Dead horse alert
Saw another road-kill deer on Willow Glen Drive Election Day morning and was reminded that a year or two ago the Chief Fish and Game Commissioner hit a buck in eastern Montana then put his tag on it, not knowing it was illegal. That convinced me I might save valued readers some grief by reviewing a column from eight years ago. Read up:
Recently found out that every time you kill a horse with your vehicle on a road, you must report it to law enforcement right away. This is not something you can just keep shrugging off. If you have been running into horses and not telling anybody, you are asking for big trouble. Discovered this after reporting a dead horse on highway 89 near East Glacier.
It seemed reasonable to assume the laws governing “dead horse reporting” also apply to other beasts such as elk, bears, cows, deer, pigs, mules, and buffalo but good reporters do not assume anything, so I called the Montana Highway Patrol Headquarters in Helena. A Lieutenant said the law requires reporting if the carcass you create “constitutes a hazard to traffic.” Next I asked, “Well O.K., but where do you draw the line?” and he replied, “Right down the middle of the road. Ha ha ha.”
After chortling over this observation, I said, “I’m talking about the size of the carcass. For example, how about a middle sized dog?” He said common sense must apply, for example, a middle sized dog might not be a serious traffic hazard but a sixty pound pig could flip a car . . . especially one of those smaller models.
Next call was to a State Game warden who said, “If you strike and kill a big game animal, the carcass should be dragged off the road.” That information seemed to fit in with that the Highway Patrol said, but I did have the scary vision of a 75 year old grandmother dragging a 700 pound bull elk off Highway 2 at Nyack Flats in the dark.
Then the Fish and Game guy dropped the bomb by answering my next question, “No George! If you should cream the world record buck deer with you car, even during hunting season while carrying an unfilled license ... you still can not tag that animal.”
“Why not? It’s something I’ve often thought about while driving around . . . even going downtown for a loaf of bread, because deer are constantly being killed right on Woodland Avenue where I live.”
“The law is clear. All tagged big game animals must be taken by legal means which means bow and arrow or guns during season.
“There is no ‘bumper season,’ ho ho ho!”
I then asked what was the reasoning behind not allowing car killed deer to be tagged and he said the Department’s reasoning was, “If that law wasn’t in effect, people might deliberately hit big game with their vehicles.” (I’m not making this up.)
There are new twists to that nagging question,
“What would I do if my old pickup should bag a ‘world record buck’ during hunting season?”
Might be tempted to drag it off the road and shoot it in the heart . . . if there weren’t any witnesses. Maybe I should work on that a little more.
( Note: There are many states that do allow “salvaging” vehicle killed game animals, but I don’t’ know if you are allowed to “salvage” the horns.)
Drive carefully, wear your seatbelts, and be kind to one another.
G. George Ostrom is a national award-winning Hungry Horse News columnist. He lives in Kalispell.