Winterkill Ethics????? I have a dilemma..UPDATE WITH PHOTOS
So........................it has been a really bad winter here in Idaho and I have never been around a large winterkill before this year.
Like most of you, I always look and keep track of wildlife throughout the year and I know that it is part of nature but man, it has been really disheartening watching the deer and the elk die.
Recently we have been getting rain and warmer weather so a lot of the slopes now are getting bare. This one area where about 30 head of elk had been hanging around, is now bare and today I spotted a brown spot up on the hill which looked like an elk. I got out the old truck binos and sure enough, its a dead bull elk. I got to looking around the hillside and man, it was sick. It is littered with dead elk and they are just lying there dead from starvation.
So, my dilemma is--------do I leave them as is or do I go and harvest some horns and ivories??? Now, most of you don't know anything about me but I live by what is right and wrong and man, this just kind of seems wrong. It is totally legal here in Idaho to possess game parts if it was natural which this obviously is so it boils down to???? I ran this by a couple of buddies whose opinions I respect and they feel the same way but one of them said, "what would you do if you just came across a dead elk while you were out hiking?" And I would take what I could in that scenario but this just seems different to me.
Now, others will also eventually see this and I know that if I don't do it, someone else will but that doesn't really matter to me---how I feel is what matters. I figure I have about a day to decide what I should do.
What would YOU all do?
Randy
So........................it has been a really bad winter here in Idaho and I have never been around a large winterkill before this year.
Like most of you, I always look and keep track of wildlife throughout the year and I know that it is part of nature but man, it has been really disheartening watching the deer and the elk die.
Recently we have been getting rain and warmer weather so a lot of the slopes now are getting bare. This one area where about 30 head of elk had been hanging around, is now bare and today I spotted a brown spot up on the hill which looked like an elk. I got out the old truck binos and sure enough, its a dead bull elk. I got to looking around the hillside and man, it was sick. It is littered with dead elk and they are just lying there dead from starvation.
So, my dilemma is--------do I leave them as is or do I go and harvest some horns and ivories??? Now, most of you don't know anything about me but I live by what is right and wrong and man, this just kind of seems wrong. It is totally legal here in Idaho to possess game parts if it was natural which this obviously is so it boils down to???? I ran this by a couple of buddies whose opinions I respect and they feel the same way but one of them said, "what would you do if you just came across a dead elk while you were out hiking?" And I would take what I could in that scenario but this just seems different to me.
Now, others will also eventually see this and I know that if I don't do it, someone else will but that doesn't really matter to me---how I feel is what matters. I figure I have about a day to decide what I should do.
What would YOU all do?
Randy
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