starting to worry me!!!!!

[5465]

What's the weather like in iowa? here in ohio it is extremely humid, hot, and dry! the weather pattern that we have seen here in the last month is the same weather pattern we had back in 2000 when we had a huge breakout of EHD(epizootic hemorrhagic disease). this is basically the same as CWD, but not as wide spread. it is passed to the deer through the misquitos and so far the past 2 weeks the mosquitos have been terrible, why not it's the perfect weather for mosquitos. i myself have witnessed first hand what a deer goes through before it dies, it is a somewhat fast process. back in 2000 it put a decent size dent in our deer population. in fact in 2000 our kill was down a lot here. i only hope that this does not occur again EVER! it is a terrible thing to witness what a deer goes through before it dies from EHD. i talked to a buddy of mine who is a game warden and he feels that there won't be a problem this year because they think there was a big kill off of misquitos this past winter because our winter came upon us very quickly last year and was very cold but it's like he said also "we didn't think we were going to have a problem in 2000 either so who knows". i was just wondering if ya'll were having better weather?

 

[Shredder]

Mosquitos are not the carrier, black gnats are, but aside from that, it is usually in late august/early september that it has been a problem and usually on the drier years......so far we seem to be at low risk right now but it can come on fast.

 

[NebraskaWhitetail]

Around here EHD is carried by tiny biting midges (commonly referred to as "no see ums"), or as Shredder called them, black gnats. I haven't heard of mosquitos being a carrier for anything but West Nile Virus.

 

[Shovelbuck]

[ QUOTE ]
this is basically the same as CWD, but not as wide spread

[/ QUOTE ] As the others have said. gnats are the carriers. It is nothing like CWD. EHD has happened in virtually every state that has whitetails while cwd has not. Not all deer die from ehd with the ones that survive it becoming imune. All deer that contract cwd die. CWD is a prion that attacks the brain while EHD is an infection that causes fever and hemmoraging. Two entirely different problems. I used to panic about EHD but the deer rebound quite quickly and there is absolutely nothing we can do about changing mother nature anyway.

 

[5465]

in 2000 my buddy and i went out to check things out on the western end of the county and we were told by the dnr officials that EHD is mainly carried by the little black gnat and that most of the deer found dead were afflicted by the gnat but there were some that had definetly been afflicted by misquitos instead of the gnat. so i guess i should say i am worried about the gnats also. also shortly after EHD had died down in my county it had started to show up in west virginia, right acrossed the river from me, not near as many deer afflicted, but last word was that they thought it was also misquitos that had afflicted some.

 

[5465]

i would like to apologize for thinking it was misquitos, i just called my buddy and he said that later tests showed that it was just the gnat that had afflicted the deer and that a lot of the deer had also been afflicted by the misquito with some other illness, not life threatening, he told me the name of the illness but i already forgot it, and it was blown up in papers and articles and some dnr officials misunderstood biologists that it was the misquitos, anyways sorry for the inconvenience. boy do i look like a dumba$$ now!!!!!

sorry

 

[NebraskaWhitetail]

Having discussions is the best way to learn about stuff like this.

Here's an interesting slide show about deer diseases (once you scroll down past the capitalism illustrations don't seem to have anything to do with the topic, but they're still funny).
Deer Diseases Slide Show

 

[JNRBRONC]

You asked how the weather in Iowa has been. Most of the state has been very wet! Besides yesterday, the temperatures have been unseasonably cool in my opinion. If I recall the last Iowa EHD outbreak correctly, it was during a dry year when the deer were congregating around what few water holes hadn't dried up. This doesn't paint a very good picture for you since you say Ohio has been dry.