The bizarre condition, called corneal dermoids, has been documented in just one other whitetail in the state of Tennessee, according to Quality Whitetails magazine, the journal of the National Deer Association. .

A dermoid, by definition, is a type of benign tumor made of tissues that usually appear in other parts of the body; in this case, skin tissue complete with hair follicles cropped up in the deer's cornea. .

The hairy-eyed deer "maybe could tell day from dark, but I wouldn’t think it would be able to see where it was going," Sterling Daniels, a wildlife biologist at the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA), told Quality Whitetails.

Rather than successfully developing into a clear cornea, the tissue instead formed skin and hair follicles, obscuring the growing deer's eyes.

Despite being born with corneal dermoids, the buck had lived to be more than a year old and even grew its first set of antlers before catching EHD, which has no treatment, Quality Whitetails reported.

"How fast [dermoids] develop over time probably isn’t well known and may vary case to case," Nemeth told Quality Whitetails.

Humans can develop dermoids in their eyes, too, causing hair to grow on their eyeballs, Live Science previously reported

(You can read more about the case of the hairy-eyed deer at Quality Whitetails magazine.)