Facebook hoax concerns deer hunters
A hoax circulating on Facebook prompted phone calls to the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks (MDWFP) and raised concerns about a disease outbreak in the deer herd.
The fake news story appears to have originated from the website prank.link where users can create prank news links that are posted to Facebook.
In this case, it includes a picture of three white-tailed deer with a headline that says, “2015 Mississippi Deer Season Cancelled.” Below that, it reads, “Deer Season in Mississippi cancelled due to ...”
A similar fake post claims the cancellation was caused by an outbreak of hemorrhagic disease. When the post is clicked the viewer is taken to prank.link and notified, “You Got Owned!”
While it would appear to be an obvious prank, the post led some hunters to contact MDWFP wanting to know if it was true and if hemorrhagic disease was the cause.
“Friday and Monday we did receive a lot of calls on that Facebook post,” MDWFP Wildlife Bureau assistant director Chris McDonald said. “We have received some phone calls about an outbreak of hemorrhagic disease.”
According to McDonald, a widespread outbreak of hemorrhagic disease, or blue tongue as it’s typically called, is false. In fact, McDonald said there have been fewer cases of blue tongue this year than normal.
“It has not been a bad year for hemorrhagic disease because it’s been so dry,” McDonald said. “Compared to other years, this has been a slow one for hemorrhagic disease.”
McDonald explained that hemorrhagic disease is spread by insects that bite deer. But the insects depend on water to mature and there hasn’t been a lot of it this summer and fall when the disease is more common.
“It causes internal bleeding, hence the word hemorrhagic,” McDonald said. “They act like they are very sick. It causes them to have a high fever. That causes them to go water.”
Because of the tendency to gravitate to water, that is where deer that have died from the disease are often found.
Although hemorrhagic disease has a greater impact on the deer population in Mississippi than other diseases, the herd’s immune system has adapted to increase survival rates.
“Normally, if you have antibodies built up within the population, which we do in this state, it would have a lesser effect on those individuals,” McDonald said.