What would cause a seemingly healthy buck to die quickly this time of year?

I found my #1 target buck dead on the 21st. The last day I had him on camera was the early morning hours of September 17th. No other dead deer around that I've noticed. There wasn't much left of him when I discovered him. He died close to a ranch road, or I doubt I would have ever seen him. A single buzzard was picking at what little remained of the carcass.

if he was close to the road. road kill...

I feel your pain. We found a very heathy 5 year old buck dead yesterday. We had seen him a lot over the last several weeks, he looked great. This happen to us last year when we lost 3 bucks in October, also large healthy deer. I thought about having a biologist check him out as he hadn't been dead long. But we are counting our losses and moving on.
Note that none of these deer showed any sign of trauma.

Interior road in the ranch itself.

I ain't easy in the wild, sometimes they just get sick and die of natural causes.

Moldy feed corn etc will kill a lot of things.

X2


Emergency meetings scheduled following reports of fumonisin in Texas corn
http://www.hpj.com/crops/emergency-meeti...f280a47c30.html

Including people

You are not the only one having deer die unexpectedly, seems with dry conditions and an early acorn drop, I'm seeing acidosis occur. Necropsy on a healthy fresh dead deer usually will have a rumen full of the green immature acorns. With not much else. Bloat will be evident.

Good info tx_biologist, we just found another dead buck (4yr old), that is two big bucks this week. The buzzards had got to him pretty good so we didn't get a chance to inspect the stomach contents. We lost three bucks last year during the acorn drop. Oddly we have never lost a doe or a young buck, always 4-6 yr mature bucks.

We discussed deer gorging themselves on acorns in a previous post. Some seemed to think the acorn issue was possible, some were sceptical. http://texashuntingforum.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/6890240/Re:_Deer_gorging_themselves_on#Post6890240

If you're in an area with muddy areas it could be ehd as well. Kills more deer than most think. Healthy deer.

I am going to post several signs at the lease this weekend informing deer not to eat any moldy deer corn, green acorns, and stay out of the mud. That ought to take care of that problem.......

Yep....yet it receives very little press.


Anthrax and CWD get all the attention

Brother texted me they found a bunch of hair on the ground near one of our water troughs and the cattle panel feed pen fence next to it was bent up and the ground was all tore up. They found a spike buck with his neck/head all scarred up dead a short distance away in the brush mostly eaten by scavengers. Appears he got his head caught reaching through the fence for a drink.

Near any public roads?

What is EHD?

Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease

I was told of another condition called enterotoxemia, where deer keeping ramming their head against a hard surface. Also caused by excessive grains like corn (I do not know if acorns fit into this)