Each year, the state of Utah issues hundreds of thousands of hunting and fishing permits allowing the harvest of millions of pounds of game meat.
The state relies on hunting for the management of many species, but when the efforts of private citizens fall short, state and federal officials step in to either relocate or kill what they determine as problem animals. To avoid a conflict of interest, wildlife managers and their immediate families are not allowed to keep those animal remains – so what happens to meat when the hunter can’t take it home?
Cody Evans, landowner specialist with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, said the answer to that question is simple: you give it away to any interested families or individuals nearby.
“We try to donate every piece of meat that we can,” Evans said. “We call around and make sure that we’ve got people to donate the meat to, and if we only have three people we’re going to donate to that night then we only shoot three deer. It’s a really good program to get meat out to people and to not waste the resource.”
In fact, the state wildlife agency manages a game meat donation program that allows residents to sign up and receive meat from wild game that are euthanized or poached. Donations are distributed on a first-come, first-serve basis tied to the sign-up date and proximity to the location of the hunt.
“We do it for a couple different reasons: to help protect agricultural land and to reduce the population of resident deer herds,” Evans said. “Residential deer don’t migrate. They’re born or reside in city limits or agricultural fields, so they’re not huntable and they do more damage than they help an area.”
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This article is published through the Utah News Collaborative, a partnership of news organizations in Utah that aims to inform readers across the state.
from The Salt Lake Tribune https://ift.tt/3HigwV3
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