If you’ve got a weak stomach, this video may not be for you…
The weather is cooling, leaves are changing, and deer season is right around the corner, meaning hunters everywhere are strapping trail cams to trees and checking footage religiously in hopes of find the right spot to set up and bag a big buck this fall.
However, as we’ve come to see time and time again, trails cams can sometimes inadvertently show us the gnarlier sides of nature, like wolves decapitating a beaver and a mountain lion destroying a coyote, but this video from Illinois may just take the cake for the grossest thing picked up that’s hit the internet.
According to MeatEater, the footage was taken by a local hunter named Chris Evans back in 2020 but always tends to make the rounds this time of the year, and 2023 is no exception.
It shows a big 10-point buck walking through a path in the woods with a massive, and I mean MASSIVE, wound on his back. You can see right down into the creature’s guts, past his spine, and it’s just nasty.
Guesses on what exactly caused this vary, with some saying it could be broadheads or bullets and others saying barbed wire fencing or flesh eating bacteria, but people generally seemed to have agreed on the creature getting gashed by a farming combine (although this farmer ran himself over with one to prove how safe it is, so I guess this isn’t quite settled yet.)
Regardless, it’s safe to say this guy wasn’t going to live much longer. Between coyotes and black bears, not to mention the impending winter and definite infection, the deer was all but dead.
Zombies may just be real after all.
The Whitetail Buck Is Found
As many of you may have suspected, the buck was actually found nearly a month later, but by then, there wasn’t much left of him. His remains were located on a neighboring property, and the hunch is that he didn’t survive much longer than after he was first spotted on the trail cam.
The guy who found him estimates it was only a few days at the most:
“Yes, the deer was found dead on the neighboring property about a month after the trail video was taken. Nothing but the skull antlers and spine. I’m guessing he didn’t live longer than a day or 2.
“We had coyotes running around on other cameras same day and next day. I think they were onto his blood scent. He was found near a farm pond. I think he headed into the water.”
He was one tough SOB, that buck…
