Hunter Nick Telscher remembers the exact moment he likely got alpha-gal syndrome, a tickborne allergy to mammalian products, such as red meat and dairy.
He'd gone out to do some pre-hunting season chores, such as hanging a new trail camera and clearing brush. Since he didn't expect the chores to take very long, and it was a hot summer day, he decided to forgo his usual tick safety measures — long sleeves and clothes treated with the tick repellent permethrin.
"And we're driving back home, and I, you know, you get that creepy crawly feeling," Telscher said. "I looked down and… I could see them on my pants, walking on, crawling all over my pants, and then I look at my arm, and I've got, I don't know, there might have been 100 seed ticks all crawling up and down my arm."
Telscher said he didn't think much of it at the time. While it was a somewhat gross experience and the bites itched afterwards, he'd grown up in rural southern Missouri and ticks were nothing new or usual.
But after a few months, he said he started feeling rotten.
"I dealt with stomach pain and stuff like that. It was real bad in the evenings, at nighttime," Telscher said. "Severe stomach pain that basically nothing could touch, I mean… you could take all the Tums in the world. It didn't matter. It didn't help."
This and a few other symptoms went on for months until his doctor suggested he do a blood test for alpha-gal syndrome. It came back positive, but Telscher didn't want to believe it, so he had the blood test run a second time.
"It comes back — the numbers are exactly the same," Telscher said. "So, that point, I had to kind of wrap my brain around, like, 'Well, statistically speaking, the odds of them messing it up twice, exactly the same way it's, not likely'…. and that sucked."
Tandra Telscher, Nick's wife, said their doctor "got on to him a little bit" and told him he needed to take the diagnosis seriously and prepare for possible allergic reactions by getting an EpiPen.
Luckily, Tandra said they already had some experience with dealing with food allergies — their young daughter has a tree nut allergy, and her mother had been diagnosed with alpha-gal a few years before Nick.
"It like totally changed [her mother's] world very drastically. She's very sensitive, and watching her struggle through that, it was really hard, and we didn't really understand it," Tandra said. "So, whenever Nick did get a positive diagnosis… it was really scary, but also we knew that we had her in our corner, and she gave us so many resources and all of her research, and it definitely helped us a lot."
So, Tandra said she got to work as the household's primary cook. She started coming up with alpha-gal safe recipes, worked on explaining to their young kids why they couldn't have hamburgers at home anymore and she emptied the fridge and freezer of all mammalian meat — except for the venison that Nick had harvested himself last deer season.
"Being a hunter — it is part of who you are."
Nick Telscher said he came to hunting a little later than most. He didn't go out for his first deer season until high school when Tandra's dad, a longtime hunter, invited him. Soon, he was hooked.
"I felt like I had some catching up to do, you know, I had to try to figure it out fast and so, I tried to push myself," Telscher said.
He quickly moved from rifle hunting to bow hunting — and then into more specified forms of bow hunting. He said his current preferred method is saddle hunting, where a hunter uses a harness and rope to suspend themselves from a tree.
Telscher said, since being diagnosed with alpha-gal, it's been frustrating not to be able to eat the venison he harvests himself. But even the act of hunting has a different feel now, because he knew he'd never be able to fully avoid ticks if he kept hunting, and subsequent bites can make alpha-gal reactions worse.
And he'd heard of other deer hunters who'd had allergic reactions — serious, even deadly ones — when field dressing deer and being exposed to their fur and blood.
"I was real frustrated… I was angry. It wasn't just that, like, down in the dumps. I was mad because I had worked hard to learn this stuff," Telscher said. "I've invested money and time and all this stuff into it, and you genuinely love it… and then to think, like, 'Well, what's the point now, right?'"
Tandra said it was hard to watch — seeing Nick struggle with the real possibility of having to give up a hobby that he loves and a tradition that was deeply embedded into their family.
"You need to grieve this. It is a loss of a major component of who you have understood yourself to be, and it's not voluntary," said Dr. Paige Freeman, a Texas-based psychologist who specializes in food and allergy anxiety.
"This is a loss of identity that has been imposed on you because it [alpha-gal] can make you extraordinarily ill over and over and over and over, and it's just not sustainable, and so, I really see that as a grieving process that just seems extraordinarily, extraordinarily difficult."
Freeman says in addition to the physical impacts of the allergy, there's also a significant psychosocial aspect.
Freeman said she works with alpha-gal patients regularly and they're often overwhelmed, at first, by their new realities — some are still trying to get diagnosed, while others are busy educating themselves on the condition and learning to read labels to avoid accidental exposure.
She added that there's also a large social burden because those with the condition are expected to educate their families and communities about what they need to stay safe.
"It is absolutely exhausting when you are trying to figure out what it means, just in general. You're trying to figure out what it means for your own life, what it means for your social life, what it means for your family, and then you are also feeling like you need to carry the burden of educating other people. It's a whole lot, and it's a whole lot all at once," Freeman said.
She said alpha-gal, in particular, is difficult for patients because there's still so much uncertainty and so many unknowns about the condition. Many refer to alpha-gal as an "any time allergy, not an every time allergy" because the triggers, the types of reaction and the severity of reactions can be different from one attack to another.
"If you said, 'You've got to tell me the hardest thing about alpha-gal syndrome and/or food allergies — what is it?' Without a doubt, what I would tell you is, it's that ambiguity and uncertainty," Freeman said.
Plus, she said, there's also the added burden of fear and hyper-vigilance — because a mistake with a food allergy can have real, potentially life-threatening consequences.
"With food allergy, you're always, there's constant vigilance. You're always being careful, you're always making sure that your food is safe, and having to take those precautions every day and every minute of your life, when, when, really you think about it, our lives are really surrounded by food," said Dr. Kelly Cleary, the Medical Director and Vice President of Health and Education for Food Allergy Research &Education [FARE], a national non-profit that focuses on food allergies through research, education and advocacy. "Every happy occasion, every sad occasion — involves food."
"With family and stuff, you almost feel like a sense of pity... and so, that's interesting to navigate. Constantly be like, 'No, we're fine. Like, it's okay. We're used to it'' like, 'This is our normal. It's not hard for us to anymore.' It was at the beginning, but now we're just kind of used to it, and it's just how we live."
Cleary is also the mother of a child with multiple food allergies. She said through her work with pediatric allergy patients — and her own lived experiences — she has seen, first-hand, the toll that food allergy can take on those with allergies.
One 2024 survey from FARE on the mental health burden of food allergies found 62% of respondents reported mental health concerns relating to their conditions, but only one-in-six patients and one-in-seven caregivers had received mental health services addressing those concerns.
Cleary added that a 2025 narrative review from Italy that looked at kids with food-induced anaphylaxis from 2005 to 2025 found that about half of children with food allergies can experience a wide range of mental health conditions, such as anxiety, depression, stress disorders, sleep and eating disorders.
"So, there can be long-term health consequences from anaphylaxis that might not be able to be treated fully," Cleary said. "Thankfully, in most cases where anaphylaxis can be treated and the course can be reversed with epinephrine, you're really dealing with more of that psychosocial impact of having to deal with that after."
Both Cleary and Freeman agree food allergy sufferers — especially those with alpha-gal syndrome — should reach out for help and find a support system.
"It is so impactful for people with AGS and food allergies, when people care," Freeman said. "It is life changing for people. If people have one restaurant that they can go eat at and they know they've got their back, that is life changing. They can then have their holiday parties there, they can then meet their friends there. It changes their life when people are supportive and inclusive."
Freeman said the Academy of Food Allergy Counseling has a searchable database of allergy-informed mental health professionals, and there are many support groups for alpha-gal that can be found online — one of which Nick Telscher started.
The birth of the Alpha Gal Hunter
Nick Telscher said he spent some time being mad, but then he had a realization.
"Why? Why do I have to stop? What is telling me that I have to stop? Who is telling me that I have to stop?" Telscher said. "No one's saying you have to stop this, you know? Like, there are more reasons to hunt than just to fill your freezer, right?"
Telscher said that, for him, hunting is about competition and skill, but it's also about connection to the land and nature, and he added that some of his favorite days in the woods have been days where he brought nothing home.
He said he also realized that while he and his family can't make use of venison, they have plenty of family and friends they would be interested.
"And so, I started being able to wrap my head around the idea of, like, 'I'm gonna go hunt still because I love it and I enjoy it and it's something that is a part of who I am,'" Telscher said. "And I'm not gonna let this bug tell me I can't hunt anymore, right? Like, I'm not gonna let this allergy tell me you have to give up what you love doing, like, you just find a way to do it that's safe and still ethical."
Telscher then spoke with Tandra and his doctor about what he needed to do to stay safe. Now, he carries an EpiPen, he wears protective equipment, such as gloves, when field dressing a deer, and he has plans to clean and prep carcasses closer to the homes of loved ones, so they can call for help if he begins to have a serious allergic reaction.
Tandra said she was excited when Nick began to prepare for what bow hunting looks like as a hunter with alpha-gal, and even more thrilled when he decided to start a social media channel, "The Alpha Gal Hunter," to share his experiences, his preparations for deer season, and what he's learned about living and hunting deer with the allergy.
"I would say to anybody else who finds themselves in this position, don't just give up," Nick Telscher said. "I think it's just one of those things that you're gonna have to think pretty hard and look inward a little bit… and maybe you take a break from it for a bit, maybe you don't… just don't give up."
Going forward, the Telschers said that they intend to donate any venison Nick brings home. They add that they'd like to see more knowledge of the allergy among the medical community, to have "mammal" listed as a potential allergen on food packaging, and for the state to take steps to reduce the overall tick population in Missouri.
For the full transcript of the radio story, click here.
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