Man threatens suit over missing road-kill moose
The bull moose had been freshly grilled, so to speak, by the front end of a tractor-trailer, tenderized by passing 18-wheelers and then marinated in its own juices on U.S. Highway 95 a few miles south of Canada.
Yes, this is a story about road kill. Big road kill on a hot day.
It’s also a story about undercover agents bravely ordering a suspicious lunch at a rural resort near North Idaho’s Moyie River in order to run down evidence that would show the road-kill moose was being sold to unsuspecting diners.
No such evidence was mentioned in a 16-page decision in which a Boundary County judge tossed out the state’s case against Feist Creek Resort owner Cliff Kramer, saying it was perfectly legal to salvage road kill that no one else wanted. What began almost exactly a year ago as an investigation into mystery meat has suddenly become a mystery of missing meat and now it’s Kramer’s turn to point fingers.
Kramer last week filed a tort claim, signaling his intent to sue the Idaho Department of Fish and Game for more than $10,000. It seems that after Boundary County 1st District Court Judge Justin Julian dismissed misdemeanor charges against him, Kramer demanded a state wildlife agent return his estimated 300 pounds of frozen, shredded, confiscated moose only to be told the meat can’t be found.
“How do you put a value on moose meat? You can’t buy it,” said Fred Gabourie, a Post Falls attorney who represented Kramer.
“He got it for free,” said Idaho State Police Trooper Brian Zimmerman, astonished to learn Kramer was pursuing the return of potentially spoiled missing moose meat. “Why would he want that garbage back?”
The Case of the Splattered Moose began June 12, 2003, when people living just south of the Canadian border remember hearing the horrific crash between truck and animal sometime around 10 p.m.
While on patrol the next day, Zimmerman was dispatched to check on a possible traffic hazard about 1 p.m., he said. He found a young bull moose dead on the pavement by the side of the highway. Zimmerman attempted to roll the 800- or 900-pound carcass farther off the road.
“It was already getting tight. Bloaty tight,” he said. “It was horrible.” It was largely hairless and at first Zimmerman thought the moose died of some terrible disease until, as he rolled it, he noticed skid marks and abrasions where the moose had apparently been dragged some distance under a truck, losing much of its hide.
“I salvage whatever I can,” Zimmerman said, citing active gleaner programs in the northern counties that supply road-killed wild game to food banks and churches. But “I wouldn’t even dream of eating anything like this.” So he left it. “And it was 4 or 5 (p.m.) when Cliff came and picked it up.”
Kramer said one of his workers nearly hit the moose on her way home from work early that morning and he went out with a front-end loader just to get the carcass out of the road. He took it to his property a few miles down U.S. 95, dug a pit and buried it. But on closer inspection, Kramer saw that meat on the hindquarters appeared to be still edible, so he butchered that part of the carcass.
The moose didn’t look as bad to him as it did to Zimmerman, Kramer said. So he dug a second pit for a barbecue, lit a bonfire and invited friends and neighbors down for an impromptu Moose Festival, he said.
“Somehow the rumor mill cranked up . . .,” attorney Gabourie said.
By June 20, just a week after the carcass was dragged off and buried, Fish and Game Agent Greg Johnson had already received three anonymous tips that, his report says, Kramer was selling the road kill as lunch. Johnson, based in Bonners Ferry, said Wednesday the threat of the lawsuit prevented him from speaking freely.
“We had a reason to go there. That’s all I can tell you at this point,” Johnson said.
Two Fish and Game agents from other districts went to the resort on June 20 in civilian clothes and ordered the “shredded beef” sandwich, suspected of being moose meat, their reports say.
Judge Julian seemed to have a queasy moment at this point, adding this 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.”
The agents didn’t clean their plates, saving some for forensic analysis. The meat was almost certainly beef, their reports say.
“No. It was pork,” Kramer said. “We don’t have shredded beef. If they ordered a sandwich, it was pork.”
After lunch, they met Johnson nearby, changed into uniforms and went back to the resort to question Kramer, who gave them permission to search freezers on the property. Agents found no moose meat in the restaurant, their reports say, but did find the moose in freezers in Kramer’s living quarters and on an outside deck.
Kramer was charged with unlawful possession of a big game animal. But Julian, noting Zimmerman had already concluded the meat to be inedible, said it’s no crime for Kramer to haul off a carcass nobody else wants.
Kramer, in the Fish and Game reports, insisted he kept the meat for friends, charged no one to eat it, and was only doing his duty as an Idaho citizen by preventing the waste of edible wild meat.
Julian largely agreed.
In his decision, the judge wrote that he does not fault Fish and Game for aggressively running down the tips and rumors. The judge took county prosecutors to task.
“The Court must ask itself what Kramer did to merit … prosecution. 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. Kramer then became ‘guilty’ of salvaging a relatively small portion of meat that very few others would have considered edible,” the judge wrote.
Julian scoffed at prosecution attempts to treat the possession of road kill with statutes intended to address poaching. That’s like saying “driving a motor vehicle on any city street between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. shall be prima facie evidence of DUI.”
Gabourie said it’s outrageous that Johnson, who accused his client of illegally possessing the meat, apparently allowed it to spoil before he could transfer the confiscated moose to a Bonners Ferry meat storage locker. The owner of the business was unable to find the moose meat when Kramer asked for it back, and wrote a note saying workers may have thought the meat was spoiled and that it was most likely taken to the landfill during routine cleaning.
Kramer had planned to serve the meat at a second-anniversary Moose Festival June 19 at Feist Creek, and has already hired a band. The event will be potluck.