After 4 years of applying I got a west river south Dakota deer tag. I got an email last night saying the dnr is asking for people to turn their tags back in for a full refund and preference point return due to an outbreak of blue tounge. Does anyone know how the deer population is doing in nw SD? Does anyone know how many years it takes for the disease to run its course? I want to hunt but I want to also conserve the resource.

The nw corner is one of the hardest hit areas. Go to the SD game fish and parks website and search "EHD map". It will show the location of known incidents of blue tongue.

I have heard now from two different ranchers a lot farther west of that who are seeing the same affliction in their deer this year. I expect to hear from more.

Osky

Well shucks. The areas I know of are mostly Mule deer areas in the NW corner of the state and that's what I planned to target. I can get MN whitetails for my meat supply so I really don't need to go out and kill a Mule deer in a area of struggling population. I just don't know much about Blue Tongue other than it can really wipe out a lot of deer fast.

EHD can really decimate a deer heard if it is a bad outbreak. In 2012 Nebraska had a really bad year of it. Some areas of the state lost upwards of 80% of the deer.

There are rumors of another outbreak this year in NE too. Nothing confirmed about how bad or how widespread it is at this time.

Hopefully SD can rebound fairly quickly!

An EHD out break and a drought at the same time will put the hammer on a deer population. As the drought concentrates the animals at the available water supplies helping spread the disease.

ND game and fish is also offering refunds and points back for areas west and southwest because of blue tongue.

You should be OK if your planning to hunt Mule Deer, EHD typically only affects Whitetails.

It’s in everything this year.

Whitetails, mulies, goats, all getting smacked hard.

Sounds like it is in the Whitehouse also

Our best antelope spot in MT got it about 15 years ago and it still hasn't recovered. We saw them tipping over and it was horrible to see.

Check with GFP to see if your area is even impacted by this like said it hits the WT population hard but we did have a sick mulie a few years ago acted like blue tongue but did not test positive for it. About had to tackle the guy to even get him to test it not certain he ever did send it in.

Shooting song dogs one fall in eastern MT came on a naturally made stock pond that had 20 some white tails dead in and around it. Terrible disease.

Osky

Seen some beautiful bucks laying around rotting and the birds would not touch them also seen a badger move in under a fresh one and gobbled it up in a few days.

FYI blue tongue and EHD are different diseases

Thanks, it's EHD. I used the SD map to see where the cases were and the heaviest hit areas are where I normally hunt. Not 100% sure on what to do yet.