Hunting and Hunters: Whether they are viral or parasitic, the diseases to which hunting animals are subject often risk making the fatigue of hunting useless. This is why the good hunter is required to know the symptoms and effects of the diseases that can affect ungulates and birds.
Becoming an experienced hunter is a slow and difficult thing that does not only require great skill in the art of hunting, cunning and patience. The good hunter in fact must know precisely the environment in which the hunt will take place, but above all the animal which will be hunted. Knowing the diseases to which it is subject, intuiting its state of health a priori is really important, since capturing a sick wild animal, affected by viral or parasitic malaise often results in useless fatigue.
Especially since the challenge will probably be uneven and therefore not very stimulating and correct, given the reduced capacity of the animal. This is why the hunter must have at least a smattering of the evils to which the animals he hunts are subject. Viral diseases are easily detectable with the naked eye, while parasitic diseases rarely hint at their presence.
Obviously the hunter is not required to be a veterinarian, yet there are alarm bells that can warn against the capture of sick animals. Broadly and generally, a sick wild animal can be recognized:
more or less conspicuous anomalies in the moult (matted, missing hair);
from particularly protruding bone;
from abnormal behaviors;
from any cough;
from movements that are awkward and unusual;
dull eye and absent gaze;
from ears that hang unnaturally;
from the unusual loneliness.
Obviously these are symptoms that the hunter must pay particular attention to. It is useless to hunt a sick animal, since the capture could be dangerous for the hunting dog and the consumption of the meat harmful to the health of the hunter.
Many pathogens, such as viruses, bacteria, parasites or fungi, can cause diseases in the wild. Among the viral diseases that it is good to stay away from we remember the anger that affects both mammals and birds indistinctly. It is a virus that mainly uses the fox for infection, which through its bite can transmit the infection. The virus is in fact well kept in the animal's saliva. The disease, whose natural course ends with the death of the wild, can manifest itself after days from the bite or even after years. Encountering an animal sick with rabies can be really dangerous as the wild becomes particularly restless, becomes more aggressive than it normally would be and loses fear of humans and other species.
Another viral disease is papillomatosis which usually affects chamois and ibex. The season is autumn - winter and the virus manages to penetrate the animal directly from wounds or mucous membranes. It produces the proliferation of warts especially around the mouth, so the hunter can easily recognize the sick animal. In any case, it is rare for the disease to prove fatal.
Let's close the discussion of viral diseases by talking about keratoconjunctivitis which mainly affects chamois. In this case the animal will have particularly inflamed eyes with abundant production of tears and pus. The hunter will be able to recognize the sick animal even at great distances.
The situation is different for parasitic diseases which for the most part can only be found on the dead animal. They rarely have a lethal effect on the wild and are more often related to one species than to another.
We are talking, for example, of the tapeworms that live in the host intestine and take their nourishment. They reproduce with astonishing speed and are excreted exclusively through excrement. The larvae that, through the bloodstream, encyst themselves in preferential points that will host future tapeworms, prove to be particularly dangerous. These parasites can be hosted indiscriminately by carnivorous and herbivorous animals and can be from a few millimeters long to much more important dimensions. The infection, while weakening the animal, hardly leads to death. More dangerous is the case of the sturgeon, who sees the cysticerci settled in the brain of the animal (more often than sheep and ungulates) with a lethal outcome.
Cysticerci may have inadvertently been passed on to hunting dogs when the wild guts, so the advice is to be especially careful. Cooking is however lethal for cysticerci.
Other particularly annoying parasites are the lung strongyles that inhabit the bronchi and trachea of the animal. The larvae are pushed upwards by coughing and ingested by the animal which partially expels them with the feces. These will have the ability to perforate the intestinal wall and return to the lungs. The wild affected by these parasites usually cough consistently, with a dry and short shearing.
Mange, on the other hand, is a better known disease, caused by mites similar to lice. Especially the chamois, the fox and many other furred wild animals are affected. They are transmitted by direct body contact and penetrate directly into the epidermis of the wild host. What makes this parasitic disease really annoying for the animal is the speed with which the mature mites reproduce. Inflammation, itching and purulent scabs are the order of the day for the wild affected by mange which in some cases can be fatal.
Finally we remember the nematodes, parasites that often inhabit the intestines and stomach of wild animals. It is from this position that they suck the blood of the animal causing bloody inflammation. Eggs excreted with feces produce larvae that will be ingested by other wild animals in a vicious circle.