I started packing a stand and a set of climbing sticks in the truck bed for just these moments as a Plan B of sorts. If he were still alive, maybe we could sneak a stand in there right after he bailed. If I bumped a good buck, fine, but you’re not going to spook a buck that’s already dead of EHD. I even started running into a few suspected buck bedding locations. (Photo courtesy of Clint McCoy, DVM)Īfter awhile we started targeting water sources, where most EHD deaths end, and we did so pragmatically. EHD-positive deer often go to water, so checking around rivers, creeks and impoundments can turn up victims. We kept the wind in our faces to both reduce alerting animals and to help us pick up the smell of dead EHD deer. We went on fact-finding hikes midday, when animals were bedded. We’re conditioned to never enter the woods until the conditions are just right for a hunt.īut we didn’t just go tromping over hill and dale. Keep in mind, it was the middle of October, so this went against all whitetail teaching. It seemed reckless and haphazard at times, but my little brother and I started walking hunting locations that housed our best target bucks. I felt we had to do something - but knowing what to do was hard to figure. But now, nearly two weeks into our season, an outbreak of EHD was apparent, the evidence was mounting rapidly, and one of our best target bucks was dead. Survivorman had been special to Eric and me, a top hit-lister with a lot of fun history we’d shared. We thought he’d been shot in the right shoulder as a 3 1/2-year-old but had survived to tell about it, throwing a cool compensatory drop tine on the left side. Dead in the bottom of a dry creek bed with velvet still on part of his rack was one of our target bucks for the season. Three hours later, a text came through: RIP SURVIVORMAN. “You can’t bump him if he’s already dead,” Eric quipped. Finally, the chronic form can last weeks to months and is characterized by less severe disease, lameness, poor hoof growth, poor antler growth and usually less mortality. The acute form is characterized by fever, water seeking, swelling of the tongue and face and a slower viremia that can produce mortality in about seven days. In the peracute form, affected deer spike tremendous fevers and can die of viremic shock within 8-36 hours of exposure. The virus has three basic presentations in whitetails. Deer begin getting bitten at these midge fly hotbeds and pretty soon, an outbreak situation occurs. With continued periods of drought, deer demand for limited water elevates, as does the supply of the bad guys. The numbers of these no-see-ums skyrocket. As the mud increases, the virus vector midge fly Culicoides uses this gunk as a breeding ground. Lack of deer water sources during drought conditions leads to high concentrations of animals around the last available mudholes. Lack of rain and low availability of water sources for whitetails create a late-summer supply-and-demand chain that leads to virus spread. In most cases, the conditions leading to an outbreak are simple. If the herd in your area has an outbreak, the virus can decimate the population to a point you’d swear whitetails were going extinct. EHD doesn’t care how you hunt or why you hunt - it can impact us all. And it doesn’t matter who you are: meat hunter, youth hunter, weekend warrior or trophy-chasin’ diehard. The disease can take all your hopes and dreams for deer season and destroy them. Those are three little letters no trophy buck or buck hunter wants to tangle with. Yes, it’s the virus we deer hunters most love to hate: the one causing epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD). In the whitetail woods, our Public Enemy #1 isn’t a true pandemic, in that it doesn’t affect deer everywhere, but it’s endemic through much of the continent’s whitetail population. A lot of us whitetail hunters already have experience in virology, and it began long before we’d ever heard of COVID-19.
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