Mature Buck mortality - Hemorrhagic Disease

Hi All:

I'd like those who participate in a deer management program *and* have had an outbreak of hemorrhagic disease to look over the age structure of their buck harvest for the following Fall/Winter and let us know what the results are.

King William County, Virginia was one of a number of Southern Piedmont Counties that experienced a significant outbreak of Hemorrhagic Disease in the Fall of 1998. The weather that year stayed warm until early December and the HD outbreak lasted through much of the rut. (In SE VA a warm Fall means 60 - 80 F in the afternoon and 40s at night.)

Our harvest of 2.5 and 3.5 year old bucks had been increasing as a result of being in a deer management program. We had only been in the program a few year, but we were learning to be selective in our deer kill. In 1997 we had killed 26 bucks in that age class.

In 1998, the buck harvest in the 2.5 and 3.5 year old classes dropped to 9 deer. Our jaws from the Fall 99 harvest haven't been aged yet, but looking at antler data, it doesn't appear that it was significantly better last fall.

This suggests that the stress of the rut led to high mortality from HD for 1.5 year and older bucks. I've spoken to our State game bioligist about this and asked that he review the data from the DMAP program to see if this trend was general.

I thought this list would also be a fruitful place to ask questions. If you have data on this subject, please respond to the list with the location of you hunting and some info on the temperature for the Fall(s) in question.

BTW, the evidence indicates that we are past at least the worst of the HD outbreak. Since we had our most selective harvest this year and it had been improving in 97 and 98, we can hope for a nice harvest next year.

Thanks for any good info.

I want to hear more. We in Kansas have had a warm year and have an exponential increasing herd. Does HD affect Mulies and whitail to the same degree? What effect does it have on does, while they are pregnant? Is HD able to cross the species boundry? Boy, I could go on, because I have a great concern about our Kansas Deer Population and the eventuality of a population crash and the time it would tqake to get the herd back up in numbers to hunt. Please send info or webpages that can direct me to Info, and I will do the same for you.