The common name for the disease is Blue Tongue.
And whether you're a hunter, property owner or just driving down the road, there's a good chance you're going to see sick or dead deer.
The disease can kill a healthy deer in a matter of hours.
96 counties out of Kentucky's 120 counties have reported the disease and it is sweeping across Ohio and Indiana as well.
With hunting season already underway in Kentucky and about to begin in Ohio, the number of reports of sick animals is expected to soar.
Local 12's Rich Jaffe shows why the outbreak will not be over until mother nature sends us colder weather.
Finke's Meat Market in Fort Wright processes about 500 deer every year for hunters.
An avid hunter himself, this year, Tim Finke's processing calls of concern.
"A lot of people are calling me telling me about how many deer they're finding on their farm, asking me if i'm finding any. There's old employees that hunt a lot come in here and he's real concerned about it he's not hunting this year he said he will not eat it so he's not gonna hunt."
The reason for the concern is a disease called EHD, Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease, or blue tongue.
Intensified by the drought, it's spread by gnats that bite deer at watering holes... and it's brutal.
Sick animals are easy to spot, and biologists say nearly 2000 dead deer have been reported so far in Kentucky alone.
"Right now what we're seeing is the acute form of the disease where most of the animals become very feverish and tend to die within one to three days and it's called hemhorragic disease because they do tend to start losing fluids and bleeding out inside and it can be a pretty quick death or they may recover and survive it's hard to know."
The good news for hunters and processors like here at Finke's is that as long as hunters harvest healthy deer, EHD presents no risk whatsoever to human beings because human beings can't even contract the virus.
"This disease is not transmissible to humans, you're not gonna get sick from handling a carcass or sick deer. Obviously we advise hunters to never harvest an animal that's visibly ill, that's just not a good idea, but if you harvest an animal that's gotten it and survived there's no danger to you any pets or anything like that."
Experts say the gnats will be killed off with the first frost, and the effects of the EHD outbreak should fade a short time later..
Experts say the Kentucky deer herd is estimated at about one million animals so the number that will die as a result of EHD is probably minimal.
A strain of EHD that affects cattle has now been confirmed in both Kentucky and Ohio but biologists say the cattle virus is neither lethal nor harmful to the beef supply.
