Well does it to anyone else that is method may have played a large part in exposing himself. Stabbing a pig with a dog also laying into the pig sounds like a good way to get blood in your eyes, nose, mouth, or an open wound.

It just goes you should be very careful when around wild animals (dead or alive) and their bodily fluids. Especially in todays world with the countless number of diseases out there.

Yes, I suspected as much. The onset was just too fast for brucellosis. A couple of days would be rare. Overnight is simply unheard of. Hopefully they have him quarantined. I would be more fearful of this being some kind of flu varient.

By the way, brucellosis is more common in large bovines (cattle, bison, elk, deer) and is also suspected of occurring in carnivores that feed on them, particularly the aborted fetuses common to animals infected with brucellosis. So keep those gloves on when skinning coyotes or wolves.

As to prevention for hunters: the brucellosis bacterium is usually not in the transmission stage during a typical fall/winter hunting season so we are reportedly not at great risk during those times. However, mammals of any sort may be carrying rabies even when they are not exhibiting the symptomatic bizarre behaviour (yet). It is an extremely rare possibility, neverthless a cut in your hand could be fatal when gutting out a rabies infected animal. One of Canada's first Govenor-Generals died from rabies after allowing a dog to lick a shaving nick. Imagine his horror a few days later when the dog started foaming at the mouth. The guy supposedly went mad and died in the bush several weeks later but common theory is that his own soldiers did him in to save him the agony of dying from the disease (Pasteur's vaccine discovery was still in the future).

At this point cleaning birds is pretty much a safe bet. That certainly could change if and when bird flu makes its way from Asia into our migratory flyways.

as a hunter it does concern me quite a bit about the numerouse diseases form our wildlife afew years ago it was mad cow and recently weve been worried about waistings disease in our deer population and leperasy in other wild life specis including the wild hog ive never hunted hogs i live in ohio and were i live we dont have them up here yet but im moving to sc next month and am planning to hunt hogs. ive never worn gloves feild dressing an animal but i think im going to start now

I dont know if i would start wearing gloves over it. But our prayers go out to young josh hope they figure it out and get it fixed.

Everyone is assuming this illness came from the hog, but why limit your search for the cause? Where was the victim several day prior, and what did he do, and whom was he in contact with? If all are convinced the illness came from the hunt, how about the insects, plants, dirty water, etc. that he came in contact with that day?