Ask The Biologist

Bless You!

Bless You!

By Bob Humphrey

Deer sneezes likely caused by irritating flies.

QUESTION: I was in my deer stand last weekend watching some does. One kept making a sound like a cough or maybe a sneeze. Do deer get colds?

ANSWER: Most deer hunters are familiar with the cringe worthy sound a deer makes that we refer to as a blow or a snort. It’s very loud, caused by a rush of air through the nose and generally produced when a deer senses danger, like the smell of a human. But that’s not the only sound they make by blowing air through their nostrils.

I, too, and probably a lot of hunters have heard the sound you’re referring to, which is much softer and often very short in duration, sounding very much like a sneeze. It may be a single sound, or repeated. While I suppose it could be something like a head cold (deer contract all kinds of diseases) I suspect it’s something different.

It’s very common for deer to have nasal bots – fly larvae. Folks not familiar with them are often puzzled when they hang their deer up and the bots start falling out of its nose. While they’re usually not harmful to the deer, I imagine it’s quite irritating having them wriggling around in their nose, and they might simply be sneezing in an attempt to rid themselves of the nuisance.

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