hairless deer?

[JoshM]

I was doing some late season bow hunting in st.Louis county this past weekend and I had a deer walk by that was missing alot of hair on both sides of its body and up over his back. Very strange looking.Does any one have any idea what that could

be from?It will most likely freeze to death.

[Grant Pearson]

maybe it has some sort of infection or virus?

[Quackaddict9]

probably got CWD through feeding deer like everyone is worried about!

seriously though, I wouldn't know why. Did it look like it was attacked by some animal... yotes, perhaps?

[icehousebob]

I don't know whether deer can catch mange or not, but if they can, that might be the cause. The state's fox and coyotes have been hit hard by it the last couple of years. The summer before last, a fox that frequented my back yard was missing chunks of hair and its tail was almost bare. The mange doesn't kill them but they freeze to death when the weather turns cold.

[BLACKJACK]

My guess would be that the deer is infested with ticks, then it rubs the hair off trying to get rid of the ticks. In the fall issue from the MN Deer hunters, they had an article about the moose die off and one of the suspected reason is tick infestations. They had a picture of a hairless moose in the magazine.

[DonBo]

Ticks would also be my best guess, but could be something more mundane like pavement rash from being hit by a car and spun down the road.