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She got her buck!
elubsme
Member Posts: 2,188 ✭✭✭✭
The air force base in Colorado Springs has a policy where the residents can process road kills. My daughter was 32nd on the list. She is visiting her Ma and me here in NorCal 1210 mile away. she got notification that there was a deer to be picked up within an hour or so. Frantically she called 7 - 10 friends living on the base asking for help. Praise God, she reached one who picked it, took it home and processed it for her. Keeping 1/2 for himself, of course. BTW, it was a nice fork horn about two years old and had minimal damage so most of the meat was salvaged.
Comments
If you find road kill where the deer was hit in the neck, Merry Christmas. You lose the neck, which isn't much good anyway, and you might lose the shoulders. Not much meat there. But, you get the backstrap and the hams. You get all the good meat.
On the other hand, if the deer was broadsided by a pickup truck,, all the meat is bloodshot and destroyed. The guts are blown up and when you go to gut the deer is is a nasty mess, just horrible to see.
With roadkill, you pays your money, and you takes your chances.
Tenderized fender meat. Less chewing don't-cha-know?
Glad someone was able to salvage it.
Over the years I have found both. Some are so mangled that there is nothing salvageable. I drag them off for coyote bait. One memorable one had #6 shot in its body and a spent rifle bullet in its hind leg—-and he was hit by a car! I called him my bad luck deer.
Years ago I had a falconer friend who was a preparator for the University. He had a state salvage permit to pick up roadkills for the lab. 4 of us were hunting with hawks one afternoon and we had just gotten back to his house when the phone rang. Game and fish said the had a report of a deer hit in the Missouri river bottom. We drove out to the mile marker given and foud blood where it was hit. Trailing and searching, we found it a mile back from the road. It had 4 broken legs.
Pretty good friend to go it and process it. Half meat is very fair price. Good for them both.
Thank you,she is retired Air Force, 25 years and lives on base. They are nice people.
Several years ago I was driving the big rig on I-10 in Texas. It was three in the morning, I was headed west to San Antonio, way out in the country near Luling. I loved those all-night drives on the lonely Texas interstates, a full moon over the desert, and no traffic.
Suddenly a big 8 point buck appeared right in front of me. He was calmly walking across the interstate. I swerved a little to the left, but not enough to miss. If you miss the deer, but flip the big truck over, you have swerved a little too much. I hit the big buck in the right ham. It knocked the deer over onto the shoulder. I drove down to the next exit, flipped and came back. The big deer was still alive, trying to pull himself with his front paws. His hams were shattered. It was pitiful. I got out [what else?] my Buck knife and cut his throat. I called 911 to get an accident report, my rt fender was busted up but the headlight still worked.
The deputy came out, he seemed rather bored, I guess he had to work deer wrecks all the time. He didn't even fill out the accident report, he handed it to me and said "Go ahead and fill this out, I gotta go."
I knew there were 15 pounds of fresh back straps right there. Best meat on the deer. You don't have to gut the deer, it is simple matter to cut open the hide on the back, and cut out those seven-pound boneless straps with the Buck knife, I could do it in ten minutes. Also, I had a big cooler full of ice! Merry Christmas Allen! I said to the cop "I just need a minute to cut out these back straps and I'll be on my way."
The deputy gave me a funny look. He said "Don't let DNR catch you. I don't know nothin." And off he drove into the night.
I thought about what the deputy said. Back in Georgia it was legal to get road kill, in fact DNR encouraged it. But with what the deputy said, it struck me that road kill scrounging might be illegal there in Texas. I decided to leave the deer alone.
I drove past that road kill 2 days later, the vultures were having a field day. A Texas good 'ol boy had stopped and sawed off the horns, it was quite a big rack.
Yeah you gotta what jurisdiction you're in. In one state they pat you on back for salvaging and removing the carcass. Then the next state over will jail you for it.
OK…...my deer vs car story.
My EX brother in law was a MORON. He worked with my dad for a bit so I had to endure him and his stupidity pretty regularly.
He thought all the people were "vacationing" in Alabama and thought they were stupid for coming up here for their fun…..when two Hurricanes were tearing into Florida at the same time. He also thinks the midieval knight yard displays are REAL….even though they are 9 feet tall and 14 inches wide. He's an idiot.
So, one day….he hit a deer with his car….a small sedan, it pretty much tore up the fender and warped the hood.
This was his moment to shine….he dragged the deer into the trunk. He made it home where he decided it was not quite dead and clubbed the poor thing with a tire iron until he was certain it was gone. (While still in the trunk) Then, he dragged it out behind my parents barn where he thought he could process it himself. It was a nightmare….I didn't see it, but I can imagine. He figures out it was a lost cause and he tosses the deer over a pasture fence and nobody knows it is there…..UNTIL. ( You know where this is going.)
The neighbors dogs found it first…..he has hounds and they were going nuts for days according to him, finally getting out of their pens and heading to this deer. Mother was feeding the horses and told my dad that something had died behind the barn somewhere. He goes to investigate and finds what is left.
The deer we salvage don't stink up the highway or lay there for little children to see when riding by with their family. Even if the deer is not salvageaby I always drag it off into the brush to conceal it from passerbys.
Admirable ^^^^