Students who went home for the holidays in certain parishes may have seen a decrease in deer available for hunting due to an outbreak of a new strain of hemorrhagic disease in some herds, according to Lane Foil, Pennington Chair for Wildlife Research in the LSU AgCenter.

Deer become infected with the disease from midges, or gnats, in the fall, and carcasses are found near or in water. Hunters preparing for deer season have called in more than 100 reports of deer carcasses all over the state, said State Wildlife Veterinarian Jim LaCour.

Only five dead deer were reported last year, LaCour said.

Foil said the increase in numbers could be attributed to a new strain of hemorrhagic disease in Louisiana. Native deer have an “inherent resistance” to the normal two strains of the virus, LaCour said.

Foil compared the disease to West Nile virus in humans. While the virus kills some people, some survive and develop antibodies.

“If it’s a female, then she develops antibodies that’s going to protect her for life, and then she’ll give antibodies to her babies,” he said of hemorrhagic disease. “That will protect them through their first year of life, and if they’re exposed to the virus, then they don’t get sick.”

Because this is the first year the new strain has developed in Louisiana, the native herds don’t have much resistance to it, Foil said.

Most of the reports are from southern parishes near the Mississippi River, like Iberville, Ascension and Terrebonne parishes, LaCour said.

Only one dead deer has been reported in East Baton Rouge Parish, LaCour said.

The outbreaks in the disease shift throughout the state each year, Foil said.

“It might be in the basin one year. It might be in the coast the next,” he said.

But Foil said students don’t need to be worried about the populations.

“Populations rebound at an amazing rate,” Foil said. “It’s not going to make a big impact for students going home for the holidays.”

Even though there have been more than 100 hemorrhagic reports statewide, LaCour said those numbers may not represent the true number of victims. Some landowners and hunters may not call the state when they come across a carcass, and some carcasses are never found.

“We don’t see every animal that’s affected. All we hear about these deer is from hunters,” LaCour said.

Foil said the virus has infected other species across the nation, and 6,000 dead deer have been reported in Nebraska.

• Among more than 100 reports of dead deer in Louisiana, only one was reported in East Baton Rouge Parish
• Some states are seeing bigger numbers affected, with about 6,000 deer dead in Nebraska