I'm curious if anyone in the membership has ever contracted an illness from handling (field dressing, skinning, eating) wild game. Seems I always see lots of warnings about wild pigs, but also for rabbits, squirrels and other rodents as well.
I've never caught anything from any critters and don't want to be concerned where none is due.
If you have, how was it diagnosed and was the treatment successful?

Armbar.

In 40+ years of doing this, the answer's NO.

But I have gotten sick plenty times from eating restaurant food. Does that not tell us something on the comparison?

As a precaution (I'm not sure against what) I do wear rubber surgical gloves for cleaning deer. I went many years without that. I also check rabbits for white spots on the liver. I was told decades ago to not eat ones with that. I think maybe it's a sign of tularemia. Others here will have more info on it. I also discard ducks with rice worms. They are found in abundance just under the skin and are really unappealing. Some amount of ducks each year turn up with them. In hot weather ducks also carry bunches of lice, but I don't consider that a deal breaker.

44 years, Nope!

20 years...No

My grandfather always told me never to shoot and eat a rabbit before a hard freeze. I'm not sure what he was talking about but always heeded to that adage.

For my own personal reasons I will not eat digestive organs and brains of animals.

quote:

Originally posted by MThuntr:
20 years...No

My grandfather always told me never to shoot and eat a rabbit before a hard freeze. I'm not sure what he was talking about but always heeded to that adage.

For my own personal reasons I will not eat digestive organs and brains of animals.

Rabbits can have Liver Flukes.A hard freeze kills them.They can make you sick.
I got llymes disease from a Deer Tick riding on a deer I was field dressing.I was lucky to have found him imbedded in my skin and got tested right away.I always give my self a good checkover after field dressing or skinning any animal

43 years and never a problem. I don't bother with the surgical gloves either. Probably 80% of the animals have been killed on my farm land. If there is a contaminant for the wild game, then the cattle, hogs, chickens and garden will have it too.

Never got sick personally, but I worked in public health work all my life. Mostly in Vector Disease work. I was involved in a number of investigations. Here's a link to a recently published situatioin involving hogs.

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5822a3.htm
These things don't make the news. Most don't even get published, just listed in tables in county and state reports. There are a lot of diseases out there and some take a long time to appear. Many of them are extremely serious. It's unlikely, but unlikely events occur. Take the precautions. Those hospital gowns and the tubes sticking in you are not macho.

Bfly

I never gotten sick from eating or processing the game I have taken or the fish I have caught. But I have not been doing it for very long, since 1960. I never heard of anybody in my circle get sick either. Look I am not a big liver eater, but I do like pickled deer heart. Just take good care with your game and you will be just fine.

Yeah, there's someting "tuleremia" or something like that you can get from dressing either rabbits or muskrats. I forget which. Wearing a pair of gloves whilst you're dressing the game takes care of that and once it's cooked there's no problem.

Although tularemia is sometimes referred to as "rabbit fever," other animals, such as muskrats, beavers and even small rodents also can carry it.

Like lyme disease, which I contracted after a MO turkey hunt, ticks are one of the main carriers of the bacteria to the animals. The incidence of human infection is nowhere near what it was 100 years ago, but it's still around.

That said, I would worry about Lyme and rabies much more than I would worry about tularemia.

While someone needs to be bitten by a tick to contract lyme, that isn't always the case with rabies. All the latter takes is contact with saliva in an open wound or cut. Thus, if anyone comes in contact with a critter that is acting strangely, such as a bobcat that doesn't seem to fear you, be very careful handling it if you kill it.

Most of the other crazy things we see such as parasites and worms in some animals become harmless when cooked. They just add to your protein intake.

Not me, I do however have a friend that got Lyme's disease from a tick that was on a deer during archery season. Don't see too many ticks during the firearms seasons in PA.

I agree that Lyme disease and Rocky mountain Spotted Fever are the big ones to have concern over. But that is an interesting article that Black Fly provided.

Armbar.

Nope. But as someone mentioned above, I do wear some surgical type gloves when I clean game. Not sure it helps any, just didn't seem like a bad habit to adopt.

Bottom line, I've never been sick from eating something wild, but I get food poisoning at least a couple times a year from eating out.

That said, brucellosis, tularemia, avian influenza, and Lyme are the ones I worry about. I wear gloves when I dress swine, waterfowl, rabbits, wash my blades afterwards with soap and warm water, and I check my body for ticks after hunts. I would refrain from eating neural tissue until they get this whole TSE thing figured out too. If you freeze meat and then cook it you should take care of most things that are dangerous.

YES

After my first shooting/hunting experience I contracted something that has caused me to buy guns I do not need, pass on social engagements for early hour hunts in horrible weather conditions, tell girl friends/wife not to expect much from me during the Fall/Winter months, make friends with random people from all over the world. To my knowledge, unless there is something wrong with you, it is a 100% contraction rate. Good news is you are usually a better person for it .

Perry

quote:

Originally posted by perry:
YES

After my first shooting/hunting experience I contracted something that has caused me to buy guns I do not need, pass on social engagements for early hour hunts in horrible weather conditions, tell girl friends/wife not to expect much from me during the Fall/Winter months, make friends with random people from all over the world. To my knowledge, unless there is something wrong with you, it is a 100% contraction rate. Good news is you are usually a better person for it .

Perry

I've got to agree with Perry on this one! And in answer to your question, I'm 52 now, been shooting things since I was 8 years old and I've never contracted any illness. But, I am careful when handling wild game, using gloves when field dressing....

I've got a cute little story to tell. I've spent almost 70 years running around the woods pulling ticks off of me w/o a problem. Last year, I got tick fever from a tick in my back yard. I was doing a "walk around" before bed and apparently he jumped me and spent the night plugged in.
I'll tell you what, boys. I've only known a few folks in my life that I dislike bad enough to wish that on. And you don't snap back from it neither.

FYI, I think the idea of carrying a couple of pair of latex gloves afield with you is the greatest thing since bottled beer.

quote:

Originally posted by perry:
YES

After my first shooting/hunting experience I contracted something that has caused me to buy guns I do not need, pass on social engagements for early hour hunts in horrible weather conditions, tell girl friends/wife not to expect much from me during the Fall/Winter months, make friends with random people from all over the world. To my knowledge, unless there is something wrong with you, it is a 100% contraction rate. Good news is you are usually a better person for it .

Perry

There are only 2 real cures for this ailment. 1)go completely broke 2)win the lottery.

Otherwise we all have to live with it. I've dicovered that 1-2 guns per year (new or used) suppress the shakes and 40-100 days in the field help the headaches. Including some fishing makes the year bareable.

My health is usually better when hunting season is on...

I don't know as anyone has proven blood to blood transmission of borrelia (Lyme Disease) but I see no reason to even think it might not happen. Have an open cut (or chapped hands) and get them in blood with a high load of borellia and I would expect transmission.

I wear gloves and am careful with the knife and around sharp bones. Here in Minnesota standard practice is to prescribe antibiotics when you get a bite from a deer tick. I would go the same route if I exposed myself by cutting myself gutting a deer. The antibiotics have limited and minor side effects. Lyme disease does not.

I got the rabbit fever (tularemia) about 25 years ago. It wasn't even a rabbit, but a hare I got it from. It had a sick looking spotted liver and I did use bare hands.

No real lasting effects. I do recall being big into the aches and pains. I understand there is a vaccine for it now. I do not have a beagle anymore and am not exposed to it.

I wear gloves all the time now when dressing game haveing had lymes and knowing lots of others that have had it too.(most likely from tick bites) We are one of the lymes hot spots here in Wis.

I wear them for all game cleaning birds, ect. They just make for a quick clean up also.

Gloves are cheap insurance. I hand them out at deer camp to anybody who doesn't have them.

For all you naysayers, here's some Sunday morning news...

TULAREMIA

Tularemia is caused by the bacterium, Francisella tularensis. Coincidentally, I grew up in Tulare County, for which it is named. Anyway, cases are extremely rare and shouldn’t be on your list of biggest worries. However, if you are a big rabbit hunter, squirrel, or beaver hunter, it might be more relevant to you. It is also carried any blood suckers- biting flies, mosquitoes, and, of course, ticks. Since Tularemia is a bacterial infection, it can be treated with antibiotics (tetracycline). Skin lesions and ulcerating lymphadenitis look like this:







If you run into an animal with a liver that looks like this (hopefully you had gloves on), wash your hands thoroughly and discard the critter where other animals can’t get to it.



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Brucellosis
This goes by other names you may have heard of like “undulant fever,” “bangs,” or “Mediterranean Fever”. It is caused by a spore forming bacteria that can give you chronic LIFE LONG symptoms. This one is NOT A JOKE.

It looks innocent enough compared to the mouth of the pork tapework (below) but it will make for a very bad hitchhiker.


Texas has a shit load of this because of all the feral hogs, but others states do as well.



Along with Tularemia above, Brucellosis is a Class A reportable disease that is supposed to be reported immediately by phone. However, I can promise you that this is not always done. As Black Fly mentioned above, this shit just isn’t reported like it should be. Lyme’s disease, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, and many others are “reportable” by law as well, but again, you rarely hear about them so don’ t think they only exist in a textbook or on the internet.

Besides debilitating cyclic fevers, it can infect your heart:



Oh, did I mention it can infect your balls too? Don’t believe me. See “Patient A” with “epididymo-orchitis” in Black Fly’s post or just meet this fella’s brucellosis infected twins:



Does wearing gloves to clean your wild pig sound like a good idea now? Yeah, I thought that’d get your attention.

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The pork tapeworm.

A little alien looking bugger who goes by the name Taenia solium can really fuck up your day. And it IS found in wild (and domestic) pork and I have seen it and I bet some of you have too.







If it gets into your brain (neurocysticercosis) it causes multiple little cysts to form and it looks like this on an MRI. (I have a picture of a real brain with this, but I can't find it... might post later):



If it gets into your eye, it looks like this:



Ahhhh… the glorious cycle of life.



It can be treated using Praziquantel or Albendazole with steroids.

“Cold smoked” pork, anyone? No thank you!

Bottom line: COOK YOUR MEAT THOROUGHLY

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Lyme’s disease

If you don’t know about this yet, you have been living under a rock. If you see this classic bullseye around a tick bite, get treatment. NOW. You need antibiotics. Doxycycline, amoxicillin, or cefuroxime axetil are good choices.

Nice post Kenati.
A few more that I've dealt withover the years, can be added to the list: Raccoon roundworm, plague,rabies, fungal diseases of Cryptococcosis, Psittacossis,Histoplasmosis, Salmonelosis, and on and on.
Raccoon roundworm only recently understood and is particularly messy, here's a CDC link for that one: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dpd/...ht_baylisascaris.htm

There are a lot of scarier sites on it out there, but the facts are correct on the CDC site.
From what researchers have told me, there are probably a lot more infections out there than are diagnosed, because it is so easily misdiagnosed, and Baylisacaris is so very common.

Bfly