Driving through northern Idaho this
summer? Bring a fork.
A judge in Bonners Ferry recently
stood up for the right of people to eat roadkill that even other
roadkill fanciers might find inedible. It sounds like one of those
jokes bluegrass musicians tell: “How many banjo players does it
take to eat a possum?” The answer: “Two: One to eat and one to
watch for cars.”
Cliff Kramer was charged with illegal
possession of a big game animal after game wardens found shredded
moose in his freezers. In his 16-page ruling, District Court Judge
Justin Julian scoffed at the charge: “So, does the salvage of meat
no one else wanted render Kramer worthy of further prosecution?
This court thinks not.”
Fire up the banjos! When John
McPhee wrote Travels in Georgia, roadkill seemed
to be on the menu every other page. It came across as natural and
free and as American as dulcimers. Has the world changed so much
that even in thinly populated Boundary County, Idaho, you have to
fight the government to eat your moose?
Kramer, who runs
a resort on the Moyie River, did it the other way around. He ate
the moose first; then he fought undercover Fish and Game agents
investigating rumors of roadkill specials. Unlike the characters in
McPhee’s essay, Kramer wasn’t just choking down the odd
squirrel or turtle. This was a moose. And he has a lunch counter.
Kramer has insisted for the last year that he only wanted
to bury a big carcass on a hot weekend, but because he’s
North Idahoan to his core, he decided he couldn’t waste meat
that looked fine to him. He insists he only lit a bonfire, then
hollered for friends and neighbors to join him for an impromptu
Moose Festival.
But then, as Kramer’s attorney Fred
Gabourie says, “Somehow the rumor mill cranked up,” spurring
undercover agents to go looking for mystery meat.
Judge
Julian seemed to have a queasy moment at this point, adding a
footnote to his decision: “The court expresses no opinion on the
wisdom of eating meat that may have been gleaned from a carcass
that was run over multiple times by large trucks and left lying on
asphalt for approximately 16 hours in temperatures exceeding 80
degrees.”
Idaho State Police Trooper Brian Zimmerman says
he got to the moose a few hours before Kramer did. “It was already
getting tight,” Zimmerman said. “Bloaty tight. It was horrible.”
The carcass was largely hairless, and at first, the
trooper thought the moose had died from some terrible disease. But
as he tried to tug and roll the 800- to 900-pound carcass, he saw
skid marks and abrasions, indicating that the moose was dragged
under a truck, losing a fair amount of hide along the way.
In Idaho’s northern counties, where jobs and money
are scarce, people get by on pluck and stubbornness. Volunteers for
gleaner programs jump out of bed at any hour and drive 40 miles in
any weather to reach a road-killed game animal. They butcher it
quickly and give the meat to food banks and churches.
But
the moose looked so bad, Zimmerman left it for the highway crews.
“I salvage whatever I can, but I wouldn’t even dream of
eating anything like this,” he said.
Kramer did, and the
judge backed him up, saying the county’s prosecution smelled
worse than the moose probably did. “Kramer is ‘guilty’
of being a good Samaritan by using his heavy equipment to scrape up
a pulverized moose to bury it before it decomposed on the side of
Highway 95,” the judge said. “Kramer then became
‘guilty’ of salvaging a relatively small portion of
meat that very few others would have considered edible.”
After Julian tossed the charges, Kramer asked game wardens to give
him back the 300 pounds of frozen, shredded, confiscated moose.
He’s planned a second anniversary Moose Festival with a live
band.
No one could find the meat. The owner of the meat
locker in Bonners Ferry thinks his workers figured the moose was
spoiled, didn’t see the evidence tag and tossed it into the
landfill.
So now Kramer is suing the state. He filed a
tort claim against the Idaho Department of Fish and Game this June,
signaling his intent to seek more than $10,000.
“How do
you put a value on moose meat?” Kramer’s attorney Gabourie
asked with a straight face. “You can’t buy it.” Trooper
Zimmerman groaned: “He got it for free.”
Thanks to a
judge with an iron constitution, this is still the land of the
free… lunch. So as Independence Day approaches, come drive in
northern Idaho. You never know when you’ll run into a little
slice of freedom. And don’t forget a fork.
Kevin Taylor is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a
service of High Country News (hcn.org). He works in Coeur
D’Alene for the Spokane (Washington)
Spokesman-Review’s north Idaho
bureau.
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