OUTDOOR HUB
Daniel Xu | January 15, 2014
A picture of this strange deer was submitted to QDMA shortly after it was harvested.
Image courtesy the QDMA
The whitetail in the above photo has not been photoshopped, nor is it a one-of-a-kind occurrence. The deer suffers from what researchers call “Bullwinkle” syndrome, after the cartoon character Bullwinkle J. Moose. Much like their namesake, deer afflicted with this illness display a rounded, moose-like snout very different from that of a healthy white-tailed deer. According to Dr. Kevin Keel, a researcher at the University of California Davis, the first documented case of this bizarre disease appeared in 2002.
“It was a deer submitted to the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study by Chuck Sharp from the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. Since then I’ve received a small number of similar cases each year,” Keel wrote to me in an email. “The reason that the deer have such a bulbous nose is that the soft tissues in that area are swollen by chronic inflammation. This inflammation is caused by a bacterial infection.”
Keel said he can’t be certain the disease is a new one. Instead, he speculates the prevalence of modern technology such as trail cameras and smartphones were responsible for the increase of “Bullwinkle” sightings.