# Deer Infection



## HCF (Apr 7, 2005)

I harvested a button buck this past Sunday and dropped it off to my butcher and Monday he called an said the deer had some kind of infection as he got towards the front of it during skinning it, yellow puss came out all the way up to the neck, one shoulder was undeveloped compared to the other. Now during gutting I didn't notice anything wrong with heart,lungs,liver nor yellow puss. He didn't recommend eating it because it had spread so far nor did he want to butcher it. So I called ODNR to maybe see if they wanted a sample or check it out but they said they didn't want it and that it was ok to eat just make sure its well done, I told them the butcher wouldn't even cut it. This sucks cause now I'm out of some meat and now a tag. I'm all tagged out.


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## gainer888 (Sep 27, 2007)

That stinks....sorry for your luck. 

What about getting another tag for a 2 or 3 deer county or urban zone? Still muzzleloading and 1+ month of archery!


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## Fishstix (Aug 16, 2005)

That does stink, but to be honest, I wouldn't want to eat the meat at all. You are out some meat, but not the memory of harvesting that deer.


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## capt S (Sep 5, 2007)

you probably did the deer a favor. i whould try and complain to the dnr and see if they would give you another tag.


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## M.Magis (Apr 5, 2004)

I'm a little surprised the butcher refused to cut any of the meat. Anyone who has butchered very many deer has seen that before. You should have at least gotten both hind quarters and the backstraps.


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## PapawSmith (Feb 13, 2007)

HCF,Since your "All tagged out" I assume you've already secured a fair amount of venison . The button buck you shot probably has been hit by a car or something traumatic like that. Blunt force trauma of that nature normally causes puss to devolope between the muscle tissue and the hide. Same thing happens to us. I recently had a finger drained of puss that i smashed when it got caught in a wife. ( Did I say "wife", I meant vise...true story). I've seen that type of infection before in animals that I have shot that had been shot before, obviously earlier in the same season, but never to the extent that you describe your deer. Thats why I figure he has been hit by something hard. I've opened up some deer that have TOTALLY ruined my day. Deer are incredibly resilient and can run away from things that would kill most of us. Your deer probably did not have a disease but instead had a full body wound. Enjoy the meat that you secured this year with your other tags that you filled and next year try, again, to fill em all!!! That is about 6 times better than the rest of us do.


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## hunt-n-fish (Jun 19, 2007)

Not sure of the spelling, but an abscess is no more you having a splinter in your finger and getting infected. This is and can be caused by thorns, while fighting w/other bucks, even old wounds from hunters. I can't tell you how many broadheads we pulled out of deer this year. The two most common points are in the neck area and the spine.

Many of them are hard to believe that the deer didn't eventually die. It's possible the area your talking about could have been a pass thru shot from above by an archery hunter (this is why straight down shots on deer are considered very poor) into the neck and out the shoulder. We've seen this before and infections can occur.

In most cases, the infections are isolated to the injured area only and will not affect the entire deer. But we've had deer who were gang-green or walking zombies, come in top the shop after being shot and for some reason, didn't heal and became more infected. In which case, I feel, the infection gets into the blood and can taint or consume the entire deer with infection. 

On Monday a hunter brought in a buck that had been shot in three places, both hinds and thru the right front shoulder. All 3 had abscesses that would require loosing the hinds and shoulder. We called him, he understood. The deer was destroyed because he didn't want it. He said he would call wildlife to try and get another permit due to the deer being in the condition it was in.

We get deer from Kelleys Island and it's incredible how many deer have previous wounds, probably the #1 area where wounds are common. Abscesses can be small and others big. Again, we have seen what you're describing before as an arrow through the meat of the neck and out the shoulder, hitting only non-vital areas and certainly not killing the animal.

Just because it has an abscess, doesn't mean the deer is 'totaled'. But I wasn't there and only the hunter and processor can use their judgment in making a decision on what to do. Probably the best old wound I ever saw on a deer was a broadhead stuck in the gonads! If was an infected and swollen. It's obviously a man thing, but when you see an oddity like that, you investigate. Talk about getting hit in the nuts ..................


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## HCF (Apr 7, 2005)

Thank you all for the info. I am very thankful to have been able to harvest a nice 8pt and a doe with this one being my 3rd. I have good memories with all the deer I have harvested. I can still hunt urban but I'm done it was a good season for me and I'm thankful.


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## Hetfieldinn (May 17, 2004)

I used to help a butcher process deer. The number of slugs and peices of arrows I would find in the deer from previous years was amazing.

I shot a twelve point two years ago that had a broadhead and about six of arrow left on it sticking an inch out of the far side of it.

I processed many deer with concentrations of puss and/or tumors growing on them. Some were the size of golf balls, and others were larger than a football. We never trashed the whole deer.


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