SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) - Right now Montana lawmakers are debating a bill making it legal for people to salvage meat from road kill on the side of the road. In Utah, it already is.
Every day Josee Seamons picks up road kill.
Seamons said, "I go get my list and then pick and area that needs to be focused on."
Seamons works as a nuisance technician for Utah's Department of Natural Resources. His job is to clean up Utah's roads of road kill.
Josee logs hundreds of miles inside his truck, driving around the valley to specific locations picking up the carcases.
Once he finds one, Josee puts on rubber gloves and gets the animal into the truck.
This work has the potential to be very messy. Josee said, "Blood, guts, and the smell is probably the worst."
But despite the gore, people here in Utah want and can take the dead animals home.
DNR has a program set up, providing the paper work making it legal for people to take the carcasses and do whatever they want with them. Usually it's to eat.
But DNR will only donate the meat if the animal is in decent condition.
Josee said, "Freshness is the biggest thing, if it is old and nasty we don't want to give it to somebody."
Not every carcass can be donated, the ones that can't go home are taken and buried at the dump.
Besides the clean up, DNR also tracks the animals and where they are killed. This information has helped in developing ways to prevent accidents killing Utah's game animals.
