BEND, Ore. — With the season of feasting and family dinners on the horizon, it’s a safe bet one dish will be missing from most menus — roadkill.
Oregon bans the harvesting of most animals you might strike with your car yet still consider eating, unlike nearly a third of states, where the fender-to-frying pan journey is one possible path for the victim of an unforeseen collision.
In Oregon, game animals killed by a vehicle cannot be harvested, by the driver or anyone else. Antlers from deer or elk killed by a vehicle cannot be harvested either. The law, according to the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife website, is intended to discourage individuals from “hunting” with their vehicle.
On the other hand, any motorist who kills a nonprotected animal — or just happens to find it along the road — is free to take it home. Qualifying species include coyote, skunk, nutria, opossum, badger, porcupine and weasel, and anything else that can be hunted without a license or tag, reports The (Bend) Bulletin .
Local angle
In Washington, a new rule adopted by the state Fish and Wildlife Commission, effective July 1, 2016, allows people to salvage deer and elk killed by motor vehicles.
However, in Clark, Cowlitz, and Wahkiakum counties, only elk — not deer — may be salvaged because federal laws prohibit handling endangered Columbian white-tailed deer in Southwest Washington.
Anyone who takes possession of a deer or elk carcass must get a free, printable permit from the state Department of Fish and Wildlife within 24 hours.
Fish and Wildlife does not guarantee that salvaged meat is fit for consumption. People are encouraged to review the Department’s Wild Game Meat Food Safety information.
More information is available at http://wdfw.wa.gov/licensing/game_salvaging.
There’s also a third category that applies to individuals licensed to trap animals for their fur. They can take home bobcat, gray fox and red fox, marten, muskrat, mink, raccoon, river otter and beaver, but only when such animals are in season.
Cory Heath, wildlife biologist with the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife, said Oregon’s laws on harvesting roadkill date back decades. In large part, the rules against keeping game animals killed by vehicles are designed to deter illegal or out-of-season hunting, he said. By banning the collection of roadkill, poachers can’t cover up their activity by claiming to have struck the animal accidentally, Heath said.
Heath said a scattering of Oregonians are caught illegally harvesting roadkill every year, though often, not for the meat.
“In many cases, they are people taking antlers off buck deer and bull elk, people taking bear paws off roadkilled bears, things like that,” he said.
Peter Murphy, regional spokesman for the Oregon Department of Transportation, said the period between early October and mid-November is the deadliest time of year for local deer venturing onto the road in Central Oregon.
Deer that make their home near Bend, Ore., and in the Cascades during summer often move toward Christmas Valley for the winter, Murphy said, necessitating trips through populated areas and across busy highways. Far fewer tend to be struck by vehicles when making the return trip in the spring.
Bend is on the northern edge of a zone extending past La Pine that sees more collisions between deer and vehicles than anywhere else in the state, Murphy said.
“Central Oregon is a hot spot, and that is perhaps the hottest hot spot in the state for collisions. We get deer everywhere around here,” he said.
The fencing that went up along both sides of U.S. Highway 97 in 2012 to funnel deer and other animals though a designated crossing near Lava Butte have been successful, Murphy said. Between 2004 and 2006, ODOT recorded 42 instances in which vehicles struck and killed deer, but Murphy said since the fencing went up, only two deer have been killed in that stretch. A new project that would extend the fencing and add new crossings is in the planning stages, he said.
