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Tuesday, December 21, 2021
East Oregonian
A11
Deer disease outbreak likely won’t affect hunting tags
By JAYSON JACOBY
Baker City Herald
An insect-borne virus
killed dozens of deer, most
whitetails, in Baker, Union
and Wallowa counties this
summer, but wildlife biolo-
gists said the die-off might
not lead to any reduction in
hunting tags.
Officials from the Oregon
Department of Fish and
Wildlife started getting
reports of dead deer around
the region this summer.
Tests of tissue samples
confirmed that the animals
were infected with a virus,
spread by biting midges, that
causes the frequently fatal
illness, epizootic hemor-
rhagic disease.
Although EHD can kill
both white-tailed and mule
deer, as well as other wild
animals, such as elk and
pronghorn antelope and
sheep and cattle, the disease
typically is much more viru-
lent among whitetails, said
Brian Ratliff, district wildlife
biologist at ODFW’s Baker
City office.
In late summer, Ratliff
said 33 of the 36 dead deer
he had examined were white-
tails.
Baker County
In Baker County the
disease outbreak was mostly
confined to the western edge
of the Baker Valley, an area
including Pine and Goodrich
creeks, Ben Dier Lane and
upper Hunt Mountain Lane,
Ratliff said.
White-tailed deer are
common in that part of the
valley, about 12 miles north-
west of Baker City.
Ratliff didn’t have a final
estimated tally of how many
deer died.
But because there is no
special hunting season for
whitetails — they are legal
quarry during seasons, the
same as mule deer — Ratliff
said the die-off won’t lead to
a reduction in hunting tags
in the Sumpter unit, which
includes Baker Valley.
An outbreak of EHD
killed an estimated 2,000
white-tailed deer in Umatilla
County during the fall of
2019, resulting in the cancel-
lation of some deer hunts in
that area.
The virus poses no threat
to people, cats or dogs. Nor
can people become ill by
eating the meat of a deer or
other animal infected with
EHD.
Deer are infected only
by being bitten by midges;
deer can’t infect each other
t h r ou g h no s e -t o -no s e
contact, as with some other
diseases.
Union County
EHD also spread through
white-tailed deer in Union
Cou nt y t h is su m mer,
including in higher eleva-
tion forested areas in the
Wenaha and Sled Springs
units where the disease has
rarely been confirmed in the
past, said Phillip Perrine, a
Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife/Contributed Photo, File
Epizootic hemorrhagic disease killed dozens of white-tailed deer in the summer of 2021 in Baker, Union and Wallowa counties, but wildlife biologist with the
Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife report that die-off was not large enough to reduce the number of hunting tags for 2022.
wildlife biologist at ODFW’s
La Grande office.
“It was more prevalent
than we’ve seen,” Perrine
said.
He didn’t have an esti-
mate for how many deer
died, although he said there
were outbreaks in both the
mountains and in the Grande
Ronde Valley.
Assessing the extent of
the outbreak will be easier
once ODFW receives hunter
reports and conducts its
annual aerial deer census
this month, Perrine said.
He said Fish and Wild-
life started getting reports
of dead white-tailed deer
in early summer, and, as in
Baker Valley, tissue samples
confirmed EHD.
Both Perrine and Ratliff
said they believe the severe
drought contributed to the
severity of this year’s EHD
outbreak.
Deer tend to be most
vulnerable to being infected
by midges when the animals
are concentrated around
water sources, the biologists
said.
And with fewer of those
sources during this dry
summer, there were likely
larger numbers of deer gath-
ering in places where they
were exposed to midges,
Perrine said.
It’s not clear yet whether
the EHD outbreak will
prompt the state game
Wishing
Everyone a Very
Happy Holiday
and for a Bright
New Year!
department to reduce hunt-
ing tag numbers for any 2022
seasons, Perrine said.
He said he hopes that’s not
the case, particularly with a
popular muzzleloader hunt
for whitetails.
Ratliff said the EHD
outbreak ended quickly once
freezing temperatures killed
the year’s crop of midges.
Both he and Perrine
said they stopped receiving
reports of dead deer in early
fall.
“Once the conditions get
colder and these midges are
no longer on the landscape,
we didn’t really have any
more losses,” Perrine said.
Wallowa County
A total of 12 deer — 11
whitetails and one mule deer
— were confirmed by tests as
having died from EHD, said
Bree Furfey, district wildlife
biologist at the department’s
Enterprise office.
The disease also is
suspected as the cause in
another mule deer’s death.
Furfey said she doesn’t
have an estimated total
number of deer deaths due
to the outbreak.
She said the virus was
most prevalent in and around
the city of Wallowa, but it
also was confirmed else-
where in the Wallowa Valley
including near Joseph,
Lostine and Enterprise, and
in the northern part of the
county near Troy and the
Wenaha country.
Although the extent of the
EHD outbreak isn’t certain,
Furfey said she doesn’t
believe the death toll among
deer was high enough to
warrant any reductions in
hunting tags for 2022.
Rapid recovery?
Although white-tailed
deer are much more suscep-
tible to EHD, the species has
an advantage in that white-
tail populations tend to grow
faster than mule deer herds
when conditions are suitable,
Perrine said.
White-tailed does typi-
cally have twin fawns each
year, he said.
“It’s difficult to over-
hunt whitetails because
they reproduce so quickly,”
Perrine said.
Furfey and Ratliff also
cited the procreation poten-
tial of whitetails as one
reason why this year’s EHD
outbreak likely won’t affect
next year’s hunting season.
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