Ever think much about it? Just read a story this AM about a little girl who contracted the plague (thats right the plague) from a dead squirrel she touched.
If the doctor wouldnt have been very good, the little girl would have certainly died.
I guess this happens about 9 times a year, but you just dont hear much about it.
Just make you think a little about the critters you touch. :eek:
If is was going to happen, I would rather it be from a critter I killed with my bow. Much more so than getting salmonella from some tainted grocery store chicken, or ecoli from some bad grocery store meat.
No,I don't wory about it! I guess if that is what is in the cards for me then it will happen.
Most of the time those diseases are transferred through contact with some smller animal like a bat or something that was already very sick and/or dead and not the larger animals we normally hunt to consume.
Bisch
Worst case of food poisoning I ever had was store bought meat from walmart. I was so bad I had blood coming out of me. Grocery store meat makes me nervous. By the way plauge is caused by flea bites.
Bad scallops in a local seafood place and a salad on a US Air flight out of Mexico City got me worse than anything I've had before. I never thing about it with game animals.
What Bisch said!
It does pay to be careful.Rabbits,squirrels,muskrats,beavers and other mammals can have tularemia and it doesn't always need a cut to be transferred.It can be fatal if not treated.
Coon roundworm can also be fatal to humans and is found in 60-90% of most coon populations.I believe bears get this also.This is a really bad one.
Trichinosis is known to occur in hogs and bears but other critters like mountain lions and coyotes get it as well.
It pays to be careful and use rubber gloves.People die from these every year and the problem is,many doctors have no experience with them and often don't consider them when making a diagnosis.The coon round worm for instance often is only found at autopsy.It just pays to be careful.
It pays to be careful an
Be careful and use common sense but none of us will be here forever. Even universal precautions wont prevent these illnesses all of the time.
What about that deer that you don't find until the next morning. What is the risk there? I have been told it won't hurt you if fully cooked with early fall temps(not freezing)...but it just wont' taste good?!
I will only eat the animals I harvest and find in reasonable amount of time. Squirrel, deer, birds and such never had a problem. I look hard at the liver's of all animals I harvest, just to make sure, especially rabbits.
Not the same thing, but I can't blame the wildgame. However I blame those darn ticks. I must have gotten bit by a Lone Star tick & now I cant eat any mammal meat.
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_127639.html
I don't know what I would do if I was allergic to red meat. Yikes
I think the usual transmission vector for the plague is a flea bite, not just touching a dead animal.
My grandfather contracted rabbit fever. don't know much about it as I was just a small kid and only remember the adults talking about it.
The girl who got the plague from the squirrel, from my understanding, got it from a flea bite off the dead squirrel she found and played with.
I understand the need for concern but as stated above common sense and some rubber gloves is about as far as I go. If you set around and wonder about all the things we ingest from public facilities, resturants, ink pens at the bank, basically anyting you touch etc etc I don't think some of us would ever leave the house again.
Bubonic Plague & Tularemia are in the same class of bacteria. I got Tularemia pneumonia from inhaling some fur from a baby rabbit that was brought into our clinic...fever of 107 and written up in the New England Journal of Medicine as the subject! I clean all my game with rubber gloves in fact two layers as I'll now use a long sleeve glove with rubber glove on top. Cook your meat to proper temperatures too.
More worried about getting some tick borne disease. Man they are THICK down here right now. Chiggers too!
I do use rubber gloves when processing hogs.
My family only eats the deer I kill and fish I catch. We haven't had to buy beef or any other red meat in 8 years. I'm sure my luck will run out eventually but I like knowing what my family is eating an animal I harvested and processed myself. We do buy pork and chicken but we spend a little extra and get it from a local butcher we know.
got to be careful but CDC (?) could give you ideas on what has been reported in your areas. I think the southwest has been the worse for plague diseases.
okay not the same thing but I got pretty sick this year from a raw oyster and I knew it ws bad BUT because you don't taste an oyster untill its already at the point of no return headed down your throat to splash into the eternal sea of carona,,, I know I deserve it but I just love RAW OYSTERS....
I fleshed out quite a few deer, bears, and yotes in the shop last year. I always wear gloves and wash up with anti-bac soap, use common sense and play it on the safe side, don't spend alot of time worrying about what can happen, if its fixen to happen its going to happen.
we just had a case of the plague when I guy was bit by a rat he was trying to take away from his cat. We are also seeing more cases of rabies this year here in OR. I've only let one deer lay after I killed it but I wasn't going to take a chance. I shot a mulie a few years ago with a rifle and when I got up to it the deer was nothing but skin and bones and the hide was missing half it's hair. I don't know what was wrong with it but I wasn't going to take a chance. The blacktail herds here are now being hit by hair loss disease caused by a new louse. This is an aisian louse (of course) anyone else notice our fish and wildlife are being devastated by intruders from asia more so than anything else.
Somewhere there's a cruel irony in the fact that people can visit a beautiful place like Yosemite one time and catch something like the hantavirus. I'd bet big money their cabins are the equivalent of hospital OR's compared to the shack I've been hunting out of for >30 yrs. I gave up trying to rid the place of mice and co-exist with some seriously well-fed black snakes just to keep the deer & field mouse population in check. I know it's a geography/location phenomenon, but I can't help but believe there's also an exposure piece that play's into it, i.e. a little dirt time can be a good thing as far as building up your resistance so some bad things. Thank the good Lord for parents of the 50's and 60's that let their kids get incredibly nasty because they didn't have electronics to play with! I digress, and my intent is not to downplay the tragedy of the outbreaks the country is seeing.
QuoteOriginally posted by gregg dudley:
More worried about getting some tick borne disease. Man they are THICK down here right now. Chiggers too!
You ain't kidding! I've never seen so many dang tics in my life as I did at Fall TBOF! We were covered with 'em!
Old dog there is alot of merit and wisdom to what you say. With all the disinfectant wipe and hand sprays alot of resistance to the diseases out there have to be weakened due to no antibodies being developed to those small exposures.
I won't bet on it but I think that the presence of the Brazilian fire ant is beneficial in keeping down ticks and possibly chiggers, too. It seems that when I'm hunting in areas of the Deep South where those things are found I just don't see any ticks.
But, there may be another factor too. I don't get out and hunt until after the weather gets pretty cool...essentially after the first frost but I do that to try to dodge the mosquitos.
olddogrib, that is better said than I could have ever composed even though I was going to attempt it. The flu shot is precisely the reason the flu keeps getting worse. Our kids are sickly because they don't play in the dirt and woods any more. If yoou aren't allowed to build an immunity to it, you are going to get sick from it. Prety simpple but the world we live in calls for these "precautions" as protocal. Anybody here with kids knws what it s like while young and in school. They simply stay sick all year long because of these supposed improvements.
My mother, wife, and grandmothers use/used the same apron to carry bread dough in, that was kneaded from the same table we ate at, which was wiped down with the same dish cloth they used for the dishes, sink, and counters for the day. No bleech, lysol, or disinfectant unless something was spilled or it was/is mopping day.
Don't get me wrong, basic sanitation is a must if you want to stay healthy, but sanitation requires precautions and common sense, not chemicals that kill everything, including you. My kids played in the floor and dirt, went bare footed and alwas had dirty feet and dirty hands from good ole dirt. Both are healthy, strong, and physiical specimens while many of their classmates are weakling's.
Use your head when dealing with anything you intend to eat. But store bought and chemical, disease ridden food is what you better be thinking about. God Bless
This thread has certainly been interesting. I hope all here are healthy for a long time.
Im sure the odds of getting sick from an animal you kill is about the same has getting struck by lightning.
But you have to admit,it'd be a bummer :eek: