Roadkill – It’s What’s for Dinner (if Michigan Proposal Makes it Into Law)

Roadkill is usually left to the vultures and the Michigan road crew to clean up.

Would you eat it?

If the answer’s yes, you’ll want to start lobbying your state representatives. The state Senate approved a bill last week allowing passersby to pick up vehicle-killed deer or bear and turn it into a meal or a rug, the Detroit News reported. The proposed legislation is headed to the house next.

if the proposal makes it into law, all Michiganders would have to do is email or phone the state’s Department of Natural Resources and “tell ’em you’re taking the deer” or other dead animal, said Sen. Darwin Booher, R-Evart, who sponsored the legislation.

Booher said the proposal is aimed at saving money and taking some of the burden off government employees.

“People should be able to stop and pick up a squirrel or a rabbit and take it home,” Booher told the newspaper. “If it would be a muskrat or a mink ... , they should be able to skin it or, if they know somebody, let them salvage $7 off it, or $20.”

Currently, drivers have first rights on animals they hit with their vehicles. If they don’t want the newly departed, people with hunting licenses and salvage tags they obtain from local police or the DNR can all dibs on dead deer and bear along the highway.

Booher and others think it’s time to make the process less cumbersome and, ahem, cleaner.

All that regulation discourages people from claiming road kill because by the time permission is granted, the roadkill has turned to carrion – something only a vulture or a buzzard wants for dinner.

They like it, though.