00:00:00
Speaker 1: At this point, I would give up on the keeping my pharma sanctuary. If you’re only hunting one or two bucks that you know are there and he might be dead, it’s worth the intrusion on the property to go in search those areas out and see if he is dead.
00:00:13
Speaker 2: There’s not a lot that you can do, to be honest.
00:00:15
Speaker 3: Welcome to Back forty.
00:00:16
Speaker 4: I’m Jake Hoefer, and we are diving into a topic here that hopefully isn’t top of mind for you right now. But unfortunately, when we sketched out these questions, I had a bad feeling that somewhere across the Midwest there would be an EHD outbreak. And so if you’re listening to this from southern Ohio, this is hopefully some insight that’s going to help you develop a plan for this fault, because unfortunately, EHD is a very real thing for a lot of places throughout the country, and most of the guests here today has had some experience with it, some a lot more than others, and a lot less for the for the fortunate guests here.
00:00:51
Speaker 3: But before we get into I.
00:00:52
Speaker 4: Want to say the Back forty podcast is brought to you by land dot Com, the leading online real estate marketplace to find your pert rural, recreational, agricultural, or hunting properties here in the United States. Before we get into the episode two, I want to give a real quick cliff notes version of what EHD is in case you’re not familiar or maybe you’re confused with what EHD is versus CWD. I am not a biologist, so I’m just going to give you an armchair quick rundown of EHD. Essentially, it is a midge that lives in the cracks of mud where there’s a lot of changes in moisture or if it’s very dry mud bottom creeks are typically bad ponds or an area where it could facilitate a lot of the midge flies. And it’s a viral infection that when a deer gets bit by it, it essentially causes a fever and the mortality rate can be very high. Now in the South, this seems like there has been more resistance of EHD built up, and so there’s different strains that can impact deer more severely.
00:01:49
Speaker 3: And that’s the really quick version of it.
00:01:51
Speaker 4: If you want to learn more about it, I’m sure there’s more episodes about EHD and more depth or you can google it, but I just wanted to make sure that there’s a clear distinct between CWD and EHD, because I think for a lot of people they get them confused. So EHD is a mid fly that bites of deers, knows inside their nostril and causes a viral infection and ultimately can can kill them all.
00:02:13
Speaker 3: So you’ve heard of rumors of EHD. What do you do now? Is there anything that you can do? Is there any silver linings?
00:02:19
Speaker 4: And to kick things off, we’re gonna start with Steve Hanson, who’s in southern Iowa and unfortunately has experienced EHD over the years, and here is his prescription to move forward if you’re experiencing this. Man, I’ve been looking forward to season all year, and now it’s been dry and I’m hearing murmurs of EHD. I go out, My deer disappeared and I want to say, my dear, but the bucks that were in the area have disappeared. My area go hammered by EHD.
00:02:53
Speaker 1: Now what, well, you might almost in that scenario, you might you know, you may have to start from scratch, and I’d probably move the cameras on the property that was hit for EHD because there’s no guarantee.
00:03:05
Speaker 5: That they are dead. So what I would do is, at.
00:03:08
Speaker 1: This point, I would give up on the keeping my pharm a sanctuary, and I would spend a good amount of time walking creeks, pond banks and truly try to find the If you’re only hunting one or two bucks that you know are there and he might be dead, it’s worth the intrusion on the property to go in search those areas out and see if he is dead. Even if you need to contact a neighbor. And this is where you know, having a good relationship with neighbors, say hey, man, I’m not wanting to hunt or anything. I smelled some dead deer in the creek. I can’t find him. Is it all right if I walk around your pond?
00:03:43
Speaker 3: Is it you know?
00:03:44
Speaker 1: I’m just trying to decide if these deer are still alive and get an idea of overall hurt health. Did we lose twenty deer, did we lose two deer? Is it a total wipeout?
00:03:54
Speaker 5: You know?
00:03:55
Speaker 1: So I would invest some time and energy doing that, but I also would be starting look at what my other options are for other places to hunt, because EHD is very localized, like we’ve had terrible wipeouts on one farm and five miles away nothing. So you know, if you have other properties, at that point, I’d probably start looking, Hey, what other options do I have? And then I always whenever the HD topic comes up, I have to bring this up because I’ve seen this happen so many times and it’s very detrimental to you know, the herd health. I’ve seen a lot of people unfortunately, reset their expectations. So all of a sudden, Oh, we had this one, you know, one sixty that was six year old, but he died of EHD. We had this other one seventy that was probably five, but he’s a shooter. But now we’re hunting these three and four year old one forties because it’s all we got left. Don’t do that, you know, that’s that means your hunting’s.
00:04:47
Speaker 5: Going to suck virtually forever.
00:04:48
Speaker 3: You’re you’re going to ruin it. You’re in a new TB.
00:04:50
Speaker 1: Yes, and exactly, you are going to perpetuate the cycle of poor age structure. If you do that, Concentrate on some cull bucks, do whatever you have to do on other place, but try to leave you know, the hurt is in its most vulnerable then, and it needs the most help.
00:05:06
Speaker 3: Next up we have Bill Winky.
00:05:08
Speaker 4: Bill has unfortunately a lot of experience as well with EHD. He has said in the past that his farm was likely one of the best in the entire country. I think it was twenty twelve until EHD came through and really devastated the farm. He’s got firsthand experience on what this means if you are finding yourself in the same exact situation. Here’s Bill winking, I’ve been hearing rumors, I’m smelling something kind of weird.
00:05:34
Speaker 3: My whole area, my whole farm just got hammered by EHD. What do I do now?
00:05:40
Speaker 4: Whom?
00:05:42
Speaker 6: Yeah, the now, I’ve certainly had that happen where I’ve lost, you know, a lot of my bucks in one year. Probably has happened more than once. In my experience down there on that southern Iowa farm, it seemed like about every seven years we get it, you know, fairly significantly, you know, and some years it’ll be twenty percent, some years it’d be you know, ten percent, some years it’d be seventy percent. You just get you’re just gonna get it every every so often. So I’ve been through this cycle. I think all you can do. I wouldn’t go out looking for them. If you’re setting your cameras or you’re working the last bit of your food plot, you know, preparation on the property, or mow and ditch or mow and access routes or something like that, you’re gonna you’re gonna smell some dead deer. It’s worth probably then just checking them out quick, you know, because you can tell which way the wind is blow it and you’re gonna find them pretty fast. But I wouldn’t scout the whole farm. You see, if I can find that buck that I was not laying dead, I’d let the cameras tell me that, because you just run the risk of bumping too many deer. You know, if you do a wholesale scouting missions to see what’s dead, uh, you don’t have a whole lot of options. And again we talked about it earlier in this series about you know, do the Great hunters killed deer every year? The great hunters have you plan B, C, D, et cetera. So if you’ve got you know, a plan C, now might be the time to pull it out. Let’s say maybe a hunt two or three states, and the properties that you’ve got in some of these other areas they weren’t affected by the EHD. It might it might be, you know, you run your cameras in the area where you know that you lost some deer just to find out what’s left. But you might want to shift all your thoughts and all your efforts to some of those other areas because it really is well, it’s simple now. I mean, you’re not going to kill him if he’s not there. So no, you don’t want to be hunting a deer that’s already dead.
00:07:58
Speaker 7: If real quick on when your farm would get hit every seven years roughly, there’s some people that say, you know, the survivors, you know, based off of all the social pressure of other deer dying that you know, the year after for a buck that did survive, maybe a four year old buck. Uh, did you see that farm bounce back or specific bucks that survive really explode?
00:08:19
Speaker 3: Is there any silver.
00:08:20
Speaker 7: Lining to when your farm got hit by the EHD that you could glean?
00:08:27
Speaker 5: Now, there’s not a there’s not a.
00:08:29
Speaker 6: Silver lining the EHD if you were managing the property. Well, the only silver lining might be if everything got out of control, and you know your your browse was max style you had. You know, deer were eating you out of house and home, brows lines everywhere, no, you know, high quality forage left in the woods. You know, it’s not a bad thing for you know, to hit the reset button. But if you were doing a pretty good job of managing that property, all you’re doing is getting set back. There’s no positive becomes out of it. We were That farm that I own in twenty eleven was awesome. I can’t even imagine better, honey. I’ve never heard people talk about better honey, other than maybe inside of a high fence, you know. But there was so many big deer there. And then during September August September in twenty twelve, we lost the most of our bucks. Well there you go. I mean the place was teed up and it was awesome and then it was bad. Never you know, there’s there’s no silver lining there. That was just that was just you know what what just happened here? And you know they’ll figure out someday how to manage that. But that’s I remember doctor James Kroll one time, you know, seminar, he said, everybody worries about CWD and rightfully so you said, but EHD wipes out way many times more deer throughout the Midwest than CWD does. It’s just that we don’t quite understand CWD that well, so we panic a little bit more over it and don’t really know the you know, the dynamics of it or as EHD. We understand it, but it doesn’t change the fact that you go from from ten to one as far as on a scale of awesome in one year.
00:10:31
Speaker 3: That’s tough. Next up, we have Jeff Sturgis. Jeff is from Michigan.
00:10:35
Speaker 4: His hunted in Wisconsin and Minnesota primarily, and typically they don’t have as much EHD or as many issues with this issue. But if he did face this, this is exactly what he would do. And I think you’re going to pick up on a trend throughout this episode of what you can do, what you can’t do, and maybe cut your losses. So here’s Jeff Sturgis after he just learned a bunch of deer gone missing due to VHD.
00:11:03
Speaker 8: We’ve been just where I’m at in southeast Minnesota where just out of the historically we’re just out of the EHD range. It happened like three miles south of US. So really, even in where I hunted in Wisconsin, it was a mile self US. Wisconsin was a mile away knocking on the door. I’ve been on properties where I’ve seen seven dead bucks in velvet on a pond like a skating pond here.
00:11:23
Speaker 5: In February at walking. They’re under the ice. That looks creepy.
00:11:27
Speaker 8: Heard stories of you know, we’ve all heard stories dozens of deer dead in the swamp out back.
00:11:32
Speaker 5: Someone put in air conditioning.
00:11:33
Speaker 8: I know one of my clients because they couldn’t leave their windows open because it kept blowing in during a warm September. All these deer dead out of the swamp. But anyways, it is a real problem. One of the things that just before we start, I love water holes. The reason, one of the reasons I love tank water holes is because there’s no mud surrounding a natural water hole.
00:11:52
Speaker 5: Then where the EHD propagates and lives.
00:11:55
Speaker 8: They live in that dry, cracking MUDs when you get drought and that water keeps your seating in a water hole that you’ve planned for deer and wildlife. All that cracking mud around there, that’s where that EHD image lives, and that’s where they propagate. So to me, we had two water holes in the property that were nice, pretty earth berms, not to mention they were in terrible locations. Dount we knock those berms out, got rid of them, and so we drained the water out, got rid of them. They’re just little room sized water holes because to me, they’re I don’t like to use COVID terms, but they’re HD super spreaders.
00:12:29
Speaker 5: I mean, they invite every deer in the.
00:12:30
Speaker 8: Neighborhood into those water holes only be exposed to HD. So I don’t want those on my property, and so that’s why we use tanks. I’m not trying to sell any tanks. We’ve tried. It’s too hard. We didn’t even come out with a product just because rubber Maid does it kind of cheap and they’re two hundred and seventy five bucks for three hundred gallon tank and they’re twenty five inches deep, sixty three by sixty nine inches, perfect size, one hundred and fifty galanon rubber Maid is a nice one two one hundred and ten galon.
00:12:58
Speaker 5: Off brand one from TSC is awesome. One to two hundred hundred bucks.
00:13:01
Speaker 8: For those, but I love those perfect depth to size ratio, not a lot of evaporation.
00:13:08
Speaker 5: So that’s one way.
00:13:09
Speaker 8: The second way to me, there’s five percent of the neighborhood that attracts mature bucks during the daylight, only five percent, because that’s that perfect combination of great fall food.
00:13:23
Speaker 5: It could be your finding this.
00:13:24
Speaker 8: On public land and public land only thing is food sources are always changing, so that those bucks aren’t going to be there from October to January where they might be on your private land if you make the right conditions and you keep food sources and good cover. Could be marginal, food sources marginal, but if they’re not under pressured and they’re consistent all year, then that’s where the mature bucks are going to be. How many times have you seen mature bucks in a state park that’s thirty acres or neighborhood set aside that’s ten acres.
00:13:52
Speaker 5: They’re not there because of food plots, feeding.
00:13:55
Speaker 8: Anything, anybody’s made any water holes, crated betting areas, they haven’t done anything to the land there, just because it’s marginal food, marginal cover, and it’s unpressured.
00:14:03
Speaker 5: It’s one area that they can find.
00:14:05
Speaker 8: So you look at that five percent, So I want to be that property that whatever bucks are left in the neighborhood. And I’m not sounds selfish, but you’re just trying to do a good job. In anything you do, you try to do your best. So I want to have that five percent property. I want to have the property that diminishes the number of dozen fauns during the summertime. I don’t like a lot of summer food. I want those dozen fauns to migrate onto the property during hunting season October November because I have quality food. But I don’t want them there waiting like an army for my fall food to arrive in August in September when I plant those food plots. So I want to minimize the number of fawns and doze on the property by even We have a product that we plant, It’s called rut zone from our food pot Seat company. It has beans in it, but we plant that July first or later early July pre probably because I want those dozen fawns to fawn somewhere else traditional fawning grounds. I want them off the p property preferred, and.
00:15:02
Speaker 5: Then they’ll come on later.
00:15:03
Speaker 8: But I don’t want them there during July and August pounding. Some of our fall foods, and that’s one of them. I want to plant beans later July first short short day bean so that I can get.
00:15:13
Speaker 5: That to grow.
00:15:14
Speaker 8: So you minimize the number of dozen fonts, you maximize the number of mature bucks in your property, which is only five percent of the neighborhood during the daylight. And that way you’re I’m not saying your EHD proof in your property, but what you’re doing is giving yourself a competitive advantage to actually be the property in the area that’s the influencer.
00:15:32
Speaker 5: And if you’re in.
00:15:33
Speaker 8: A dry region and you don’t have water holes that are full of mud and receding cracked mud and drying mud, then to me, that’s one more way you protect those mature box on your property. If they spend the majority of their time on your property. Do you know at night, most dear drink by eating green vegetation. So if they’re eating green vegetation all night because they’re out in the open aggfields, they don’t need to take a drink of wie.
00:16:00
Speaker 5: They come back on your land during the daylight. You don’t have mud.
00:16:03
Speaker 8: Holes surrounded by a dry and crack and receding mud that propagate the EHD midge in a lot of those ways, just by housing those mature box during the daylight the most, by being a five percent property, by reducing the number or eliminating if you can waterhole or mudhole areas on your property, then to me, you can have a fighting chance against EHD.
00:16:26
Speaker 5: And again, I feel sorry for it if you guys, if that.
00:16:28
Speaker 8: Happens, because I know I’ve been with clients almost in tears, you know, where they’ve built deer herds for three or four years and then just to have wiped out.
00:16:37
Speaker 5: And I haven’t gone through.
00:16:38
Speaker 8: It personally, but I’ve personally experienced it with clients and friends and it sucks, it really does. So those are the few things that you can do to try to me mitigate by EHD.
00:16:50
Speaker 7: What would you do if if you’re Minnesota farm, you know, if there’s a lot of eggs in that basket and I do not even want to say this, but it’s the question of what would happen and if hypothetically snap your fingers, then you’re like, oh my gosh, somehow we did get hammered and I lost eighty percent of you know, the age structure on this farm. What would you do for the season other than cry, maybe.
00:17:14
Speaker 8: I try to identify that one mature black left that I could hunt, and if that wasn’t the case, you know, then I would be happy to monitor the herd enjoy taking care of the land. We have lots of pheasant on our property. And I’m not saying that the pheasants, the grouse and the rabbits and the birds, butterflies, bees that we house on the property, our turkey nesting polt, all our turkeys. I’m not saying that that would, you know, take that sting away from losing that white tail herd. But it be a focus of mine that I would turn my attention to because we do that year round anyways. You know, we spend so many hours on the property because we are looking at turkey nesting areas, improving turkey population.
00:18:03
Speaker 5: We have lots of groups on the property, lots of pheasant.
00:18:06
Speaker 8: It just miles of peasant habitat edge and turkey nesting, and so I would focus on that, and then I’d look at trying to go north a little bit or find areas core areas on public land where I could hunt, and we hunt public land every year. Will be out to Pennsylvania again, out in the hills out in the Federal forest there that I’ve been going to since ninety three.
00:18:27
Speaker 5: I go back to.
00:18:27
Speaker 8: Michigan often, I think the last time was three years ago to hunt public land, and so public.
00:18:33
Speaker 5: Land has always been in my roots.
00:18:34
Speaker 8: And I’d go find a non EHD exposed public land to hunt somewhere because I gotta scratch that white till itch and then at home I take care of the critters and enjoy it.
00:18:45
Speaker 5: Yeah it sucked.
00:18:56
Speaker 8: Yeah, no one wants to think it would be horrible, but you know, you know, you just try to turn your focus on other things. And what I’ve tried to do in life at the age of fifty five is I hate this expression.
00:19:09
Speaker 5: It is what it is.
00:19:10
Speaker 8: But if you live a little bit by that looking at like, you can’t you can’t control, you can’t worry about the things you can’t change in life. If you worry about things and you let them get you down, including hunting, you can really drag you down into precious So I’d prefer to focus on Yep, that happened. It was bad, and this goes to life too. We can’t do anything about it. We’ll make better decisions next time, or we’ll just you know, we’ll deal with it and you move on and stay positive.
00:19:45
Speaker 4: Next, we have Don Higgins, and his advice here is very straightforward. And if you are in this scenario, or maybe if you artists feeling not very confident going into this season, I think Don’s advice right here is going to be a gentle nudge of him urgement. So here we go. This is what Down’s gonna do. If of the deer just got wiped out to EHD, the midgefly came in and caused havoc on his farm.
00:20:10
Speaker 9: Well, I’d let my trail cameras tell me the story. Is your target buck really dead? Is there another target buck that you’d want to go after that you’re still getting pictures of? If not, go somewhere else, I mean, there’s no sense in right and off your season. I mean, the United States is a big country. I’ve never heard of EHD wiping out the entire country. Go somewhere where there’s still deer. You may not get the hunted as often, you may have to wait till weekends or your vacation instead of hunting every evening, but still don’t give up. It goes back to the saying that I’ve I’ve repeated many times, find a solution, don’t make excuses, find solutions, and there’s always a solution.
00:20:51
Speaker 7: Do you think some guys, I mean, unfortunately areas get hit by EHD and a common thing is houser season hot even hunt got we got hit by eu H And do you think it’s just maybe they didn’t really want to hunt that bad.
00:21:04
Speaker 9: Well, I think it comes down to priorities and they probably got something else they like to do at that time of the year. I mean, I can’t imagine they’re sitting home staring at the ceiling and they’re probably into football or something like that, and that takes their time. For guys like me, there is no alternative. It’s been chasing big deer three hundred and sixty five days a year, and it doesn’t matter what month it is, I’m doing something related to chasing big deer. And I totally get it that not everybody is that serious about it. But if your goal is to kill giants, it better be pretty high on your priority list or it’s not going to happen at least consistently.
00:21:42
Speaker 4: Next up, we have Bobby Kendall. Bobby has a lot of intel across the Midwest, and when you have a lot of different places that you’re in tune with, more than likely one area may get snipped by EHD. Here is his approach, And these are always usually based off of rumors, and sometimes there’s room of catastrophic devastation to the white tailed deer herd, and sometimes maybe it’s going out of proportion. So here’s Bobby Kendall on what his perspective is when it comes to facing EHD.
00:22:11
Speaker 7: Head on my area that I this has been hammered by EHD.
00:22:14
Speaker 3: My season’s over.
00:22:15
Speaker 7: I’m gonna get eight more fantasy football teams because my season’s over.
00:22:20
Speaker 3: Is that is that the right approach? And where do I start?
00:22:23
Speaker 5: Yeah?
00:22:23
Speaker 3: This is this is your mindset.
00:22:25
Speaker 10: So like if EHD hits your farm and it’s the only place that you’re hunting, yeah you’re I mean ninety percent chance that you’re kind of screwed, you know, probably, But this is where you know, a lot of these conversations today have come back to good hunters. Great hunters. You know, you have to get good at finding deer, So you got to go out and find more places. You can’t just sit around and hope. And you know, now I’ll kind of talk about this from a different angle, you know, deer strategy, and my opinion, it starts. A lot of guys we deal with they haven’t even bought a farm yet. So those guys are it’s really good because you can have this conversation on the front end. Deer strategy is not just this stuff, the food plot and everything. It’s your spread of farm. So a lot of these guys are buying multiple farms, or they want a four hundred acre farm or an eight hundred acre farm. And part of your dear strategy is not pigeonholing yourself into one, into a situation where you get wiped out by EHD. So instead of buying a four hundred, maybe buy two two hundreds. Maybe buy four to one hundreds instead of buying one hundred, Maybe by two fifties. Instead of leasing a two hundred, maybe you lease a fifty to a one to fifty. The more pieces you can have always, the better you’re going to be off. You have to have a great, big piece before it’s like okay, you know this makes sense. You are so much better doing your part on fifty acres and sampling a thousand or twelve hundred or eighteen hundred acres than you are having eighteen hundred and sampling twenty four hundred. You know what I mean. You can take that same thousand acres in ten pieces and sample ten thousand acres. So getting ahead of that problem. You know, that’s all part of your dear strategy game. And you know, so don’t don’t get in a position where you’re screwed because your farm got wiped out by EHD.
00:24:23
Speaker 5: I guess what I’m saying.
00:24:24
Speaker 3: So go go knock on some doors.
00:24:25
Speaker 10: Go knock on some doors if you’re in that situation, and start trying to change course so it doesn’t happen again.
00:24:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, because it does suck. There, you guys have it.
00:24:34
Speaker 7: Next, we have Thomas mills Now he’s in Wisconsin, and I think his approach here is going to be very interesting on what to do if you’re handcuffed to the farm and is it worth paying attention?
00:24:46
Speaker 4: Is it worth picking up a different hobby this fall. Here’s what Thomas Millson has to say. All right, I’ve been hearing rumors it’s been really dry. I think I smelled the dead deer. Sure enough, my whole farm was hammered by EHD, What do I do now?
00:25:06
Speaker 2: Well, this year, you certainly don’t have to worry about it being dry if you’re in the Midwest. But ESG is a weird thing because it can be so isolated in those pockets, and it happens a lot. Right Just this last year, just south of here, a friend of mine all their target books dead up by us. No problem at all. There’s not a lot that you can do, to be honest. The first thing I’m gonna do is a thorough examination of my farm, my property itself, and figure out again is there anything that we can do to get ahead of this problem in the future.
00:25:39
Speaker 5: And then the next thing.
00:25:40
Speaker 2: I’m gonna do is I’m gonna hunt. I’m gonna hunt like normal. I’m gonna observe my property, I’m gonna observe the habitat deer movement. I’m gonna act as if there’s a mature buck on the property as much as possible. But I also might pick up an out of state hunt, or maybe do something out west, or maybe do some low impact dope control, depending on you know, the quality. If I heard in general, obviously, if EHD just hit you really hard and killed a lot dear, you probably don’t want to go and kill a bunch of does, but if it just took out a few of your older age class bucks, which tends to happen, right, We’ve got a lot more sensitive vascular tissue on a buck like that for those flies to bite, so that happens quite a bit.
00:26:19
Speaker 3: But I’m going to just try to feel it out.
00:26:23
Speaker 2: And remember, every year’s a building year on a property, every year’s building year.
00:26:27
Speaker 5: So again, this.
00:26:28
Speaker 2: Year somewhat of a bus Still a lot of things that we can do to enjoy our time out there. Maybe I’ll spend more time taking my kids hunting. Maybe I’ll try and get them on the DOS or some management, dear, whatever it might be. But I’m also looking at that property and going, okay, what is the cause of something like this? You know, I think one of the big things we like to blame ponds, water holes and stuff like that, which is partially true, yes, but from a holistic standpoint, we also need to look at what are the natural predators of this midge that spreads the and we don’t provide very good habitat for those animals either. Birds, spiders, dragonflies are probably the biggest predators of insects like that, midges and also mosquitoes alike. Dragonflies need similar water. They need open water. The stuff that we look at and go that’s stagnant water, that’s a mosquito haven. Mosquitoes can breed in you a thimble of water. Dragonflies need a lot more water. And when you have a healthy habitat for water water, predators like that, like the dragonflies, they’ll feed on the midge in the larval state, they’ll feed on mosquitos in the larval state in that water, and then they’ll also catch them out of the air. So it’s kind of kind of twofold there, right, But it goes back to the habitat. If we have a lot better native habitat that supports a lot of healthier insect populations than we have the predatory insects in that ecosystem that also feed on that midge, and that reduces all that stuff. So a lot of these problems that we face as deer hunters, we have created ourselves not just as hunters but as humans and habitat loss and destruction and pesticides and all these things that are killing all the things out there, and then just a select handful of these pests can survive these situations. And it also goes back to healthier deer. You know, healthy food plots, getting a lot of mineral content into the forage so it’s actually nutrient dense and not just this, you know, a lush, green, empty calorie meal for them. We get as much vitamins in there as possible. I run goats in the woods, right, the best way to combat biting insects on goats is to make sure that they have access to minerals. Trace minerals all the time. When the mineral content is up in their body, their blood changes. It makes them a lot healthier. The same as true for deer, and deer don’t hit mineral licks all the time. So having mineral licks out I think is also a good idea where it’s legal. But if it’s not legal, there then having really really high quality food plots and really high quality native vegetation. So here we go all the way back around. Native vegetation really good for the insects that are going to kill the midges.
00:29:05
Speaker 5: Native vegetation, deep root.
00:29:07
Speaker 2: Systems, a lot of minerals, a lot of good protein, creates a lot healthier animals and also doesn’t concentrate them so much in certain areas. That’s going to be that full circle, holistic approach to improving your property to combat EHD. And we’re also going to address those water sources too and try to mitigate the muddy water sources like that too, So it all goes hand in hand.
00:29:29
Speaker 4: Without further ado, we are going to close this out with Mark Kenyon on his perspective on this specific topic.
00:29:36
Speaker 7: Here we go, right, I’ve been hearing rumors, mumbles. I think my whole area is got wiped out by EHD. It’s September. My season is completely different than what I thought. Potentially, what do I do well? Good news badness on the situation. The bad news is that I probably have the worst answer anyone today in today’s episode because I’ve never personally had to experience this. But that’s also the good news. I’ve never had a personal experience. Yes, so I’ve worried about it, and in last year actually was maybe the time in the last like fifteen years where I thought this might have happened the most likely, And so I have these questions and I was like, ooh, is this what’s going on? Is this why they all disappeared. Is this what’s happening? So I lived this a little bit last year, but I’ve never had it actually confirmed and really truly blow things up for me. So I think that what I did last year is that I searched and hoped him, prayed and kept hoping him, praying that they were around somewhere that just de your behavior change or pressure had changed, and something had pushed these bucks out of their usual patterns. I definitely paid a lot of extra attention to water when I was out hunting during the season or doing some final prep work there in the late August early September, because that’s typically where you’re to find deer from EHD. They go to water, So I was always watching for that. I was asking neighbors. I was like, hey, are you finding dead deer? Have you seen any sign of this? Are you’re smelling anything funky? Like I’m wondering if this is what’s going on, So just just allow the detective work to try to confirm. That didn’t end up turning anything out, And so I think if there were rumors, that’s what I would be doing to try to confirm. If I was in a situation where it is confirmed and I start finding dead deer or I start hearing about it happening, and it seems like the deer that I’m after that year, or whatever mature bucks were around, or toast. I think, then you’ve got two options. One of these options is hopefully you are prepared for both these six I think the key thing is this. I mentioned this on a different episode. One of the most important things to consistent deer hunting success is having a diversified portfolio. If you were dependent on any one deer, or any one property or any one area.
00:31:59
Speaker 3: You are putting your your house.
00:32:01
Speaker 7: Of cards is a serious risk because it could all come tumbling down if you have one bad case of HD, or if you have one neighbor who shoots the one buck here after whatever. There’s so many things can happen if you are dependent on this one thing. So I try to make sure that I have multiple areas that can hunt, multiple properties that can hunt, multiple deer I can hunt and or well, I guess, and public opportunities as well. So having many private accesses is great. If you have those opportunities, or if you own a farm or multiple farms, whatever it is, whatever your circumstances are, Supplementing that with public land is a great way to have more options, so that if EHD does blow up your core place, it’s not like AH says, is over, I’m doomed. It’s okay. Pivot, what’s Plan B, what’s Plan C? What’s planned? And if you don’t have a BC or D, then it’s you know, hitting the hitting the doors, you know, hitting the road, knocking on doors, trying to get last in the permission, talking to friends, talking to your network. You know, it’s amazing if you start asking about hunting opportunities, and even today where there are so many people trying to get access, there are still opportunities to get permission in places if you ask enough, if you talk, if you find creative ways to help people out, people will help you back. So even in this case where your property gets destroyed and there’s maybe nothing you want to hunt anymore, I certainly wouldn’t want to hang it up for the year. I would say, all right, well, now what do I need to do.
00:33:31
Speaker 3: How do you make.
00:33:31
Speaker 7: Something out of the situation, and how do I find like a silver lining to this? This is a great opportunity to go and do that thing that you’ve always thought someday I’ll do it that brand new adventure, traveling out of state to some new place, or learning a piece of public land. You’ve always thought, man, that looks pretty good. But I’ve always had this great farm hunt. This is the year when you have ESG hit where your planing a disappears. That’s the year ticked flyer, Go do something new, Go try a new technique, a new area, learn some new lessons, because they have nothing to lose and only new opportunities and learnings to gain. So I would view EHD as an unfortunate pivot point that you should try to make the best of. Yeah, I think that’s the best thing you can do. I mean, sitting there and sulking for the whole year probably is doing a human And you know, this is a more occurring issue, and that’s why this was a question that I asked eight people, and everyone had a different level of experience with EHD, and that the general consensus was.
00:34:34
Speaker 3: Move on.
00:34:34
Speaker 7: I mean, that’s all you could probably do and obviously verify that there was an issue, because EHD is always a rumor. It’s always oh so and so heard from so and so that there was a bunch of dead deer, and so that kind of perpetuates a lot of panic, and maybe sometimes it’s over sensationalized, and sometimes maybe it’s very accurate. And so I think you had to figure out what that is, and that was the general consensus.
00:34:56
Speaker 3: So that’s the HD.
00:34:58
Speaker 7: I hope everyone listening to this does not have to experience this issue. And I hopefully this is a trend that becomes less popular and occurs less often, but it’s something that’s really real right now, and so that’s why we asked that. But next week we have a really I guess, kind of somewhat philosophical question of how can we make the next twenty five years of hunting beer hunting better than the last twenty five And we have a great variety of answers, and I hope you guys tune in next week.
00:35:24
Speaker 3: Obviously, it is.
00:35:25
Speaker 4: My wish here that no one has to experience this, but it is an issue that is becoming.
00:35:30
Speaker 3: More and more prevalent.
00:35:31
Speaker 4: There’s a lot of people that are hypothesizing different solutions and trying to hopefully mitigate the problems with EHD, and hopefully there’s a solution in the future. There’s obviously some things that people talked about from a habitat perspective of what you could potentially.
00:35:45
Speaker 3: Do, and this is the reality of the situation right now.
00:35:48
Speaker 4: Like I said in the very beginning, Ohio unfortunately is facing this once again. There was parts of Illinois last year that got hit and this seems like every single year there’s pocketed regions that get really hurt by EHD. So hopefully this episode doesn’t hit home. But unfortunately, if you’re in the Midwest, you can almost earmark this because probably in the next few years, or the next five years or ten years, this is something that you’re unfortunately likely going to face as things sit today.
00:36:13
Speaker 3: So that is it.
00:36:14
Speaker 4: We are closing out the back forty series here pretty soon. We have one more episode that I hope you guys will enjoy. It’s a very overarching, big picture, more philosophical question that I wanted to get perspective from all of these guests.
00:36:27
Speaker 3: So that is it. We will see you next time. See you
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