Kinda nice Blacktail dead head I picked up this year

[Roperfive88]

Would the new salvage law allow for picking up year old road kill?

 The law requires you to turn in the horns of a salvaged deer or elk.

No it doesn't.

You are correct. When the law first came out I thought I read some where that you did. After reading again you can keep them.

[predatorpro]

Would the new salvage law allow for picking up year old road kill?

I know someone will push the law eventually and screw up a good thing

Is using a salvage tag for an old deer make you a bad person or something?

[tjthebest]

Would the new salvage law allow for picking up year old road kill?

I know someone will push the law eventually and screw up a good thing

Is using a salvage tag for an old deer make you a bad person or something?

Not legal to use a salvage permit on a dead head found in the woods. i found a HUGE 6x6 elk head in the woods and i called WDFW olympia and talked to 3 different people, inlcuding the head warden in my district, and they all said that you cannot use the salvage permit on a dead head. The WAC reads pretty clear on it as well. Its a shame.

[h20hunter]

Two posts removed.

Keep it civil and not personal.

[Buckmark]

Wonder if you can keep a dead head you find on your own private property if you dont remove it from the property?

[KFhunter]

Wonder if you can keep a dead head you find on your own private property if you dont remove it from the property?

That's about the same as finding it "in Idaho", it's a stupid law and very difficult to enforce.

As we all know tags are suppose to stay with the meat, in the freezer.  I've got dead heads all around the property stuck in various red ant hills.
Whatever enforcement value there used to be with dead heads is gone.

I'm sorry Hoythunter doesn't under stand where I'm coming from or thinks I'm just being "cute" or whatever he thinks from his high horse I don't care. 
Picking up a dead head is illegal in WA but it's done all the time and I could care less, it doesn't help catch poachers.  I can almost understand big horn sheep heads but I still think we should be able to pick those up and have them pinned.  It's ridiculous.

[Odell]

Would the new salvage law allow for picking up year old road kill?

I know someone will push the law eventually and screw up a good thing

Is using a salvage tag for an old deer make you a bad person or something?

Not legal to use a salvage permit on a dead head found in the woods. i found a HUGE 6x6 elk head in the woods and i called WDFW olympia and talked to 3 different people, inlcuding the head warden in my district, and they all said that you cannot use the salvage permit on a dead head. The WAC reads pretty clear on it as well. Its a shame.

Must drive you nuts picturing it rotting in the woods. Send me the coordinates and I'll put your mind at ease.


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[millerwheeler]

What if it doesn't have antlers  like cow elk, doe, bear , cougar , coyote , wolf , etc??? Curios

[dreamunelk]

Same as a buck.

[300UltraMagShooter]

This post is exhibit A in the argument against so many dang laws.  There are just way too many to keep up with. 

Everyone here is a criminal... only difference between everyone is some haven't been charged with something yet.

I wish I could remember the name of that book I read many years back about the out of control legal system in America.  It's insane.

[JDHasty]

This post is exhibit A in the argument against so many dang laws.  There are just way too many to keep up with. 

Everyone here is a criminal... only difference between everyone is some haven't been charged with something yet.

I wish I could remember the name of that book I read many years back about the out of control legal system in America.  It's insane.

I suspect that I had the opportunity to know that I could not do what I did, but don't remember ever seeing that specific law.  And here is what is most telling to me, my Game Regs is read from cover to cover with a highlighter in my teeth so that I can grab it and highlight anything I am not intimately familiar with.  In fact my Game Regs has been "Exhibit A" for what hunter Ed students' Game Regs should look like due to how dog eared and marked up it always is.  I read it, mark it up and reread it every year. 

As for picking up that head, my Tribal friends will show me the monster they hunted for three years... that always eluded them... and then winter got him.  Did I say the Tribal members I know know their land like their own front room?  Yep, I did.  And that is because they are out there all the time scouting, and with their families, and they pick up dead heads legally. 

I think it is safe to say that everyone knows you cannot pick up a sheep skull, unless you are a Tribal member, and you cannot pick up eagle feathers either... but it never occurred to me that deer and elk were also included in what a person cannot pickup in the field.  This is only the second dead head I have caried out of the woods, the first one was a pretty nice, but not spectacular three point that an acquaintance had shot with a 357 Maximum Ruger Single Action revolver that had jumped up and ran off as he approached it with tag in hand.  That one was in nice condition and I left it with the property owner who delivered it a very appreciative hunter who was overjoyed that I stumbled across it.  No more of that for me either now that I know, you do the math. 

Unless a person has some inkling, what would motivate them to go digging through the RCW to find out?  Or even to look at the FAQs on WDFWs site to get an answer. 

Bottom line there most certainly was no criminal intent involved what so ever, and if someone wants to make the case that I did not do due my diligence... I would just have to say that in my mind, I can say with a clear conscience, that I believe that I have always gone out of my way to know what the Controlling Legal Authority is.

It's not a big deal to me that others took the opportunity to set me straight in their own way, it's all in good fun here, and I am perfectly comfortable being used as an example that will sink in and resonate with others, and that is what I am willing to accept as what all who posted on this topic were doing.

     

[Boss .300 winmag]

Same as a buck.

Prove it.

[pcal]

I have a huge pile of racks (over 30)that I tagged since 1979 here in washington.My two sons have contrbuted to the pile,too.I have a  # of skulls with horns attached sans tags so how could the law prove that I didnt legally put them in the pile? I used to skin out the heads and let them weather on top of one of my sheds in my back yard so they show as a natural rather than a bleached mount.I did cut the skulls of our 2 deer but the racks were small 4x4&3x2.My point is:Don't talk too much about what you harvested,where or whern you did it.I learned that you always come out with game as if you were poaching because there are few wardens that are hunters in this state and an honest mistake.will cost you dearly.

[JDHasty]

I have a huge pile of racks (over 30)that I tagged since 1979 here in washington.My two sons have contrbuted to the pile,too.I have a  # of skulls with horns attached sans tags so how could the law prove that I didnt legally put them in the pile? I used to skin out the heads and let them weather on top of one of my sheds in my back yard so they show as a natural rather than a bleached mount.I did cut the skulls of our 2 deer but the racks were small 4x4&3x2.My point is:Don't talk too much about what you harvested,where or whern you did it.I learned that you always come out with game as if you were poaching because there are few wardens that are hunters in this state and an honest mistake.will cost you dearly.

My kids have a pile of skulls with antlers on them and after we ate the meat it never occurred to retain those tags.  Hell, I had the skulls laying under the tree while the meat was at the butcher and in those cases the case could be made...  I also normally have a deer hide tanned with hair on, pert near every year, and some of them have passed into possession of friends and relatives and there is no longer a tag that can be associated with them. 

What concerns me is: Where does this end?  Today I don't know, and what if we have hair on deer hides laying around our house, one or more of the kids will frequently be buried under a pile of deer hides, beaver skins, coon skins, coyote hides, bear rugs, and maybe a bobcat or two thrown into the mix with only their head sticking out while they are watching Pepper Pig or Dora Explorer videos.  The cats are sealed, but the rest... if I needed the tags I couldn't stand and deliver if I wanted to.

I am fairly confident that the kids and I made an Indian drum made out of rawhide from a deer I shot has been made 100% "legal," without any tag.  But what about the rawhide skin laying in the basement next to an Indian drum hoop that I picked up last month from the tannery?  Should I just "self report" and insist that WDFW agents charge me with possessing it without the 2014 tag that belongs to it in order to have a "test case" go through the system, and take it before a jury of my peers in order to set legal precedence that at some point along the way that the tag retention requirement has become so onerous that it is just not reasonable to expect that it can be complied with?

At this point, I just don't know.  I'm all about giving law enforcement the tools they need to charge offenders who are deliberately and systematically poaching the game animals that belong to us as residents of the State of Washington.  But, my God, at some point the net becomes so all encompassing that it "catches" people who are trying to stay well within the law just because they have no way of knowing what the law is unless they make a career of studying all of it's intricacies.   

     

[Hoythunter]

Wonder if you can keep a dead head you find on your own private property if you dont remove it from the property?

That's about the same as finding it "in Idaho", it's a stupid law and very difficult to enforce.

As we all know tags are suppose to stay with the meat, in the freezer.  I've got dead heads all around the property stuck in various red ant hills.
Whatever enforcement value there used to be with dead heads is gone.

I'm sorry Hoythunter doesn't under stand where I'm coming from or thinks I'm just being "cute" or whatever he thinks from his high horse I don't care. 
Picking up a dead head is illegal in WA but it's done all the time and I could care less, it doesn't help catch poachers.  I can almost understand big horn sheep heads but I still think we should be able to pick those up and have them pinned.  It's ridiculous.

Get real, your reply was "where did you find a BT in Idaho?"  But then again, you don't care, right?  another fly over post.  Get to the point already.  Your posts swing from both sides of the plate.  If you could care less you would've never allocated he's doing something illegal, as you did.  Don't usually bite but I did.  Damn, time to get back up on my horse.