Idaho Food Bank Distributes Roadkill

[flashl]

COEUR D'ALENE, IDAHO -- A food bank in Idaho is using roadkill to feed those in need, and it is legal.

Volunteers are pulling wild game off the roadways -- including moose and deer -- that have been hit by cars and giving the meat to the Post Falls Food Bank in Coeur D'Alene to distribute to needy families.

Kathy Larson, the food bank manager, said they don't have enough money to buy the meat on their own.

"Meat is expensive, we only have a little budget and if we use our budget to buy meat then we don't have money for peanut butter, canned fruit things like that," Larson said.

Idaho - News 13

[cliffordu]

1. Welcome to the future....

At least you won't get mad cow from vension....

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. No, they would get mad deer instead

[LeftyMom]

5. Deer have their own prion disease, chronic wasting disease

It's actually much more widespread than BSE.

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. On the one hand that seems very resourceful, but on the other it's a darned shame that

there isn't more funding backing up this food bank.

[caseycoon]

4. In many states roadkill is given to the poor.

As long as it's fresh, of course. They pick it up, clean the carcass, butcher & distribute. Not much different than a hunter eating the game he/she has killed. They don't do the totally squashed little critters.

[ConcernedCanuk]

9. Your comment brought to mind the song "Dead skunk in the middle of the road"

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Up here in Northern Ontario, road kill of the Moose and Deer kind is not uncommon.

I live in a small community of 2500, and when a moose or deer is killed on the road,

The person can keep the animal and use it for food, pelt for clothing, bones/antlers for tools whatever.

If a moose or deer is found left behind, our police will usually contact a number of individuals to see if they will pick it up for them.

Saves the taxpayer cost of cleanup, and the animal is removed by said citizen and usually quickly butchered and frozen.

I only hit one animal, a deer, that died instantly - I stopped and dragged it off the road, deer only weighed about 150 pounds - but didn't know at the time I could keep the animal. I reported the incident and location to an OPP office about 1/2 hour away - as I was traveling through.

The OPP informed me that I could go retrieve the animal, but I was on my way to a job site, and just didn't have the time.

Someone else may have benefited from the animal, I do not know.

But using the meat for the poor is a great idea IMO.

Maybe I can nudge our local butchers in this direction, as I know as a recipient from our one and only local food bank - real meat is non-existent.

All I ever get in the meat category is hot-dogs and baloney.

Venison and moose would be a great diet change.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

6. Lemme tell you...

Someone once gave my mother 10 lbs of Ground Moose. She made spiced meatballs with italian sauce and peppers and took them to a show by her "sons" in the band "Blackfoot", when they played at the Capitol Theater in Passaic NJ. 10 lbs of meatballs. She was in the dressing room when an Epic Records Company rep was digging into a teetering pile of them. My mother, a sweet-natured woman with Souther manners and ways, walked up to him and asked him how he liked them. He said they were the best meatballs he ever had. She sweetly told him they were moose.

He blanched, his mouth fell open, he shrugged and he went back to demolishing the meatballs. He had seconds.

Moose is dayum good. Bear Stroganoff rocks.

[cutlassmama]

7. Does it taste gamey?

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

8. Moose? Not at all.

I would suggest you do a little research on what the Moose eats in the wild.

[slampoet]

10. In Michigan when poachers get caught with too many, the carcass is given to the poor.

I think with roadkill the driver has claim but if they don't want it the poor get it.

[shrike]

11. Depends on how old the roadkill is

DH picked up a small buck that was so fresh, it was still warm. Somebody must have hit it and drove on.

He brought it home, dressed it -- he hunted for years -- and we ate every bit of it over time. As for the question about gamey taste, the deer in our area are corn-fed (lots of fields). Doesn't taste that much different than beef, at least to me.

I've tasted a lot of wild game, and the only thing I didn't like was wild boar. Caribou was delicious.