Oh Deer, Oh Road Kill

July 7, 2016

Question: I hit a deer while driving a few nights ago. The dang thing jumped right out in front of my car at the last minute while I was only going 35 mph. It lived but it got me wondering whether I could have legally taken it home. If I field dress a freshly killed deer that’s been accidentally hit by a car, and even if I don’t have a deer tag, I don’t see why I could not take it. Otherwise, it would just rot on the side of the road and go to waste. I’m not a road-kill eater, but if I killed a deer by accident, I wouldn’t mind taking it home and eating it and keeping the skin. (Anonymous)

Answer: Unfortunately, this would not be legal. Road-killed wildlife may not be retained. Only authorized personnel of state and/or local agencies are permitted to dispatch and remove injured or dead animals.

Even if you were a licensed California hunter with the appropriate tags to take the deer, you cannot legally tag that deer and take it home. Deer may only be taken with rifles, shotguns, pistols and revolvers, muzzleloaders and archery equipment. Motor vehicles are not included in this list of legal methods of take.

Although FGC, section 2000.5(a), states the accidental taking of game by a motor vehicle is not a violation of the law, it does not authorize the possession of animals taken by a collision with a vehicle. You may wonder why this is the case since it seems like it would be a waste of a deer to not be able to place a tag on it and perhaps save another from being taken. The reason is that some poachers would use the “collision” excuse to take deer at night with their vehicle and just attach their tag to justify the action.

It was explained to me that this law is because DFG doesn't want to encourage people to change from a 30-06 to a Buick as their weapon of choice when hunting.  Also, most deer are hit at night, so spotlighting is possibly involved. 

I imagine that IF it were legal to collect road-kill deer, then a lot more deer would be struck by autos. 

You would see big ol bumpers like we have in Montana! We get to pick em up here. Salvage permit. Hit a lot of deer, elk, cows, moose, and tourists stopping to take a picture in the middle of the road. Fish and game just asks you scrape them off the road, unless it's snowing, then the plow'll get em in the morning.
Deer!
Hit them. Don't swerve. Brake. & vice versa Brake. Don't swerve. Hit them.

Thats the thing, and unfortunately, its primarily a CA thing.  Other states allow the harvest of "road kill".  We choose to live in CA, and no matter how bad the laws are, we have to follow them.  Im not in any way endorsing the crap we have to endure.

And i agree, never, ever, swerve.  Hit the animal straight on.  Much less chance of injury to yourself and others property that way.  A deer will bounce up and over....a tree wont.


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Same as in Idaho... We can take them if we get a salvage permit. There are some crazy Mad Max looking cars up there.  When I first took my wife up to a mountain lake she decided to wait in the truck while I hiked around because she didn't want to donate any more blood to the mesquitoes. While I was fishing an old camouflaged Bronco pulled up with no windows and the roof cut off the top of it showed up and parked next to her. Some pretty rough looking guys got out and walked around the lake and started fishing next to me. They told that they were getting pretty hungry so it was time to go fishing and that they made there money by turning in the mackinaw heads from lake
Pend Oreille when they had the gill netting program still going. Then they asked me if I had seen that pretty little oriental girl sitting in the truck over there? I was like yah... She's my wife. They were just quite after that, lol. On they way back home we saw a Grizzly bear which was a surprise to me as I'd never seen one the entire time I lived there. She said she would never go into the woods with me again. Luckily that has changed and she has become quite the outdoorsy woman. At least compared to what she was when I met her. I guess that got a bit off topic from the picking up ran over deer, lol.

Last month when we went up to Mendo for our last ab trip the road was clean, meaning there was no dead animals but on our way back we saw a dead deer on the shoulder. Not sure if a vehicle struck it or it came out from the woods and died. question.. do you report it in?

No

In the more urban and suburban parts of the state you might call it in and maybe animal control will do something, but out here in the rural parts someone will happen by with a gun soon enough, put the deer out of it's misery, and either toss it in the back of the pickup or not.   (I'm obviously referring to a post that (shocker!)  VK sent to the great deleted post farm to live out it's days.  fugg)

The given reason for not allowing salvage is stupid.  How many more deer will actually be intentionally taken?  The number has to be in the dozens tops.  It's already estimated that fully 50% of the deer harvested statewide are poached.  The last numbers for 2014 have 14,199 deer legally harvested.  So out of 25k-30k deer taken each year another 80 will be killed intentionally by mad max deer assault vehicles.  So what?  State by state deer on vehicle data isn't readily found, but nationally 1.2 million deer are struck by vehicles each year.  There isn't data on how many f those 1.2 million are intentional, but it can't be much.

We define taking roadkill dear as poaching, then we say we cant allow salvage of roadkill because poachers would take advantage of it.  That is ridiculous.  Poachers don't care what the law says, and now the salvageable meat goes to waste, left as carrion in rural areas or collected and tossed into a landfill in the urban areas.

California Über Alles

Yeah ..guilty ...figured I was being obvious and redundant ..so I deleted , I'm trying man..

When I lived in Missouri I harvested a road kill deer, fun story over a drink by the fire

Anyone interested in  wearing a red speedo and kneeling next to roadkill deer and eating a beef liver or red jello? Ohh ya we can pour a gallon of ketchup all over you too. I think multiple cameras for filming will be required. If anyone stops by the side of the road you have to tell them your just having breakfast as you bite into the liver. If we determine that cutting open the deer is not a violation we can do that too. If that video works out we can then  make a mechanical deer ( head turning and front feet moving as to get up) that will look like it is trying to get away as you are eating its liver.

Anyone interested in  wearing a red speedo and kneeling next to roadkill deer and eating a beef liver or red jello? Ohh ya we can pour a gallon of ketchup all over you too. I think multiple cameras for filming will be required. If anyone stops by the side of the road you have to tell them your just having breakfast as you bite into the liver. If we determine that cutting open the deer is not a violation we can do that too. If that video works out we can then  make a mechanical deer ( head turning and front feet moving as to get up) that will look like it is trying to get away as you are eating its liver.

I'm down

We need a written ruling from DFW first on cutting on Roadkill. WE will not be eating it or taking it only hacking on it so its goreee.

Would it be unwanton waste?

Anyone interested in  wearing a red speedo and kneeling next to roadkill deer and eating a beef liver or red jello? Ohh ya we can pour a gallon of ketchup all over you too. I think multiple cameras for filming will be required. If anyone stops by the side of the road you have to tell them your just having breakfast as you bite into the liver. If we determine that cutting open the deer is not a violation we can do that too. If that video works out we can then  make a mechanical deer ( head turning and front feet moving as to get up) that will look like it is trying to get away as you are eating its liver.

That's only slightly less gory than my story, pocket knife, live animal with broken spine, doing the dispatch in the middle of the road...  did you know that a deer's carotid artery is deep in muscle and hard to find ?  I do