dead elk etiquette

Kid comes home from town and announces that aside from our road being treacherous, there is a big dead elk in a field, not far off the road. Since large dead elk are not common in this area, she stopped to have a look, as had several other neighbours.

Some men were examining elk to determine cause of death. Nothing seemed immediately obvious. She says the animal was not stiff, snow was melting off it (still warm) it was bleeding from the butt, but no other sign of injury, no obviously broken limbs. But she said the rack was as tall as the men trying to handle the elk.

Later, when she went to town, the elk was still there, but its head was gone! One of said neighbours, and we likely know who, since he is a notorious collector of animal heads, they hang around his place all summer, suspended in trees, so birds can pick the flesh off...no doubt came over and de-headed the elk.

He didn't even bother to drag the elk off into the tree line to do this. No, just made a big, bloody butcher job of it right there by the road. I am pretty sure that hacking the head off a dead elk is illegal. I'm thinking a call to conservation and maybe this carcass could have been used for a wild bird refuge or some other cause, maybe the SPCA, I don't know, but to just make no effort to report or harvest, just to hack off the head and take the antlers...some people belong in jail.

They can't take anything without reporting it to the nearest conservation office.

That is just plain disrespectful on so many levels!

Don't think I'd want to be getting all involved with a carcass when I didn't even know the cause of death.

My thoughts exactly Fowler!

I think a call to some local tow truck companies will reveal cause of death. Pretty sure it was hit and pretty sure the vehicle would have been totalled, or pretty close. Doubt whatever hit it left under its own power. Just a guess, but I know how things go up this road.

i have seen that lots people are gross, lots of headless bucks along the roads...gross

I hope they let the Queen know, it is her elk, after all!

Around here we have that problem as well ! If they at least took the whole animal and left with it ,but they just want the head .Most are so called "" Hunters "" who will then claim the head as one that they shot ! In Manitoba you can keep the animal if you hit it and as they say "" it has to have tire marks "" otherwise I believe it is a offence in all the provinces and carries a huge fine ! I'd call the CO's and they can pursue it and hopefully catch the varmit and deal with them /him /her /it !

Sounds like a bad Texas heart shot from a poacher off the road, and he came back later for the head. Someone got away with a crime, one that is not penalized tough enough around here. Fines should be higher, licence taken away longer or forever etc, There are also not enough F/W officers around to keep up with the idiot road hunters during the season.

Piet

In alberta removing any part of a found dead animal is against the law or illegal under the Alberta Hunting Act/ Regulations, with out proper permits.

FOUND DEAD WILDLIFE

When driving or walking, hunters often find dead wildlife that they would like to keep. In most cases it is unlawful to possess such wildlife or parts of wildlife without first obtaining a permit. Contact a Fish and Wildlife office to apply for such a permit before taking possession of the wildlife.

Source: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

at the risk of going against the grain here, no doubt what the guy did wasn't a great idea but really...... who does it hurt? if he poached the animal that is one thing. he should be punished for poaching. if he grabbed the head off road kill, although it may be a dumb idea as the whole animal should be put to use and there are the laws about the subject, why the anger? guy did something dumb, tsk tsk. didn't hurt anyone. didn't interfere with the way anyone goes about their business. why the drama?
people do dumb things all the time. can't get too worked up over everyone of them.

i think the issue was the fact it was done on the side of the road, leaving a bloody mess in plain view of the general public. as a hunter, i find that ignorant and inconsiderate to non hunters

Hillbilly wrote: i think the issue was the fact it was done on the side of the road, leaving a bloody mess in plain view of the general public. as a hunter, i find that ignorant and inconsiderate to non hunters

I agree and being a hunter myself also, this kind of thing is what ruins it for us. Harder to get permission on land, etc. That is why I like bowhunting so much also, I don't have to worry about those lead flingers. I remember a gamewarden trying to set up a decoy on a notorious road for roadhunters, three bucks were killed from the road on that piece of land in one week. He was not able to find a spot to set up the decoy, due to unsafe backgrounds. There were three properties right around there that you could not see over the ridge and one through some trees...

Gamestaff, I don't think that is the right attitude and that is what is part of the ongoing problem. If you will not pay attention to the little things, you are more likely to let more important things slide/fail also.
"people do dumb thing all the time" is definitely no excuse and one of the dumbest things I have heard in a while.

Piet

I agree hillbilly. As another hunter, we get a bad enough rep from those bad "hunters" without having things like this going on!! It is bad hunter etiquuette to leave a bloody mess of any kind behind!!

Daughter, who told me about this, has a friend who is an avid hunter and he is very upset over this disregard for the law. Like Piet, he says it's morons like this who give everyone else a bad name.

I cannot say for sure that the person who took the head didn't phone the conservation guys. BUt I do know this; I have had many bear problems and when you phone their number (which no one EVER answers, leave a message) you wait over a week to get a reply. This guy might have made that call. Did he get a reply the same day saying go ahead and take the antlers? Not a chance. ANd yesterday was a holiday here...I'm thinking no officers were in the office.

I just hope someone puts a tractor on it, which would have been eaiser with a head on it, and drags it off into the bushline where the local coyotes and birds will pick it over.

This is a planted herd of elk that move through here. Everyone loves to see them and they only show up here for a limited time of the year, then they leave. If this animal was shot by some local yutz who stinking well knows better, he better keep his head down. BUt as Daughter said, there was no injury, entry wound or exit wound anywhere on the animal as this group of men was trying to determine. Just some blood from the butt. I'm thinking collision with a vehicle and internal damage, bled to death internally?

It's just disturbing. That's all.

it's not meant to be an excuse and i make no justification for the actions of whoever this was, but do we really need to get so upset about a situation we know little about or has nothing to do with us?
poaching doesn't seem to be the issue. the issue as i understood it is some guy showed bad judgement by messing with a carcass on the side of the road. it's a dead animal. the guy should have and hopefully did operated within the bounds of the law and should have showed consideration for others, no doubt. no arguement. what i don't get is why the fact that he didn't or may not have done those things gets people SO upset? if a law was broken, i hope he gets what is coming to him.
if no law was broken, then we are all just getting worked up about what is totally within someone's freedom to do. and it is up to us how offended we want to be.
i'm a hunter too, not sure why that adds credability to the point. i have no issue getting permission anywhere in this province, i hunt all over the province. i generally only hunt private land. never an issue.
i don't like seeing disregard for the law either, i work in the feild. as a hunter and an officer i get the problem, but really don't get the point of taking it out of any kind of constructive context.

uno, i can almost guarantee you that on a stat holiday in hunting season when most potential hunters are off work, the local enforcement would have been out in force. the joys of a job like that is that they work when others are not.

if the guy was gutsy enough to take the head off illegally in plain view of a road in an area where people are actively concerned about the particular species..... well this guy is the bravest man in town. and how he did it without getting seen or caught is just nothing short of an amazing feat.

gamestaff wrote:it's not meant to be an excuse and i make no justification for the actions of whoever this was, but do we really need to get so upset about a situation we know little about or has nothing to do with us?
poaching doesn't seem to be the issue. the issue as i understood it is some guy showed bad judgement by messing with a carcass on the side of the road. it's a dead animal. the guy should have and hopefully did operated within the bounds of the law and should have showed consideration for others, no doubt. no arguement. what i don't get is why the fact that he didn't or may not have done those things gets people SO upset? if a law was broken, i hope he gets what is coming to him.
if no law was broken, then we are all just getting worked up about what is totally within someone's freedom to do. and it is up to us how offended we want to be.
i'm a hunter too, not sure why that adds credability to the point. i have no issue getting permission anywhere in this province, i hunt all over the province. i generally only hunt private land. never an issue.
i don't like seeing disregard for the law either, i work in the feild. as a hunter and an officer i get the problem, but really don't get the point of taking it out of any kind of constructive context.

uno, i can almost guarantee you that on a stat holiday in hunting season when most potential hunters are off work, the local enforcement would have been out in force. the joys of a job like that is that they work when others are not.

....as a avid hunter myself i understand what you are saying ,but I have seen guys pull over and cut the head off in broad daylight as cars drove by !I would like to give everyone the benifit of a doubt that this might have been done legally ? If it was hit by a vehical ,maybe the owner of said vehical took the rack ? or might have been the police so that it didn't disappear ? I would think that if someone hit it with a vehical some one out there is talking about it and the truth might come out yet ? If the animal had been cleaned up properly then this topic wouldn't be takeing place .Uno ,did someone take a picture of the rack ? in case you were thinking of reporting it then they could look into the taxidermy shops to see if it shows up ? just a thought .Unfortunatly there are a lot of animals that get hit every year and there will always be someone that will take advantage of a situation such as this .

I don't know if anyone took a picture. Daughter went back to take a picture and send it to her disbelieving hunter friend, who didn't believe there was a dead elk near the road, and when she got there, head was gone.

She did say the rack was almost as tall as some of the men that were there. According to daughter, the animal was VERY LARGE.

Gamestaff, in our area we seem to be understaffed by conservation officers. We could probably use dozens more, especially this time of year. Did you say you worked in this field? Are you a conservation officer? I find it interesting then that you seem to be casual about what is ABSOLUTELY illegal. There is no question about the illegality of this.

One of the men attending, neighour, is a known head hunter and as I said earlier his place if always festooned with the rotting heads of various animals. To my knowledge he does not have the heads stuffed or mounted, just wants the rack. Considering that he is a well known local hunter, he may indeed have the direct hotline to the local conservation guy and who knows, maybe he did have permission to hack off the head. But I somehow doubt it. I am surprised that no effort was made to harvest more of the animal.

Around here the rules are that you are NOT ALLOWED to eat or keep roadkill. Not even if someone else hit it and you shot it while it flopped on the side of the road. The conservation guys will NOT ALLOW you to keep that animal. The thought behind this is that it encourages people to go out of their way to smack animals, often sending damaged animals into the bush and ditches to die horribly.

What's the problem? As stupid as some of our laws might be, they are our laws. If you feel a law is stupd, take up the proper channels of getting it changed. Do not slink around under cover of darkness and shrug and pretend that what you are doing is okay because you deem this law stupid. If this guy has a point to make he should have had photos of himself taken hacking off the head, illegally, and then submitted them to the newspaper so that he could MAKE A POINT about the stupidity of the law. Skinking around underhandedly, disregarding laws when it suits you, is to me, grossly unacceptable.

Does this act directly affect me? No. It makes me sad for the elk. It makes me think my neighbour is an opportunist with no respect for the animal, dead or otherwise. It makes me think if people have a problem with the law, then get off their butt and DO SOMETHING about it. But will I lose sleep? No. I just thought it was intersting since it is an event that I have not seen up here in 20 years, a dead ELK by the road. Deer, yes, elk, no. THey are impressive animals.

no i am not a conservation officer.
however, i just got back from town where i did stop at the office and talked to them. there is no issue picking up a dead animal from the roadside WITH permission. in fact various people have outstanding agreements with highways and fish cops to have road kill disposed of as long as it is not for human consumption.
i am not casual about anyone doing what is illegal. not at all. i don't think the law is stupid at all. what i think is getting carried away is the ideas and conclusions that are drawn and the emotions being generated in the face of so little facts. no one really seems to know what actually happened but no one is short of judgements and opinions.
i agree, elk are very impressive and the senseless loss of one is too bad. maybe i missed the point of the original post and some following ones, i thought it was more of a slander at someone based on what people were guessing happened. if it was simply to bring to light the loss of an impressive animal, then i am in complete agreement with you.

Dead elk update.

This is the local word on the street.

The guy who came and took the head called the conservation office, but no one answered. He left a message saying who he was, where he was, what he was going to do. He then hacked off the head and took it home. Next day offical guys in suits show up and take the head, and hand him a hefty fine.

Then offical guys perform post mortem on the elk. THey skin it to see if there is bruising or trauma that showed death by vehicle collision. BUt no such evidence was found. A metal detector was used to check for bullets. None were found. SO why and how this massive bull elk came to be dead in the field just off the road, no one knows. The land owner then hooked onto the carcass with a tractor and hauled it way up into the tree line, out of sight.

To add insult to injury, the landowner charged his other head-hacking neighbour with trespass. Nothing like overkill. This is the story..but all sounds plausable knowing the locals.

prairie dog wrote:Around here we have that problem as well ! If they
at least took the whole animal and left with it ,but they just want the
head .Most are so called "" Hunters "" who will then claim the head as
one that they shot ! In Manitoba you can keep the animal if you hit it
and as they say "" it has to have tire marks "" otherwise I believe it
is a offence in all the provinces and carries a huge fine ! I'd call
the CO's and they can pursue it and hopefully catch the varmit and deal
with them /him /her /it !

Hi , There is nothing illegal about picking up road kill in Manitoba. I was told I could by Len Turcotte, a provincial animal protection officer and that people do pick up road kill all the time.
Geri

Rasilon wrote:

prairie dog wrote:Around here we have that problem as well ! If they
at least took the whole animal and left with it ,but they just want the
head .Most are so called "" Hunters "" who will then claim the head as
one that they shot ! In Manitoba you can keep the animal if you hit it
and as they say "" it has to have tire marks "" otherwise I believe it
is a offence in all the provinces and carries a huge fine ! I'd call
the CO's and they can pursue it and hopefully catch the varmit and deal
with them /him /her /it !

Hi , There is nothing illegal about picking up road kill in Manitoba. I was told I could by Len Turcotte, a provincial animal protection officer and that people do pick up road kill all the time.
Geri

..........as I stated in my post ?

prairie dog wrote:

Rasilon wrote:

prairie dog wrote:Around here we have that problem as well ! If they
at least took the whole animal and left with it ,but they just want the
head .Most are so called "" Hunters "" who will then claim the head as
one that they shot ! In Manitoba you can keep the animal if you hit it
and as they say "" it has to have tire marks "" otherwise I believe it
is a offence in all the provinces and carries a huge fine ! I'd call
the CO's and they can pursue it and hopefully catch the varmit and deal
with them /him /her /it !

Hi , There is nothing illegal about picking up road kill in Manitoba. I was told I could by Len Turcotte, a provincial animal protection officer and that people do pick up road kill all the time.
Geri

..........as I stated in my post ?

You can pick it up wether you hit it or not.