This is a bald cypress, one of a few growing along a small, marshy area where I originally found the deer a few months back. The bald cypress belongs to the sequoia family; they can grow to be over 100 feet tall and live to be anywhere from 800 to 1,000 years old. Apparently, the oldest living tree in Illinois is a bald cypress. who knew?I don’t have a lot (any) experience photographing carcasses…plus, this one was pretty inaccessible and there were some parts that were still a little ripe. Amazing, though, how thoroughly consumed and decomposed in such a short time. There were some other scraps scattered about, some hide and bone, that we came across a short ways away.If I remember correctly, there were two jawbones lying side by side as if they’d fallen from the skull that way. I wish I would have gotten a picture of that, but again…not a lot of experience with dead deer photography, and the stinkiness.
sittinginthewoods 
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