Hemorrhagic disease has killed a number of deer in the Sheridan area this summer, but the Wyoming Game and Fish Department believes the disease has run its course and does not anticipate this should cause any concern for hunters this fall.
Beginning in mid-August, white-tailed deer carcasses were reported along the Tongue River in the Dayton and Ranchester areas northwest of Sheridan. The carcasses displayed the symptoms of hemorrhagic disease - either epizootic hemorrhagic disease or blue tongue. Blood tests conducted the Wyoming State Veterinary Laboratory in Laramie verified hemorrhagic disease as the cause.
Since the disease was confined to a relatively small area, the die-off will not impact upcoming white-tailed deer hunting in most of the Sheridan Region, said Lynn Jahnke, Game and Fish wildlife management coordinator in Sheridan. He believes there are still plenty of white-tailed deer hunting opportunities in the region.
“We believe the outbreak is largely over for 2006,” Jahnke said on Sept. 25. Hemorrhagic disease outbreaks are not unusual in the Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska region.
“Conditions were ideal for an outbreak of the disease during August,” Jahnke said. “Recent cold temperatures slowed the spread of the disease as frost killed the ‘no-see-um’ gnats which spread the disease. Reports of dead deer declined after the first frost in early September.”
The viruses can cause spontaneous hemorrhaging in the muscles and organs five to 10 days after an animal is infected. Even with a hard frost the disease will continue to claim some animals that were previously infected for a couple of weeks.
Jahnke explained that during late summer, white-tailed deer were concentrated around water sources in the lowland environment of the gnats. The gnats spread the virus by biting infected and then uninfected deer. The last documented outbreak of the disease near Sheridan was in 1998. Although the disease has probably been in the region for decades, the first documented Wyoming outbreak was 1959 in Weston County.
Jahnke assured hunters they do not have to worry about getting the disease from eating their deer meat. “There is no human health concern from the hemorrhagic disease,” Jahnke said. “Humans can’t get it and neither can most other wildlife.”
He added mule deer and antelope occasionally get the disease but are generally insulated from the infection because those species tend not to inhabit the environment of the gnats.