Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Small Game It's gonna be a nasty warble year in Virginia

The squirrels around my house all have them. Never seen them as bad as this year. Usually I don't see them this developed until mid to late September. We've had some cooler weather lately that may have sped up developement. But almost all the squirrels around here have them. They don't hurt the meat and don't go any deeper than the skin, and the squirrels recover completely once they come out. But dam, they make for some ugly squirrels.

my grandfather used to call them "wolves"

Takes some good COLD weather to get them off. What causes them??? I have a lot of fox squirrels at one farm that are eat up with them.

It's caused by a big Bot Fly that bites them and lays an egg in the skin that developes into a larvae. They will develope and come out then burrow into the ground then emerge the following year as a fly. Here, they're still in the skin in Octrober.

Sounds like the zit from hell lol

Always heard the first frost kills then off. Anyone else hear this or any truth to that? Seems possible.

I feel sorry for the ones that have them. Must be uncomfortable as f*ck for the little buggers... We call them "wolves" here too.

Disgusting things. I've seen four on one squirrel before.

I had no idea that we had those things in this country! I’d read about bot flys in Africa, so this is a surprise.

What's grosser is that when you are getting ready to clean the dead squirrel, the bot fly larvae is sticking its air tube up through the pin hole.

Good part is, they are in the skin and it doesn't affect the meat. The other thing is, bot flies are native insects and this has been going on for eons. The squirrel doesn't have a disease. It's just the natural part of both critters lives. The squirrels heal up completely after the larvae come out.

Iam from Canada, the squirrels

didn't have them, but they bothered our cattle and came out along the back, sure ruined the hides for leather. Cheers NC

My mother told me that if you whack the cow hard with your hand beside the hole, the warble would pop out. Is that really true?

None of the approximately ten squirrels that feed in my yard have them. Hard to tell on rabbits with all that hair.

I thought a warble fly and a bot fly were two different Demons.

This is the Bot fly I have to deal with. https://entomology.ca.uky.edu/ef504

They don’t hurt the meat although it’s nasty as hell to see

Damn, you guys pass up that extra protein?

A killing frost will get them.

I'ze a tad squeamish.......

We call them 'wolves' in N. La. also, but until I moved to S. La. I had never seen them on squirrels. Rabbits yes. Need a freeze to get rid of them. That's why we dont rabbit hunt until deer season is over in Jan.

Yuk...

Squirrels seem to be able to exist with them tho...

From memory, they were pretty well history by the time the season opened.

Wolves here.. Last summer we had one boar squirrel that had four of them. One on his head, one between the shoulder blades and one behind each shoulder. We called him Quasimodo 😊