The Ultimate Guide to Eating and Donating Roadkill

Jess Johnson heard the crash before she saw it, and she knew exactly what the sound meant: Yet another vehicle careening down the highway in front of her house had hit a whitetail deer. So Johnson and her friends, who had just lit their grill for a summer barbecue, went out to the highway. They found a truck with a smashed bumper and a dead whitetail with a crushed shoulder lying nearby.

After checking to make sure the driver and passengers were fine (they were shaken but unharmed), Johnson asked if they wanted the deer. The crew declined, so Johnson and her friends reported the roadkill on the state’s new 511 app and dragged it a few hundred yards back to her house in the fading evening light.

Then they sliced out the backstraps, placed them on the lit grill, and continued their evening barbecue — with a side of field dressing and butchering.

Related: The Best Venison Backstrap Recipes

“I [usually] have a very awkward conversation, something like, ‘So, you going to do anything with that?’” she says. “Any deer that has been a full-grown adult I’ve gotten some meat off of.”

A decade ago, saving that venison would have been against the law. But in 2019, Wyoming lawmakers made it legal to recover roadkill.

Eating animals killed by cars and trucks used to be the purview of redneck jokes and the state of Alaska (more on this in a minute). Almost no one in the Lower 48 harvested roadkill, which was considered disgusting at best and potentially poaching at worst, given that it was outlawed in most states. But many states are now greenlighting the practice, something people like Johnson say is the only silver lining in an endemic problem affecting both wildlife and travelers across the country.

But just because many states allow people to pick up roadkill doesn’t mean it’s that simple everywhere. Some states, like Louisiana and Texas, still don’t allow the practice. Most states, including Wyoming, have their own regulatory idiosyncrasies based on everything from geography to culture. So before you decide to drag a carcass off the highway and into your truck, here’s what you should know.

Is Roadkill Actually Safe to Eat?

Under ideal circumstances, roadkill is definitely safe to eat. It all depends on the condition of the specific animal you want to salvage. When people like Johnson, or chefs at the West Virginia RoadKill Cookoff, talk about eating roadkill, they’re not encouraging someone to pick up a bloated deer that’s been baking in 80-degree sunshine. Most aren’t even advocating picking up roadkill that you or someone you know didn’t see die.

For Johnson, a government affairs specialist with the Wyoming Wildlife Federation and longtime hunter, the idea behind harvesting roadkill was to give a driver or a bystander the opportunity to salvage some meat.

“I’m not really someone who would see a carcass and pull over,” Johnson says. “I would never harvest one of those.”

As any hunter knows, a dead animal can spoil fast. The process is often even faster if the animal suffered major trauma — like smashing into the front bumper of an F150 traveling at 65 mph. It’s one of the reasons why Wyoming doesn’t allow harvesting roadkill along interstate highways. Speed limits on major Wyoming interstates top 80 mph, turning most wildlife into “red mist” upon impact. Lawmakers also feared for human safety if people stopped to try and collect a dead animal on a busy, four-lane highway.

But if you hit an animal, or see one struck, and the vehicle impacted just part of the animal (especially its head), it’s worth checking out.

“You can hit a deer in a way that there’s nothing left on it that’s good [to keep], and you can hit a deer in a way where it’s almost like [a] head shot,” Johnson says. “You want to be concerned about the midsection of the deer, the guts, and how stirred up they’ve gotten. If it feels slushy in the shoulder and the hip, as far as bones, that’s probably not a good sign.”

Do Many People Really Harvest and Eat Roadkill?

Aside from Johnson, who once served a roast from a road-killed deer at a sportsman’s forum at the Wyoming state Capitol, plenty of Americans also collect roadkill for the dinner table. While statewide statistics aren’t always easy to track down, about 500 of the 750 to 900 moose killed on Alaskan roads each year are “salvaged in some way,” according to Capt. Brent Johnson, Alaska Wildlife Trooper’s Northern Detachment commander.

The state also allows people to collect caribou struck on roads around the state. In total, Alaskans collect and distribute about 20,000 pounds of game meat killed on roads each year. If an animal was killed by a larger vehicle, like a tractor trailer, and isn’t as fit for human consumption, the meat can also be given to trappers or mushers with dog teams, though both of those are less common scenarios.

But Capt. Johnson also notes that roadkill in Alaska and roadkill in, say, Georgia, are not the same thing. Most animals killed and collected on Alaska’s roads are big-bodied moose, and the bulk of them are killed in late fall and early winter when cold temperatures preserve the meat for longer.

Know Your State’s Regulations Before Salvaging Roadkill

Look up the regulations in any given state and the answer to “Can I harvest roadkill?” may well be some version of “Yes, but…” Take Alaska. The Last Frontier was one of the first to allow roadkill harvest, but it’s actually illegal to load up a dead animal and take it home for yourself. Roadkill can only be collected by someone on the state’s charity list after they’re notified by the state. So just because you hit a big-game animal doesn’t mean you’ll be the one who gets to eat it.

“Early on in statehood, they said the resources of the state of Alaska belong to all people, and that includes wildlife,” he says. Plus, few drivers who hit a 1,500-pound moose are thinking about grinding it into burger. Most are calling for a tow.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife not only allows residents to collect roadkill, but in some areas also manages a donation list like Alaska’s. When an animal is hit, a wildlife officer calls the first person on the donation list to come collect the animal.

Do You Need Permission to Collect Roadkill?

Of the states that allow individuals to collect roadkill, many require some kind of permission slip from either the state game agency or Department of Transportation. Some are as simple as Wyoming’s, whose DOT 511 app allows drivers to check road conditions — and collect the permission slip for roadkill. It even works when, as is the case across vast portions of the state, there’s no cell service.

The form also allows the Wyoming Game and Fish Department to keep track of how many animals people are harvesting from roadsides. And it provides wildlife officials with data on locations of roadkill deer, elk, and antelope to potentially target those areas later for wildlife crossing structures.

While anyone can pick up roadkill in Colorado, the state requires a roadkill collection permit be filed within 48 hours of harvesting an animal. The Missouri DOT also lets residents salvage deer struck by vehicles as long as they have written permission (which is free) from the Missouri Department of Conservation.

Minnesota changed its laws in 1987 to allow Department of Natural Resources officers to issue 6-month permits to state and local authorities that give drivers the ability to claim a dead critter, free of charge. Those carcasses can also be given away or donated to an organization.

Is it Legal to Dispatch a Suffering Animal?

In most states, no, it’s not legal to dispatch suffering wildlife without authorization. When authors of the Wyoming roadkill collection bill debated that portion, Johnson says some lawmakers worried that allowing someone to legally dispatch a suffering animal could lead to poaching.

The same goes for Alaska, but Capt. Johnson said wardens have “great discretion in this area.”

“In the rare circumstance that a passerby puts a wounded and suffering animal down we have never levied any charges,” he says. “More frequently a Trooper may verbally give a person permission to do this if the Trooper is unable to respond to the area in a reasonable time frame, taking into account the location and if it’s safe to discharge a firearm or not.”

Wardens in most states will likely offer the same grace if the person with a smashed bumper puts a deer with crushed hind quarters out of its misery.

Can You Donate Roadkill?

Alaska’s program originated from the idea that roadkill would go to charities, but the program has changed over the years, and now the list is largely individuals and not just charities. But not all states allow roadkill to be donated, and not all organizations accept it.

Minnesota’s wild-game donation program accepts meat from legally harvested game animals while specifically stating it will not accept donations of roadkill animals. Donating roadkill is specifically illegal in Wyoming and other states largely due to food safety concerns.

Related: The Key to Solving Big-Game Migration Conflicts? Roadkill

Jess Johnson hopes more states allowing people to collect roadkill helps reduce the general ick it often inspires.

“As a hunter, I’m looking at this like, ‘There’s a lot of salvageable meat on this, and that’s a food item,’” she says. “At least having a silver lining come from a tragedy of a wildlife collision is nice.”