dear season doomed and for many more to come.....

Ehd has hit harder than ever before.what are your thoughts and why ? We went out today to my friends property in lasalle county and found 7 dead deer 2 nice shooter bucks hes been watching for years and 5 does 2 were old and 3 young.not including all the others dead from other properties and counties. A farmer north of ottawa just found 68 on his farm and his neighbor had 36 thats just insane how many people are finding now that the combines came out and there food depleaded we need to do something about this for our future generations to come.

 

The herd will rebound faster and healthier in a few short seasons...not in one year and not in two but I bet by year two things will start shaping up. Nature is awesome in recovery.

 

I'm going to go out one more time this year, need to pull my cams. If I shoot anything it will probably be a button buck, unless I see groups of deer like in years past. I really don't know how much the logging on the neighboring property played in to my lack of sightings this year. But letting the does have their offspring will allow a quicker herd recovery than not. Smaller herd means a harsher winter wont be as detrimental as well, food won't be as scarce.

I'm hoping a lot more counties are closed for late winter antlerless, my county was closed last year for the first time I can remember. Not sure what makes them close them though, high enough harvests or if harvests have a significant drop off from previous year averages??

 

This is all a part of nature.

It will even itself out - We as humans cannot control it, we cannot prevent droughts, etc so we just need to wait it out and let it get back to normal.

 

A buddy of mine had this happen to his property in Nebraska a year ago. He found over 40 dead bucks. Nearly all of his top end bucks were dead. He has some good new bucks on his property already this year. It is horrible, but it may surprise you how fast things come back. I have experienced it this year to a lesser degree. We lost a lot of our deer two years ago and a few more this summer. It really hurts to see them go that way. I am hopeful that next year will be better.

 

Like others have said, things seem to even themselves out. Too many deer, you get disease and road kill. Too few deer, it seems the deer do a better job a reproducing viable offspring. I'm not sure how bad we were hit last year. I know of two shooter bucks within a half mile of me. This year, I'm not sure either. I found a doe on my place, so I'm sure there were more.

A couple things I've noticed were that almost every doe I saw, or had on camera had at least two fawns and some with three. That's natures way of jumping the population back up. In a couple years, assuming no more drought years, we should be back to where we were.

 

Don't think there is really anything you can do. The population will bounce back, just haveta wait it out.

We havent found any dead here or haven't heard of any in area. So its hard to say what's goin on. One thing I have wondered about this year and with all the people finding dead deer is if its ehd or something else. The fsrm I hunt and two neighbors, all with cattle, have had a total of 5 cows die this year from something spread from ticks. I can't remember what its called but the vet did a autopsy on one that was off the farm I hunt and confirmed that's what did her in. Makes me wonder if that may be the cause of some of the deer deaths. But again who knows.

 

Not like you can control mother nature and rain! Last year was still worse with the drought we had

 

Illinois DNR had 400 reported cases by October 1 Illinois DNR concedes that EHD has hit deer again this year - Outdoor News - October 2013. I'm sure the numbers are much much higher due to non-reporting especially by farmers. The good news is that the hardest hit counties from last year are the lowest this year. Just as others have said, it appears to be due to resistance after exposure to the virus. Hopefully the populations will rebound quickly.

 

The ground I hunt in SoDak got nailed last year with EHD. On the 40 acres I hunt, I found nine deer. Four of them were P&Y bucks. As you would expect, the 2012 season was awful. I had very few encounters and no shooter buck encounters. It really makes you appreciate deer hunting when the population is stable!

This year has been much better. There is a huge crop of 2.5 year olds around from what I have noticed. This means the next couple seasons are going to be very promising.

With proper DNR management, the herd will be back in no time. For us, only 50 rifle tags were issued in the whole county this year. Typically there are about 600 tags issued. This is a huge part of getting the numbers back.

 

From what I have read, the majority of the heard is immune to EHD for 7-8 years following an outbreak.

 

That's the whole problem, IL does not have proper deer herd management. Our herd is controlled by whining insurance executives and deer vehicle collisions. The DNR in its defense, has been raped by the IL general assembly of a lot of its funding and personnel while taking on more and more responsibilities. Blagojevich before being sentenced almost cost the state even more in federal funding that Quinn quickly remedied, but that wasn't to benefit anything it was a feel good measure and also one to keep an already broke state some federal monies coming in.

FOID cards are delayed by nearly 3-4 months, every other bill brought up in the GA is gun control measures. This state flat out doesn't care about "natural resources" to the taxes come natural and that's all the resource they need. I can see them benefiting further from a reduced herd. Whitetail deer are hard to come by so we need to protect them by increasing permits and licenses yet again. They would love to destroy hunting so they can get rid of even more evil guns. Mark Miller is a friend and appointee of Quinn, I doubt he has much control over everything either.

Rant over

 

Thanks for the info. I just moved to IL and still know little if nothing about the politics of the state. Except that it seems the governors seem to go to prison either during or just after leaving office. I also get the impression that Chicago-values are often times imposed on the rest of the state, which is mostly rural. I just moved to Western IL from CA so I can't believe it could be worse than there. At least I hope not.

 

We haven't found any dead deer on our farm, and yet deer numbers are lower than they have ever been..

 

Do a search for IL joint deer task force.

Here's a link to a FAQ about it, it's about 4-5 years old. Typical IL politics really

http://dnr.state.il.us/orc/deer task force/JTF Information Sheet 2-2-09.pdf

 

Definitely not going to happen in Illinois. Other than the late season, there seems only to be a 'sell more tags' mentality. Low deer numbers also don't seem to protect the deer from EHD. Last year EHD went through the area in Central Illinois that I hunted. Then probably too many remaining does were killed that fall. The drought and/or disease/coyotes made the fawn crop really poor. EHD seems to have hit again. This year I saw fewer deer than ever. Alarmingly low numbers. If a bunch more does are killed off, the population will be down for a while. On the upside, the mast crop is excellent so the deer should winter fat and happy.

There are still plenty of deer in some parts of IL but other places sure have taken a big hit. I'm not sure why IL deer management as a whole is still in deer population reduction mode.

 

I don't think we're quite as bad as CA but we're right there. And yes be prepared to be controlled by Chicago.

 

Its been pretty dry in most of Illinois for the past two years. This year was better then last but still everything as far as rain shut off in in middle of the spring and didn't get much all summer. Were getting rain here at decent amounts but its got a lot of catching up to do.

I think that most of the problem, been a pretty good drought past couple years. Guess shouldn't of said all of Illinois but where I live, yea.

 

yup Illinois is starting to suck

So what you are saying Christine is that the best thing in Illinois is the "Welcome to Utah" sign ??????