With the hunting season ending in Iowa, a local conservation officer says deer harvest numbers were down 19 percent in Guthrie County. 

Iowa Department of Natural Resources Officer Jeremy King says especially during the gun and late muzzleloader seasons he got a lot of feedback from residents explaining that they weren’t seeing many deer. King conveys the numbers are backed up by what he was hearing. He says for example in Guthrie County, they normally harvest annually through all the deer seasons combined about 1,200 does and that’s about 50 percent of the tags available. 

“Well, this year, those numbers we dropped from about 1,200 which we’ve averaged the last five years to not quite 700 doe’s this year, which is very substantial.”

Kings speculates that a disease called EHD (Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease) could have been a major factor.

“Well, about the end of September this year, my numbers for EHD deer blew up. People started calling, telling me about the deer. They’re finding dead bucks and does and it carried not only through the end of September, all the way through October, and November, and December. So we lost a lot of deer to EHD this year, and I think that is a big hurt.”

King states another disease that is causing a lot of deer to die is Chronic Wasting Disease. He says moving forward this will be a concern for the DNR and other hunters.