A little surprise in my deer

So, I just went into the garage this morning and noticed 3 of these grubs laying under the road kill deer I dressed for the food bank (see pic) and wondered- where did they come from??

grub

Did some critter come in and leave them?  No tracks in the blood or any sign of disturbance.

Something in the ceiling that was dislodged when I pulled the line up through the pulley? No sign of that.

Then I saw it – something in the deer’s nose sort of peeking out of a nostril. I got the grabber off my workbench and reached up and pulled it out and realized – they are coming out of the deer’s nose!  The don’t seem alive when you touch them on the ground, but they are obviously are, as they are moving up and out of the nose.

First two words that came to mind were Nas  Tee.

I looked them up on the web and of course, they are common – bot fly larvae.

So Why The Bot Fly?

I’ve never seen them on any deer I’ve ever harvested or cut up. I think I remember a different phase of the bot fly larvae under some caribou skin once, but never blacktailed deer. Could be their life cycle is such that the larvae only exit the nose during months of the year when we don’t normally harvest them.

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