fbpx

FWP Chair Gets Warning for Deer Hit with His Car

By Beacon Staff

HELENA — The chairman of the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks commission — which is responsible for setting hunting regulations — received a warning recently after tagging a deer he hit with his car.

Bob Ream was on his way to hunt deer in north-central Montana before sunrise on Nov. 12 when a deer jumped in front of his 2000 Subaru Forester. The deer was dead, but only the carcass of its hind quarter was damaged, so Ream tagged it and took it home for processing, the Independent Record reported Tuesday.

Ream didn’t find out his actions were illegal until he mentioned it while talking to a game warden about another topic.

“I grew up in Wisconsin and Minnesota, where when you hit a deer you just call the warden and I think you gave them $5 and they gave you a tag at any time of the year,” Ream told the newspaper. “In 26 other states, they have provisions for salvaging road kill. We don’t have that here; in fact, quite the opposite. But I assumed I could tag it.”

Jim Kropp, chief of law enforcement for FWP, said Montana statutes limit hunting to firearms and archery during set seasons and times of day. The laws don’t go into detail about what’s an illegal take because it would be too difficult to define all the various unlawful scenarios, Kropp said.

In 31 years of law enforcement, Kropp said he hasn’t run across a situation like Ream’s very often, usually because the deer was not salvageable after they had been hit by a vehicle.

“More often we get calls from people who want to cut off antlers or the claws of black bears (killed by vehicles), and you simply can’t do that,” Kropp said. “But the only way to possess them legally is to harvest them legally with a license.”

Ream said the issue goes back to a 1984 legal opinion from a FWP staff attorney. He said he may bring up the issue at the Dec. 8 commission meeting to see if they can somehow clarify the regulations so that others don’t make the same mistake he did.

“I grew up learning not to waste game,” he said. “The food bank benefited out of this, so 90 percent of it was good. I think this may be a gray area that we may need to look into further and at the very least put into the regulations.”

Ream said his car was totaled after suffering $5,000 in damage. He wasn’t injured.