| Deer Diseases 101 by Brad Blaine |
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| Deer disease is something that has come into the media spotlight recently. It is my intention to discuss some of the more common deer diseases that tend to pop up from time to time. I must admit that I am not a cervid pathologist (one who examines diseases of the deer family). However, I do know enough to understand their language as well as how to pass that information onto our hunters. With that said, let's begin. Disease itself can be caused by any number of things regardless of whether its in deer, people or even plants. The causitive agent of disease is microorganisms (germs). These can be viruses, bacteria, fungi and others. All of these are teeny weeny little things that only a trained microbiologist can detect using laboratory techniques (see Table 1). Table 1. This table shows the relative sizes of common small particles. Notice that viruses can only be seen with and are several million times smaller than a human hair in size! So how do we hunters detect disease in deer without having to contract a microbiologist? Well, in all honesty, a hunter can't determine with any great certainty whether a deer is diseased or not without tissue testing. But, there are some outward characteristics of infected animals that one can see, thus allowing the hunter to protect himself from potential infection. Although in my opinion, the infected deer should be harvested and kept from infecting the rest of the population, current laws prevent shooting a diseased deer and leave it lay unless a state wildlife agency gives a replacement tag. One note on this, most deer diseases are hard if not impossible to be transferred to people. However, precautions should be taken For now let's look at the specific deer diseases that are or have been threats to West Virginia deer. Bovine tuberculosis (TB) is a contagious respiratory disease caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium bovis. TB is a slowly developing disease in deer which can take years before becoming noticeable. Deer have trouble with breathing and ultimately die due to respiratory problems. If you should happen to shoot a deer with TB, you will notice yellow or tan lumps inside the ribcage and or lungs (see Figure 1 and 2). No jerky or smoked sausage should be made out of TB diseased deer although thoughly cooked steaks and burger are o.k.. Figure 1. Normal deer without TB. Note the clean Figure 2. TB infected deer. Note the yellow lumps on lungs and ribcage. lungs and ribcage. Deer Diseases Continued |
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