CASS COUNTY —

Dale Wallace of Goshen, Indiana, at first thought the swollen muzzle of the buck that showed up on his trail cameras this summer might have been the result of a hornet sting.

But the animal continued to show up throughout the summer, and its unusual appearance remained unchanged.

Last week, Wallace spotted the animal while he was bow hunting on his land in Cass County, and shot it.

Now the unique animal's head is bound for Georgia, where

from around the country.

The deer is the first of its kind to be found in Michigan, biologist Kevin Keel told Wallace.

“ The lesion is most likely chronic inflammation due to a bacterial infection. To my knowledge I’m the only one that has worked on these cases and I have about 10 of them now from Georgia to Idaho,” Keel wrote in a post on

, a hunting blog where he saw a photo of Wallace's deer.

Keel, a wildlife pathologist at the

at the University of Georgia said the group has been studying deer diseases since 1957 and has examined thousands of deer over the years. “However, we have only received submissions of deer like this in the last seven years. I’m not certain what is going on but I’m anxious to get as much information about such cases as possible," Keel wrote.

Wallace said he initially reported his find to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources deer station near Jones, but workers there were not interested. So his wife suggested he post the photo on the popular hunting web site, where it was spotted by Keel.

He said he spoke with Keel by telephone to arrange to ship the head to him for study, and learned that other specimens he has checked just have big noses. “Mine, the whole skull is enlarged,” he said.

The taxidermist found it to measure several inches larger than a big 12-point buck he had mounted, and he told Wallace he's not sure what mannequin to use to prepare the mounted head when it's returned.

“I've been hunting 20 years. I've never seen anything like this, “ Wallace said.