Found just down the road from my parent's property....EHD is slowly choking my hunting grounds...my other property has speckled findings around it in almost every direction. We've had some cold weather so hopefully no more infections and it's the remnants of the last ones infected.
that's a damn shame. I was on another thread here earlier this week ("where are the deer") and I stated that here in NE Illinois where I live now, I've hardly seen any deer while out driving around, and my dad who lives near Ft Wayne IN also reported he's not seeing hardly any deer on his way to work, which would normally be an everyday occurrence. I had a bad feeling about that. Without any evidence to back it up, I was thinking the lack of sightings could be due to disease, drought, or both. Has the DNR confirmed it was EHD? I just did a quick google check of EHD, and found that the MI DNR (I hunt primarily in Michigan,) has a page on their website dedicated to EHD reporting and tracking. Since September of this year, the 2 counties I hunt have reported a total of 571 confirmed fatalities. Since August 7, 2012 (THIS YEAR!) 8,671 Michigan deer have been reported killed by EHD. This is huge news- why isn't this being reported?
Population won't go up till breeding happens...but hard freezes kills the midges larvae putting stop to the spread this year. PT! Gonna try man, that's at the new swamp property and I'm hoping him and the other two shooters are not infected!
I was asking the same question here back in August when I started finding dead deer on the properties I hunt. I know that the experts say that it effects pockets of areas but I know people that hunt in the highly infected areas should plan on seeing way fewer deer. It sucks but thats the hand we have been dealt. Officals down play it because they do not want to spread a panic which would effect the sale of lisences and overall revenue. I try to stay positive and hunt harder and smarter as mature bucks will be few and far between. Good luck to all.
NE Kansas = Not good. I heard from one guy that found 20. We have found a couple and we haven't even been looking really. Also I have 0 hit list bucks this year. Last year I had 3 good shooters and 5-6 good 2-3 yrs (ended up shooting a buck I had never seen before). This year NOTHING! I haven't done alot of walking around the property this fall but I bet we find a bunch of racks and/or skulls mushroom and shed hunting this year.
