Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Giardiasis

It's not only the bugs, but wearing latex gloves sure keeps the blood off which to me seems to hasten the cracks in the finger tips. I don't get them near as much as I use to. Same here, I didn't wear them for years, but now I do.

My original thought was the elk. After several days in the snow and cold, my fingers get cracks in them from dry/cold. I thought maybe I got blood or somehow some intestinal juice in the cracks. I mentioned that to my doc and he thought it more likely a water source. He's a big hiker and has had giardia himself. He leaned more toward snow or some other water source.

I also mentioned cutting the fur off the skull cap when I got back. The area between the skull and fur was green. He didn't think that likely either.

I try to remember to have a pair or 2 on me. I really like the gloves for keeping most of your hands clean. Fingers anyways, I admit it is nice not having the dried blood under and around the fingernails.

I think the snow is a stretch.

Unless it was the yellow kind.

Could have been the snow. Giardiasis will form a cyst that is damn near impossible to kill by freezing.

That's kind of a personal question, ain't it??

I was thinking the same.......lol

I used to field dress all my deer bare handed as well for 20 years and put a big freaking chew of Skoal in at some point after cleaning it. It took me once getting sick a few years ago and since then it's gloves. Plus, I cut my self when I was in my early twenties field dressing one, never got anything then, but I worry nowadays with CWD and other diseases. Not that my knife wouldn't cut through the surgical gloves I know wear, but I'm a lot more careful nowadays. Especially when cleaning my beast..............

I'd be inclined to blame contaminated hands or gloves as opposed to the distilled water found in snow.

My initial thought as well. Except I'm the only one in my group to get it so it just about has to be something unique to me.

Snow is not pure by any stretch.

That's not what she told me.......

Did a doctor confirm for sure you had Giardia?
If not, it could be any manner of "bugs" with a hundred ways of contracting it including your own dirty hands, especially being out in the woods a few days. I carry hand sanitizer in my pocket when I'm out there and use it often, especially after every "bathroom stop", before eating, after handling animals, etc.

If it was Giardia for sure, I've never heard of anyone contracting that from handling animal blood. I've only heard of it being contracted by ingesting contaminated water, so I'd vote for the snow, as unlikely as that seems to me.

I don't know if there are any other means of contracting it, maybe, just never heard of it but I would like to know.

Sorry to hear you were suffering. I picked up a few years ago on a float down a northern river called the Dease. More dang beavers in that river than moose.

The only symptoms I had were an upset stomache and projectile diarea. It passed in a few days but it was a nuisance.

Worked with Dr Glen Clark at CWU in Ellensburg, WA, collecting samples for Girdia, working on dying plans to find one that works, and then counting cysts under magnification. Spent hundreds of hours doing it and ended up with a dose myself.

I had no weight to lose in those days yet managed to lose a bunch. Flagyl was/is the only thing they will give you for it and it is just a huge purge of the gut, good and bad.

Ended up with another dose helping Dewey Halverson prepare his drops for the Iditarod Dog Sled race. We boned dozens of skinned beavers and packaged them. Having looked at many hundreds of slides taken from beaver scat I knew full well there were plenty of cysts to go around.

I think I got it from opening a beer can...

Tiny, tiny rills up high in the Cascades were often packed full of Giardia and the voles up there proved to be the source. No way will I drink water straight from a creek.

Many folks can never get rid of it and it can be debilitating.

Bwinters: Giardiasis (commonly refered to, also, as Giardia) is nothing to take lightly.
I contracted it on a guided Moose Hunt in Alberta, Canada - what a miserable incapacitating disease it is!
It can also be fatal!
My older brother had a friend who contracted Giardia in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming on a hiking trip - he died three weeks later in a hospital in Seattle.
He literally bled to death internally!
My good friend here in SW Montana had the disease misdiagnosed for 4 or 5 years - the blood tests simply failed somehow initially to reveal Giardia.
He underwent misery that ravaged him and nearly killed him.
He also at one point underwent "exploratory" surgery and organ biopsies as his Doctors could not figure out his problem.
Finally another blood sample was sent to the MAYO Clinic and Giardia was "discovered" and soon was remedied for him.
I have another friend with whom I traveled from Seattle to Montana to Hunt with one November he walked out into an icey creek and scooped up a handful of water and vioula he soon became incredibly ill!
Our trips to clinics did not resolve his symptoms and once we got back home he kissed his wife and she came down with Giardiasis!
She lost 22 pounds of weight before she was cured.
I know people who claim that Giardia did not exist in North America 100+ years ago and that it came from Europe and Asia about then???
I am glad you are recovering!
I carry my own water when Hunting or I go thirsty.
On our back pack Hunts we filter and boil!
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

Sure sounds like it:

I got it back in 82 on a Colorado back country deer hunt drinking water from a creek ,just like everyone else in camp was.
I was the only one of 6 guys to get sick.
At the time I was in the Army and weighed about 140 lbs.
Within 6-8 weeks I was down to about 105 and they still couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. Just kept giving me pepto bismol.
Finally went to a civilian Dr in Colorado Springs and he figured it out. Flagl cured it but by that time I was down to about 95 lbs.

Wasn't fun.

This occured in the late 1970s.

I had a friend in Los Angeles who loved to back pack up in the high Sierra. One day, he became sick. Stomach cramps and nausea, then "the runs." He became sicker and sicker. His doctor did not know what was wrong.

As my friend deteriorated, his doctor put him in the UCLA hospital. He got worse. Doctors ran all kinds of tests and could not figure out what was wrong. He was approaching a "terminal state." His wife was frantic.

One morning, a new, young UCLA resident doctor, an Oriental man who was educated here in the States, read his charts and then asked him, "You wouldn't happen to be a hiker, would you?"

My friend answered that he was. The young doctor then asked him if he had been hiking recently? Yep, up in the Sierra about three weeks ago. The doctor asked if he had drunk any of the water from creeks in the Sierra? Yes.

The doctor said, "You have contracted Giardia." Antibiotics specific to Giardia were adminstered and in a couple days, my friend was much better and out of danger.

He never again went hiking without taking an expensive water filter with him and using it assiduously. To this day he has not again contracted Giardia.

It was his experience that made me stop using unfiltered, or unboiled water when hunting, hiking, camping, etc.

L.W.

Call your local water authority and ask them how well filtered your tap water is, you'll be surprised. Our water is filtered to "95%". So yes bugs can get by. MIL's neighbor got it a couple months ago and she barely leaves the house. They called to city and got the above response and a comment that it's not uncommon to pick it up from tap water.