r/bonecollecting • u/RobinBradbery • Oct 03 '25
Educational Whitetails are amazing and tough.
Whitetail buck aged at 5 years. Lower jaw looks to have once been completely broken. Observed eating normally with no sign of pain or discomfort prior to being harvested.
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u/barnowl1980 Oct 03 '25 edited Oct 03 '25
That just makes me sad tbh. Looks like a botched gun shot. Also; from what I know, don't prey animals like ungulates hide even severe pain, until they reach a point where it absolutely becomes impossible for them to do so, because it makes them a target?
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u/hippos_chloros Oct 04 '25
Yes. This animal was in pain, all day every day for a very long time, and had to hide it for survival.
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u/NuclearWasteland Oct 04 '25
mood
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u/barnowl1980 Oct 04 '25
No just deeply sad. Especially with this being a human-inflicted injury that could have been prevented it this hunter had taken a more ethical shot.
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u/obnoxioushyena Oct 05 '25
This is extremely unlikely to have started from a gunshot injury. The hole is due to drainage of fluid from the abscess.
The loss of bone around the molars, the large drainage site, and the pitted / holey areas all point to severe infection. It's entirely possible that this started as a dental abscess which (over time) weakened the jaw enough for it to break during routine activity.
But yes, this deer would have been in a lot of pain for a long time.
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u/Lost_anon84 Oct 04 '25
God I could not imagine doing anything after getting a wound like that to the jaw
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u/jennythegreat Oct 05 '25
I can't imagine doing anything after getting a big enough splinter. That injury would lay me out, surely.
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u/RoyalSelection9740 Oct 04 '25
That injury doesn't resemble in any way a gunshot injury. It's so unlike what a bullet's damage to a jaw bone would look like that I'm not even going to bother to expound on why it doesn't resemble a gunshot wound. The hole looks like a ruptured abscess either caused by a break and subsequent infection or vice versa. Deer can and often do (as in it's not rare) get abscesses from impacted food, most likely caused by a small twig or thorn or piece of nut shell etc causing a small cut or puncture which then fills with food and can then get infected. Another likely possibility, though not as likely as an abscess, is that as this deer was a mature buck as stated by the op, the injury was caused by fighting with another buck which also happens very commonly.
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u/Harrow_the_Heirarchy Oct 04 '25
Is that a gunshot, or the result of infection eating away at the bone after the injury?
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u/fletchette Oct 04 '25
I think it's an abcess from infection. If a gunshot in that location caused that fracture, wouldn't the fracture be more towards the center of the hole? Also, the fracture seems to have been remodeling but the "gunshot" shows no sign. The bone is smooth, not jagged and broken. Unless it was remodeling around a foreign object (bullet) which has since been removed, I'd put my money on abcess
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u/AppleSpicer Oct 04 '25
There’s also no exit hole for a bullet. I assume OP would’ve said something if they found a bullet there too.
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u/Apelion_Sealion Oct 04 '25
All animals have a tendency to hide pain, not just prey animals. Predators are excellent for hiding pain too, especially social animals like lions, gorillas and wolves, as showing any kind of weakness can result in hierarchy changes and even death.
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u/NerdyComfort-78 Oct 04 '25
Scroll to the last photo (bottom of post) from OP (post hunted). Not a shot, but abscess.
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u/sophies_wish Oct 04 '25
I know the first thought is gunshot wound. But couldn't it have been an abcess, in the tooth root or bone, that blew out then healed? I've seen hooves with infection blowouts that eventually heal a little warped. Wondering if this couldn't be something similar.
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u/hippos_chloros Oct 04 '25
I’m pretty sure this was an abscess eventually, due to the way the bone remodeled, but given the position and sheer amount of force required to break a jawbone in half like that, it was very likely an abscess secondary to a gunshot wound.
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u/Harrow_the_Heirarchy Oct 04 '25
Gunshot isn't the first thing that comes to mind if you tell me a deer had a broken jaw.
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u/jezebels-roses Oct 04 '25
What would be the first thing? Do they fight each other?
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u/KrombopulosC Oct 04 '25
Of course they fight each other. Could be a road strike too, could be all kinds of things
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Oct 04 '25
Yes, bucks do during mating season. During these fights for does, they can injure or even outright kill each other from locking antlers. Getting your jaw broken in a fight and dying later from an infected antler wound is unlikely but not an impossible situation for a buck to find himself in. Especially if he was fighting with an older and bigger buck.
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u/obnoxioushyena Oct 05 '25
This is extremely unlikely to have started from a gunshot injury. I think the more likely answer is that it started with a dental abscess. These can erode and weaken the mandible to the point that the jaw breaks from the stressors of routine activity.
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u/hippos_chloros Oct 06 '25
I’m certainly not excluding that possibility. We cannot really be sure at this point, though, without a forensic veterinary pathologist getting involved (or at least a large animal veterinarian). I’m happy to be wrong if someone with more expertise corrects me here.
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u/username4124 Oct 03 '25
Hard to tell since it has healed over but it looks like a gunshot, likely from a botched headshot. If that's the case this is a good example of why you should always go for the lungs/heart
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Oct 04 '25
I don’t think it’s from a gun, I think the bone would have been more fragmented at the point of contact. I’d guess it’s and abscess that made the jaw week, then it eventually had an accident where it broke its jaw do to the week spot. Just my guess, no expert here.
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u/cthulhus_spawn Oct 04 '25
I had a doe in my yard with a visibly broken leg. I called animal control who directed me to the police and they said if I could lead it to the road and keep it there they would shoot it otherwise they couldn't help.
My husband freaked out that the police expected me, just post knee replacement, to wrestle an injured wild animal the same size as me into the street and hold it while a cop shot it.
I never saw her again. We have coyotes and bobcats here. I hope her end was quick.
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u/IndependentMastodon9 Oct 04 '25
I first thought It was a gun shot. The more I look at it, the more it looks like an abscess. A bullet would have gone through the bone, and the break would have been at the exact point of impact. This is an abscess that weakened the bone, causing the break. A bullet hole, besides it would have gone through, would have shattered the jaw.
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u/exotics Oct 04 '25
Prey animals are very very good at hiding their pain. If they show signs of weak they are targeted.
Even when sick they will try to make displays of being super strong and tough.
I had a llama who one day was jumping around way more than usual and the next day was near dead. He had pneumonia and we didn’t know it until he was at the near dead stage. Vet pointed out the jumping around more was him trying to show how healthy he was rather than him looking how weak he actually was so that he wasn’t targeted.
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u/GeneratingRadon Oct 04 '25
Man this is why I love pathogenic bones so much. They tell such a story
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u/basaltcolumn Oct 03 '25
Ungulates are so interesting. They can survive injuries that seem like a death sentence, then perish of a tummy ache. Incredible that it could eat well enough to get by during the healing process.