A 15yr old kid brought this deer in Monday to have mounted. While skinning deer I got in to some infection. The 2nd pic is what I found when I removed the skull cap.....
The infection inside skull is what would worry me.
Would you feed the meat to your family?

No

I'd have to pass on that.

I would call the family and tell them what you found, if they to it to a processing plant I would hope they could tell from the smell and the way it look!

I notified the kids Dad . He says the meat smelled & looked fine

did you notify the IN DNR or Purdue Animal Disease and Diagnostic lab to test it?

I would not get all panicked, but look at the map. We have CWD on 3 sides of Indiana and it is spreading.

It is only a matter of time before monitoring and changing how we process deer is going to become reality.

Bickbucks, In that last picture, has that abscess eaten into the bone on the skull? Looks that way.

Yaz,I believe so.
There was no sign of injury to the hide other than. A area next to the left eye had what looked like a scab. but there wasn't any injury to the hide. Cape fleshed out great. The scab was a build up of pus seepage through the skin

I would do what Chevy said... Contact DNR and Purdue asap...

Looks to me like an old injury. Especially if there were no outward appearances of a recent one. For an abscess to eat into the bone, that injury was likely several months, and even a year old or better old. It looks like it had just entered the brain cavity through the skull fissure. I'd say he wouldn't have lasted too long after that. I'd say the meat would have been just fine. Thanks for posting the pics.

yaz, If its a year old injury it didn't effect antler growth. Pic doesn't do the deer justice.
He'll gross in the high 160's.

That small of an abscess probably wouldn't antler growth. Bet it didn't bother him a bit. I'd say it was a fighting injury from the year before. I've caped them out with a lot bigger nasty's than that in their jawbones and around there heads with no apparent ill effects. Pretty tough critters! I do find that kind of stuff interesting though...as you can tell.

The meat will be fine. I've cut larger abscesses out of deer with old broadhead wounds. Won't get in to the ones normally found in pork. Let your nose be your guide.

I'm with chevy on this one. Only way to know is to send it off for biopsy. If it's an abscess, by definition that is bacterial. Therefore the bacteria is traveling throughout his entire body. I wouldn't be too worried about the meat. If he was septic,and the infection was really bad, we would have never seen this buck. The pus doesn't really tell you anything about the cause. This could be a primary or even secondary cancer site, even fungal. Pus is just mostly made up of dead cells after the body has sent good cells to a wound area in an attempt to heal. Either way, if meat looked and smelled ok, most likely any bacteria would be killed during cooking. Not trying to sound like a know it all, just trying to help. On the scoring, I'm guessing gross 160-162, net 150-152. Great buck with a lot of character either way. I'd be interested to hear others on score. I'm no expert.

Give it to your mother in law.