for starters go here http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=63378673&blogID=304301088
secondly, anybody else?
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Thank you for pointing that out, Scavanger!
The link will open the page now.
Sucks that those raccoons were murdered by cars, its great that you found them though, and that you are respecting them and making something from them. I would have probably ate them but I know youāre in portland and they say urban animals can be pretty dirty. Are you gonna braintan the pelts?
Generally, if it doesnĆĀ¢Ć¢āĀ¬Ć¢āĀ¢t smell bad it isnĆĀ¢Ć¢āĀ¬Ć¢āĀ¢t. Sick critters look sick.
Blood shot meat (muscle that has pockets of blood running through it) will be the first to go bad but it will not deter your dog. Internal organs tend to stay pretty well in most hits. There is usually always some salvageable meat. ItĆĀ¢Ć¢āĀ¬Ć¢āĀ¢s not hard to pull a deer somewhere where you can work on it without problems with LEO. The carcass from winter critters can stay good for a pretty long time.
In my experiences with roadkill the organs seem to be the first thing to go bad along with deeply bruised meat. Anyway that sure was a prime looking racoon find. Fresh as you could hope for. Delicious.
I found a deer on the side of the road this weekend. As I got close enough to look, the smell nearly knocked me down. He looked young and small, with no spots and tiny nubs where antlers would have sprouted soon. His belly looked bloated and green, dark blood pooled, mostly dry, in his ear, eyeballs had dried, wrinkled, and started to get fuzzy and green. Both right legs had severely broken and one hip looked bloody and badly injuredāpoor guy. Hair pulled out easily. I could see that some carrion eaters had begun work on his face and hip injury.
I felt sad to see what had happened to him, also that I found him so late. I decided at this point to leave him to feed those creatures, who will likely finish him if heās lain there this long and no humans have stopped to either honor and make use of his body or do whatever those āauthoritiesā do. With some guidance, maybe I could have still used his body to learn some skills, maybe not so much the meat. But he lay in the median strip of a busy-ish highway in broad daylight, far from home, and despite his small size I may have faced a messy challenge (his belly looked ready to blow) loading him into the truck by myself, which helped my decision.
Iād appreciate any feedback about what else I could have doneāso Iāll know next time.
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Geez, I think you did right. It doesnāt do any good to have an absolutely awful experience that makes trying again in the future unappealing.
I donāt like telling people what they could or should have done, your experience just reminds me of a story.
My bad. Sorry if I sounded like an a-hole in that last post of mine on this thread. I just get the intuitive feeling that one could have misunderstood my intentions. Ya see, every time I tell people that they could or should or āif they wouldāveā I later feel like a fool, so lately Iāve grown disinterested in giving people coulds, shoulds, and woulds, even telling someone they ācanā makes me feel foolish at times, most of the time a matter of fact.
Anyway, I do have interest in advice giving and story telling, with that said, I hope the following story helps:
Once upon a time, just struck on the head and still warm laid a rock-dove dead in the middle of a busy, well traveled street by a roadkill hit & run, and I saw her. Without a second thought I slowed my gait where I walked on the sidewalks and waited for the street to clear of traffic and people gazes around myself and the bird so that I could go bush while I ran out into the street to carry the bird away from any more collisions. When I brought the dove back to the sidewalk I walked in a way that if anybody looked at what I had in my hand they would only see blur, not the dead neighbor dove. Prior to even walking out to getting the bird out of the street I made plans in my mind on what I would do with the bird. I figured Iād place the bird underneath some shrubs nearby so that I could come back later and harvest the bones or feed the bush and creatures at home there. A small but homey juniper got the honor to watch over the neighbor and I havenāt gone back since.
I heard generally speaking State road cleanup crews do one ta two things with roadkill they incounter. I heard they either black plastic bag them and throw them into landfills or they drag or carry them into nearby forest 20 to 40 feet off road as I similarly did in the story above. In fact, I keep an eye out into bushes, shrubs, and forests as I walk along streets and sidewalks, and this has helped me find various neighbors killed and dragged of the road by roadkill, including one whole possum, a whole deer, and several partial cats and birds.
Yeah, ācoulda shoulda wouldaā is a problematic way of seeing things. Iām not sure if itās appropriate in some situations, or never appropriate.
Even if itās bloated and stinky I will often take roadkills off to the side a ways so that the scavengers that come wonāt end up as roadkill while they are cleaning up the carcass.
your compassion is inspiring! :o
I think also they cover the animal in Lime, or some sort of white stuffā¦ to help it decompose? Has anyone seen that?
if you find old roadkill you can usually scavenge some meat and hide (especially larger animals like deer). check to see if there are digestive juices coming from the abdomen (discolorations on skin). if there are and it seems like some organs may be ruptured or if you think there is shit spread down a leg or in the abdominal cavity there are a couple options.
what i usually do is start taking the hide off, but i do not puncture in to the abdominal cavity. iāll start by skinning and then cutting off the uncontaminated meat (front legs, back straps, back legs, etc) and then iāll open up the abdomen and check out the situation. that way i can usually contain any shit or digestive juices. if the animal looks good iāll just butcher it normally, though.
just b/c meat has gastric juices on it does not mean you canāt eat it, though. just keep in mind it will go off quicker and that youāll probably want to cook that meat.