Bloody trail-cam pic???
Mule Deer
Just pulled trail-cams from a ranch listing I have in southern CO and found this one lone picture which appears to be a tail soaked in blood. Looks like a young buck almost got whacked! No other pictures of anything else chasing him. Getting lots of bear pics at this camera location but not a single mt. lion pic. Bummed it's a little blurry. What do you all think...blood, not blood, something else????
My first thought was a prolapsed uterus. But it does look like there's some velvety bone over his ears.
Bad case of hemorrhoids;).
Barbed wire cut. I brain tan hides. ALL deer and elk hides have barbed wire cuts in them. Right above the tail.
It's either blood, or he backed into a can of spray paint...
Or I suppose some moron might have hit him in the back-side with a paintball, but you'd expect that to be on top....
Odd thing is that while wolves and coyotes often do start eating at that end, you'd think there would be signs of them ham-stringing him first, and he looks pretty clean apart from that tail...
I guess one other possibility is a gastrointestinal disease or parasite.
Rudolph's cousin, "Randy, the Red Tailed Deer"?
Looks like possible coyote damage.Any coyote pictures tracking?
Probably a rectal prolapse based on what i can tell from the picture.
It's too high for prolapse.That's the tail.
I'm with cjgregory on this one....more than likely been into a fight with a fence.
Could be fence,I guess, but I don't see adult bucks going through fences here,especially with racks in velvet.They jump instead.
How close is this to a road? Could have gotten clipped by a vehicle that caused internal bleeding...It looks like only the bottom of the tail has the blood on it (it seems to be the normal brown color on top), suggesting to me that the blood probably came from the anus...
It could also be where a predator got a chomp in and the buck managed to escape... I had a video of a mature doe and her fawn one summer...the fawn clearly had slick red blood running down it's back leg...not hamstring area, but higher up on the haunch...definitely coyotes in that case, there's a ton of them around my hunting grounds
"It looks like only the bottom of the tail has the blood on it (it seems to be the normal brown color on top), suggesting to me that the blood probably came from the anus..."
Mule deer tails aren't brown on top.
Generally on the run it gets tricky for them. The scars are right above the tail. Antelope, deer and Elk, all have them. They can drop their front end rather quickly but to keep going, the back end stays more up.
Some of them are so deep that they barely heal and once I start working the hide the scar opens up and I have a hide that's good for remnants only.
Hunters are notoriously bad skinners as well. Once they score the hide with a knife its pretty much useless. That's why most of my hides are my own kills or family members.
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=video+of+deer+going+under+that+fence&view=detail&mid=4A3A9287E4C5CA68107A4A3A9287E4C5CA68107A&FORM=VIRE
Sorry for the late response...still on a 3 day road showing ranches. The camera is nowhere near a road or a fence. Could have easily injured itself on a neighboring fence somewhere else I guess? The blood looks pretty fresh and the only other pics I have from this location are bears and elk. It's anybody's guess at this point :) I'll post the bears pics from this location when I get back to the office this week.....
Blayne
@Jim B: Good point...I guess I did that whole "I live in IL with whitetail so all deer are whitetail" thing...
"@Jim B: Good point...I guess I did that whole "I live in IL with whitetail so all deer are whitetail" thing..."
I think we all do that at times.I had to stop and look to be sure it wasn't a whitetail,myself.
My first guess was a coyote and I think,still is, though I agree,we may never know.Canines often grab on to the root of the tail when trying to stop a deer.I've seen deer that size,taken down by pairs of coyotes,on fresh snow where it left not doubt what transpired and how.
What I'm seeing,isn't characteristic of mountain lion damage though they are probably around as well.
Coyote
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MocKEor1BM8
Look familiar?
It can be brutal to watch.Once they get some blood started and begin seeing some stress behavior,canines can get relentless.
Coyote trying to drag it down and tail peeled off. Thats what it looks like to me. Shawn
Yote damage. Bear aren't the greatest of killers. Watch one when it attacks a deer. They just go in and use their size to over power the deer and hopefully keep it down. They bite the back, the neck, etc. but, it is usually done from over top. Canines hamstring their prey. They like grabbing the tail. I'm betting that is what done this. God Bless
