I gotcha on the “roadkill excuse.” I was just joking around, playing off the extreme of the vehicular poacher.

The issue of poachers using the roadkill excuse isn’t so much that people are running them down with their vehicles (although I know for a fact that there are people who do this…crazy as it sounds). It’s more common to encounter someone who shot the animal, and when they get caught they claim it was “crippled by the side of the road” and they just “put it out of its misery”. I also know for a fact that this goes on.

It’s unfortunate that CA manages things like this, but based on the size of the state and the number of people here, I understand why they do.

Just to clarify: You can’t legally pick up road kill in Vermont either. But when a deer, for example, is killed in an accident, wardens sometimes invite the driver to take the animal home. It would take a pretty desperate poacher to intentionally incur thousands of dollars of damage to their own vehicle to get a deer!

If the driver doesn’t end up with the meat, and if it isn’t too terribly torn up, then the warden usually calls someone else. Vermont wardens maintain lists of local folks who could use the venison.

Also, I checked with VT F&W and they confirmed that farmers who get permits to kill deer are often allowed to keep the meat. Overall, it seems that here our laws are more closely tied to subsistence (farming and hunting) and to wildlife as a food source.

As far as utilizing deer killed on a depredation permit, I don’t have first hand experience, but what I’ve heard is that deer permits are very hard to get, and the depredation agent is not allowed to use the meat. It comes back to a handful of dishonest poachers leveraging the “depredation” argument to cover up their illegal activities. (I do know, first hand, that depredated hogs can be utilized, but hogs and deer are treated differently by the DFG, as they should be.)

If you’re seeing a common thread here, you should. It’s poachers… people killing game without regard to season, limit, or other regulations… a real life example of a few bad apples ruining the whole barrel.

I’ve held my tongue so far on jreed’s comments because my first inclination is to always offer benefit of the doubt. I don’t know jreed, and I have no idea about the reality of his circumstances, his personal motivations, or anything else. I know there are people out there who truly subsist on illegally killed game, and of those people I’ve known personally, I have a hard time condemning them for their actions.

The folks I’ve known were quiet about what they did (they sure as hell wouldn’t trumpet their actions over the Internet). They didn’t offer justification or excuses. They were simply people with very low incomes, living in isolated areas where they had limited access to relief resources. They were also surrounded by a natural bounty, most notably an overpopulated deer herd. It simply made sense to take a little from time to time, and I agree that it probably hurt nothing.

On the other hand, we have folks who choose not to apply the laws of the land to themselves because they feel somehow entitled to the exemption, or think the regulation or law doesn’t make sense or is unfair. From what I’ve read so far, this is the category in which our friend, jreed, belongs. It’s the same mindset that is used by shoplifters and thieves who justify their actions because prices are too high.

When I read the complaints about lack of good public land, how hard it is to find legal game in CA, or how “unreasonable laws make hunting a joke,” I can’t help but think someone is just making excuses because hunting legally is too difficult. This is made even more obvious when I see foolishness like, “bucks aren’t active in the heat.”

This state has some awesome public land for deer hunting, and the hunter who learns his quarry can put that public land to work for himself. With a reasonably developed set of hunting skills, a persistent hunter can kill deer…even in the heat of the early seasons. If it’s truly about feeding the family, then that should be all the incentive a hunter needs to put in the time and effort to tag out. The argument that, “I cant take a week off for a hundred and twenty pounds of meat,” just doesn’t fly.

With that said, I don’t necessarily disagree with everything jreed says. CA regulations are a little screwed up. In some places, we need to open things up a bit and allow antlerless hunts. I believe that, with better oversight the depredation permits for deer should allow utilization of the meat. And of course I think folks should be allowed to recover road kill, although I understand the concerns that currently make it illegal. Unfortunately, it is the actions of people like jreed that keep these laws on the books.

By the way, I also agree that many of us do take for granted the luxury of sport hunting. It’s not a pursuit that’s readily available to every citizen… particularly urban folks. In many cases, it’s barely affordable to those below the poverty line. However, introspection into our motivations and methods is hardly the sole province of the privileged class. Not saying that every hunter should examine it to the lengths that some folks here are doing, but it’s an exercise we should all consider.

One thing worth noting is that our deer population is in decline here in Cali and they’re trying to figure out why: http://www.dfg.ca.gov/news/news10/2010080303-Deer-Study.html

The roadkill thing sounds about right. There’s some roadkill you can pick up if you’re licensed (raccoon, for example), but others you can’t pick up, and you can’t even finish off if you see it suffering from mortal wounds on the road.

That said, I know some wardens, and I can’t speak for all of them, but they’d rather work on the egregious cases of poaching (people who kill way over limits, or who bait) than picking on people trying to feed their families. But unless you know your local warden, you never know if that’s a risk worth taking.

I’m sorry to hear that California’s laws are so unfriendly to eating wild meat. No one can use the venison from deer shot to prevent agricultural damage? Roadkill can’t be eaten either? That’s ridiculous. Can some of my other California friends confirm this craziness?

Here in Vermont, I’m fairly certain the venison can be utilized in both cases. If, for example, you hit a deer with your car, the game warden will usually offer the carcass to you.