Dead Deer Removal

Our Dead Deer Removal Process

This is the simplest process on our site, because that's the point — you've already had enough of a day.

1. Call and describe the situation. Where the deer is, how accessible it is, and what condition it's in. That's everything we need to quote the job over the phone. Each removal is priced as a custom quote — location, access, and condition drive it — and the number we give you is the number you pay.

2. We show up equipped. A fresh roadside strike on the front lawn, a decomposed carcass at the back of a wooded lot, a deer that went into the pool overnight — each is a different job, and we arrive with the gear and protective equipment the specific situation calls for. Our technicians work quickly and discreetly; most neighbors never know we were there.

3. Removal and licensed disposal. We extract the carcass, sanitize the contact area on request, and transport the animal to a licensed disposal facility. You don't touch anything, lift anything, or figure out where a 150-pound animal can legally go. Done means done.

Five Reasons Not to Deal With a Dead Deer Yourself

The weight is no joke. A grown whitetail weighs as much as a person, and a bloated one weighs more and handles worse. Dragging one across a lawn without equipment is how backs get wrenched — and the drag path smears fluids, hair, and parasites across the yard your kids play in.

The ticks don't die with the deer. Deer are the blacklegged tick's favorite host, and a single carcass can carry them by the dozen. When the host goes cold, those ticks start questing for a warm replacement — and the closest one is whoever kneels down next to the animal. Pennsylvania reports more Lyme disease cases than nearly any state in the country, year after year. A dead deer is a tick bomb; treat it like one.

Assume disease until proven otherwise. Chronic Wasting Disease is established in Pennsylvania, and an infected deer can look completely normal. There's no way to know without a lab. The CDC's guidance is to avoid contact with the brain, spinal column, and lymph tissue of any dead deer — which in practice means don't handle the animal at all.

You can't just throw it away. Curbside trash and most transfer stations won't accept a carcass, and backyard burial is a worse idea than it sounds: too shallow and scavengers excavate it; too close to a well and you've got a groundwater problem; and in a state where CWD exists, burying a deer risks putting prions into your soil — where they can stay infectious for years.

The township isn't coming. Pennsylvania's system covers roads, not yards. PennDOT crews handle deer on state routes, and your township or borough road crew handles local streets — but the moment the animal is on private ground, responsibility shifts to the property owner. The Game Commission doesn't do pickups either. If the deer is on your lawn, in your landscaping, or in your pool, the phone tree ends with a private service. That's us.

Why There's a Dead Deer on Your Property in the First Place

Deer calls come in year-round, but after two decades the calendar is predictable. Knowing the pattern explains why this happened to you — and why it happens to your neighbors more often than anyone mentions at the block party.

October through December — the rut and rifle season. Mating season sends bucks charging across roads at dawn and dusk with their judgment switched off, right through commuter hours. Pennsylvania sits at or near the top of the national rankings for deer-vehicle collisions every single year. And once the firearms season opens after Thanksgiving, wounded deer that slip away can travel a surprising distance before going down — which is how a carcass ends up in a Lower Merion backyard when nobody heard a thing.

August through October — EHD season. Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease, spread by biting midges, spikes a deer's temperature so high that the animal seeks water to cool down. This is why late-summer calls so often involve pools, ponds, and creek banks — and southeastern Pennsylvania has seen its share of EHD outbreaks. The disease poses no threat to people or pets, but the cleanup is exactly as unpleasant as you'd imagine.

March and April — the snowmelt discoveries. Hard winters cull fawns and old deer, and the carcasses surface as the snow goes. Spring yard cleanup season is, less cheerfully, also carcass discovery season.

May and June — fawning and dispersal. Fawns that don't make it and yearling bucks pushed out to find new territory produce a steady trickle of calls, especially in leafy suburban neighborhoods where tall plantings hide an animal for days.

Underneath all of it is simple math: Pennsylvania's deer herd is estimated at roughly a million and a half animals, and the suburban collar counties around Philadelphia hold some of the densest pockets — far more deer per square mile than the surrounding habitat can actually support.

CWD Is Here. Here's What That Means.

Chronic Wasting Disease isn't approaching Pennsylvania — it arrived years ago. The disease was first detected in the state back in 2012, and the Game Commission has been managing it ever since through Disease Management Areas, ongoing testing, and rules restricting the movement of high-risk deer parts. CWD is caused by misfolded proteins called prions, it is always fatal to the deer that contract it, and there is no vaccine, treatment, or cure. Worst of all, prions don't break down the way bacteria and viruses do: once they're in the soil, they can remain infectious for years to decades.

Here's the part that matters to a homeowner standing over a carcass: a CWD-positive deer can shed prions for a year or more while looking perfectly healthy. The deer in your yard may have been hit by a car, taken by EHD, or lost to a hard winter — or it may be carrying something a visual inspection can't reveal. The CDC recommends avoiding contact with the brain, spinal cord, and lymph nodes of any dead deer, full stop.

So we run every job the same way: technicians in proper PPE, the carcass contained for transport, and disposal only at a licensed facility — never a wood line, never an open dump. In a state where CWD is a settled fact rather than a distant worry, disposal done right isn't about the smell. It's about not seeding your own soil with something that outlasts your mortgage.