Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Anthrax

Just found out that anthrax has pretty much wiped out our lease. I was going to set up a new blind this weekend but have decided not to set it up
We are still heading up there this weekend to see the damage for ourselves. From what I have heard from other guys that hunt the same ranch, but different pasture is that its a total wipe out.

So anthrax is naturally occurring in soil.... and for some reason it multiplied????

From what I understand, when you have a wet spring and a dry summer it makes the condition more favorable.
I read somewhere that the state is saying over 750 thousand acres and 80-90% death rate.

Wow thats horrible! Where is this located?

I did some reading on this a few weeks back - sad deal for the critters.

Seems the grazers - cattle, deer, horses, antelope, sheep etc. are the most prone.
Of course the porkers you folks could all do without are far less susceptible.

Ozona Texas.
We are about 25 miles south of Ozona off 163. The affected area stretches west of Ozona and east to Sonora and down south to Eagle Pass. Its not uncommon for Anthrax in this area, but this seems to be a REALLY bad year.

We hunt south and west of you between Pumpville and Sheffield. We've been fortunate this year. We got hit in about 2011. It didn't completely wipe us out, but it got a bunch. It took about 3 years to recover too. A lot of folks aren't reporting the impact to their leases for fear of quarantine I suppose. The reason I say that is I sat in on a meeting last week and the Texas Department of State Health Services said there's only been 5 confirmed cases in Uvalde, ValVerde and a couple of other counties. I keep hearing about folks losing their entire herd on another forum as well.

I'm in the Rocksprings area in the far SW corner of Edward's county. We have a little in Kinney county as well. Anthrax hit us hard in 2003. We lost 80 to 90 percent of our herd. Took 3 to 4 years to come back. The only good thing was it actually helped us long term as the antler quality improved greatly due to better forage and a more balanced herd. We have kept the herd in check since then. I'm praying it does not get us this year. It is brutal.

One interesting thing that happened last time it hit our place was a tremendous increase in Feral hogs. My theory was they were eating allot of the dead deer and the sows were in good shape and dropped big litters. We shot way over 100 pigs off the ranch in 2003 thru 2004. The Antrax doesn't bother the hogs.

Hope you find your place in better shape than what you are hearing about it!

Just got back from the lease, yesterday. We saw 5 dead cows and 5 dead deer. I was expecting to see more dead deer.
We did have a 1/2" of rain saturday evening, and drove around and wallked alot sunday. Zero deer tracks or sightings. Its like they all just vanished.
This is a place that is usually covered up with deer.

Is it Possible that the Russians did something to the soil.

Sorry to hear this. Been where you are before. Hopefully it is not near as bad as you are thinking. The upside is you can really manage your herd now and if kept under the carrying capacity of the property can grow much larger bucks. Will just take a few seasons.

Dub Thomas - How far south and west of Sheffield do you think it spread? We hunt between Dryden and Sanderson and our Mule Deer numbers are way down. I thought the country was just shot up, which it is, but Anthrax in addition would explain the drop in numbers and also give me hope that it will recover.

Sad but like Mohawk wrote use it as a management tool and shoot the hell out of the hogs in the meantime.

Tejano,

I don't think it made it that far west. The farthest I've heard has been from about Ozona down towards Del Rio. Mainly the eastern part of Val Verde County, parts of Crockett and Sutton Counties have been hit. I've heard of guys saying they've seen 40-100 dead deer on their leases.

Thanks good to know but the over shooting may be a permanent situation with no recovery possible. Almost all of central Tx. is over populated with deer and many other parts of Tx. too but more locally. Let's just hope the long term effect is positive. I have seen twice where drought resulted in 75% fawn kill and long term it resulted in larger deer. Hope this is true of Anthrax and that the survivors are developing more resistance.

Anthrax is irruptive. It lays dormant for generations and blasts everything when conditions are right. That doesn’t lend itself to developing resistance