Since I've lived here (about 16 years), we haven't had any real overpopulation of deer. Then during the drought, their numbers dropped drastically, I suppose because the drought hit this little area so especially hard. After a while, we saw deer mostly only in the summer, and few of them even then. I hear people from other areas of Texas complain about there being way too many deer, and I understand why that can be a really bad thing. I could be wrong, but I think that the deer I saw was injured, and any sickness was mainly because of that. One of its legs appeared completely unusable, and it seemed like it was barely able to move one other leg. Could have been hit by a car or shot. We have a fence around the part of my place that I call a yard, so deer munching only affects the rest of the place. Actually, I think wild hogs do more damage than anything else for the parts that the hogs can reach. They root around at night and leave quite a mess!
