EHD in E. Central Illinois, what have you heard?
 

A couple of my buddies have come across a couple of really nice dead bucks in Clark Co. and another in Cumberland Co. Is EHD back for a second year? What's the word? I don't think E. Central Illinois can tolerate another bad year of EHD, what used to be a great place to hunt is going to take a min. of 4 years in order to recover, I don't think we could handle another year equal to 2012.. The taxidermists in the area can testify how bad it has been. Just wondering what people have been seeing? DNR just released numbers for this year and we are down considerably to last year, I don't know if its from not seeing deer, or because the numbers of hunters are not there. Non-resident hunter/permits are on the decline due to the poor quality of the Illinois deer herd, word has traveled fast! Who's going to want to spend the kind of money non-residents do, not to see deer...

I hunt in West Central Illinois and we have heard of a few isolated cases but not that many. I think this year was very light compared to last year. I think EHD is pretty localized. It seems like some farms get hit hard while 4 miles away no deer die at all. Sorry to hear, lets just hope your areas get a good freeze soon. We've gotten a decent amount of rain in the last few weeks so you shouldn't have too many more problems but again a freeze will end it all, at least for the year.

I hunt with a buddy in South Central Illinois and there have been some reports of EHD there this year as well. Again, not as bad as last year but there have been some dead deer found and abnormal actions. Lets hope it ends here

Well first off I am not upset that out of state numbers are going down. Now maybe they will stop paying big bucks to lease IL private land that a resident will now have a chance at.

Also EHD is not new. There are always going to be deer lost to it. The only issue is last year was pretty rough on the herd. Here in Champaign county I have not heard of any being found. I have a buddy who hunts near casey and also in Ashmore and he hasn't found any either. For those guys who only shoot bucks this may be a rough season. For the rest of us who want meat over antler we should still be ok.

I would love to put a big buck on the ground but for now as long as I can fill the freezer I can stand to wait a couple years for buck numbers to hopefully bounce back.

The numbers are off, but here is a chart by the DNR of which counties were hit the hardest. The numbers were only those of confirmed deer... of which we found 11 dead on our property alone last year and we didn't report it just because there were dead deer everywhere... In Cumberland county on a 1300 acre farm (my buddies friend), from August to October they found 61 dead deer.
I think it will be sometime before we see the herd back to normal.

http://www.heartlandoutdoors.com/hea...s_bad_as_2012/

That chart looks a lot better than last year! This disease comes and goes every year but with how severe it was last year I think more people were worried about it this year. Hopefully next year the casualties will be even lower. It was that dry August that really hurt us this year. I think if we would have one good rain in August the cases would have been super low.