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Whether you hunt white-tailed deer primarily for fresh venison, the experience and memories, or a set of antlers, many hunters appreciate being able to observe and harvest larger, older age class bucks. In 2016, DEC launched the “Let Young Bucks Go and Watch Them Grow” educational campaign. The campaign promotes individual choice and voluntary restraint to shift the age composition of bucks harvested by hunters in New York State towards older age classes, while still providing hunters the freedom to harvest any buck they desire.
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New Research Suggests White-Tailed Deer May Be Highly Susceptible to COVID-19
The bioRxiv-published report details a study conducted by an interdisciplinary team of researchers led by Penn State University (PSU) scientists. The team examined 131 free-ranging white-tailed deer, all living on Staten Island, the most suburban of the 5 New York City boroughs. Nineteen tested positive for COVID antibodies, indicating that the deer had prior exposure to the virus and, according to the researchers, implying that they are vulnerable to repeated re-infections with new variants.
The report has not yet been certified by peer review, but has been published as a pre-print because of the significance of the findings, according to Suresh Kuchipudi, an American College of Veterinary Microbiologists (ACVM) board-certified specialist in virology and immunology at the Department of Veterinary and Biological Sciences at PSU. He serves as associate director of PSU’s Animal Diagnostic Laboratory where, as head of microbiology, he oversees the University’s bacteriology, virology, serology, and molecular diagnostic units. Kuchipudi has expressed concern that spillover of omicron from humans to deer could result in new and possibly vaccine-resistant mutations of the virus evolving undetected in non-human hosts and noted that one of the infected deer in the study had antibodies from a previous COVID-19 infection; indicating that deer, like humans, can experience breakthrough cases.
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