Hemorrhagic Disease (HD)

[JB]

Biting midges (“no see ums”) transmit this viral disease of white-tailed deer. Deer die from extensive internal hemorrhages. HD typically appears during the late summer or early fall. The appearance of sick or dead deer near water at this time of year is an indication of potential HD. Early signs of infection are respiratory distress, swelling of the head, neck or tongue and stupor. Deer may have open sores on the tongue and upper front dental pad. Deer that survive the initial infection may have reduced mobility related to lameness. Some of these deer may not live. Surviving deer show hooves with sloughing tissue. DNR monitors HD by looking for sloughing hoof tissue on deer harvested during firearm deer hunting season. HD appears annually in Maryland with varying distribution and intensity. Typical white-tailed deer mortality rates are less than 25 percent and do not occur over large landscapes. The virus is not contagious to humans and only harvested deer with huge open sores should not be consumed. Dogs, cats and sheep are not affected, but cattle can exhibit very mild symptoms.

 

[JB]

are these the same as "jiggers"?
no-see-um's/ jiggers?

 

[noharleyyet]

Do you mean chiggers? That's why I don't wear flip flops in the field.

 

[DRAFTSTUD]

Ken, If this is the same thing as Blue Tongue, I had this at one of my Deer Leases and you will lose alot of your Deer. The Hooves will be messed up and so will the Racks. If your lease is near a Herd of Cattle it is just a matter of time before your Deer Herd starts showing the symtoms listed in your article. We were told to shoot down the population and wait out the recovery. The Deer herd did recover and were alot more Healthy for it. It is hard to see a member show up with a 8 Pt. or a 17 point Skull in one case that they found scouting the woods. John

 

[JB]

Do you mean chiggers? That's why I don't wear flip flops in the field

.

lol..yeah, thats what i mean.
i call bull-chit on you not wearing flip-flops in the field!

 

[mtmiller]

We were told to shoot down the population and wait out the recovery. The Deer herd did recover and were alot more Healthy for it.

Curious who made the comment to "shoot down" the population (fish/game)? I would not consider EHD as a density-dependant disease.

 

[iminrut]

I don't know....that's kinda what I was always lead to beleive Blue Tongue was....a population disease....mother nature keeping things in check......

We get it here in western ND about every 5 years it seems.......now that I think about it, we're probably due, cause it sure seems like it's been a while since we had an outbreak.......

 

[TheTone]

My experience with EHD is its kind of a combination of factors that leads to a bad outbreak. When we had our bad outbreak in the Clearwater region in 2003 we had a couple different things that came into play. 2003 was a very dry year which lead to the whitetails in most of the areas affected concentrating on the remaining water systems. The Clearwater already had a really high whitetail density, so thus with them concentrating even further it was easy for the disease to affect a lot of deer. We lost a bunch of deer to it, but some of the areas hardest hit still have some pretty good hunting. The deer I killed in 2004 came out of an area that was hard hit by it and I saw a bunch of bucks in that same area last year. Whitetails can rebound pretty fast from these sorts of things in my experience.

 

[Ithaca 37]

Tone, I think other deer from as many as 5-10 miles away moved into the good habitat that became available when EHD killed 40%-70% of the deer near the water sources. Two years after EHD the deer population was starting to look real good again where I hunt along the Clearwater River. I'll be interested in seeing how good it is this Nov..

 

[DRAFTSTUD]

mtmiller, The F&G were the ones who told me. But, not everyone you reach at the end of a phone uses science when they answer a question. I hope the made some kind of sense? John

 

[JB]

Curious who made the comment to "shoot down" the population (fish/game)? I would not consider EHD as a density-dependant disease.

mtmiller, is blue tounge disease the same as EHD?
i guess the thinking is to keep the virus contained as much as possible.
"the disease itself is not transmitted animal to animal" but the animals do carry the insects that spread the virus....so you have the same result as if the disease were spread animal to animal.

 

[TheTone]

Ithica, I agree completely with what you said about deer moving in to this "new" available habitat. The past couple years I've seen really great fawn numbers, the whitetails are able to take care of themselves pretty well when the habitat is available to them. I won't be chasing whitetails this November as I was able to draw a mule deer tag in a unit up here.

 

[Tom]

JB, I think they're pretty similar diseases, but have different virus types, if you get into the genetic testing of the disease. Right mtmiller?

Isn't that what google has pointed to/saying here?
http://www.usaha.org/committees/rep...5.pdf#search="EHD versus blue tongue disease"