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Wild hog hunting is exploding in popularity right along with the exploding wild hog population, but this is not the kind of hog fever you want to be catching.

From this story on wyff4.com (South Carolina):

An Upstate family and wildlife officials are warning hunters of a hog-bourne illness after a Laurens County man was hospitalized following a hog hunting trip. “Had we known this, we would have never — he would have never gone hog hunting,” said Renae Hensley, whose 23-year-old son, Josh, was in Greenville Memorial Hospital on Thursday with an undiagnosed illness.

“Yesterday his fever was around 104 all day. It spiked to 105 at one point,” Hensley said. Hensley and her husband, Butch, said Josh started feeling ill on Sunday, after a hunting trip the day before, in which he and his friends killed a 360-pound hog using dogs and knives. Renae said she and her husband suspected that a disease called brucellosis may be the cause of Josh’s condition after hearing about the disease from a friend.

According to Tom Swayngham, a wildlife coordinator for the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, brucellosis is carried in the bodily fluid of some wild pigs, and can be passed to humans if an animal’s blood gets in a person’s eyes, nose, mouth or cuts in the skin. “It’s not very common. A lot of hunters do not use rubber gloves, and we wish they would,” Swayngham said. “The best precaution is to use rubber gloves when cleaning the animal. You don’t want to touch any uncooked meat, intestines, or reproductive tracts,” he said.

Anyone ever contract brucellosis from a hog they shot? What precautions do you use in the field?