Wonder what happened to this deer?

wahoowad

Member
This morning I was sitting on a bench next to a small pond in my neighborhood woods. Across the pond, maybe 50 yards away, I could see a couple deer grazing at the shoreline. All was quiet and peaceful.

All of a sudden one deer went loudly crashing through a foot or two of water, turned and ran back and completed 2 or 3 circles like this. Then it went a little deeper, began to struggle, gave a bleat and then slowly subsided and died right there in front of us.

Initially I thought maybe it got into a nest of bees and that's why it was running around, but I figure if that was all it was it would have run off even if it had to swim through the pond.

Next theory is it had some kind of stroke. It kept running to the right in 3 circles, maybe had some stroke or something that affected it's mobility.

Maybe it had a broken leg that let go all of a sudden, it freaked and tried to run and couldn't get out of the mud with 3 good legs.

Last theory is a poisonous snake bite killed it. I don't think a water moccasin would kill something that big so fast, and we have rattle snakes near here but again doubt it would have killed so fast.

I hunt but also have compassion for animals so it was disturbing as heck to just witness this. Any theories would could have happened?
 
Blue tongue disease. Google it, there is a lot of information about it along with pictures of how most deer that are stricken with the disease act and appear. Hot, dry weather makes the problem worse.
 
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