Man wants to get roadkill moose meat back

Cliff Kramer wants his roadkill back.

Kramer, the owner of the Feist Creek Resort who was accused, and then cleared, of possessing big game without a permit, says he wants the fish and game officer who seized his moose meat charged with a crime.

He says he lost an estimated $10,000 in moose meat that he’d reaped from the roadside on U.S. Highway 95 a few miles south of the Canadian border. Kramer’s attorney is asking the Boundary County Prosecutor’s Office to file misdemeanor charges against the game officer who seized the meat, which was later lost.

Kramer says he wants to be reimbursed, but he’s more concerned about the principle behind the lost meat. If any of his meat still exists, it should be given back to him, he said.

The prosecutor’s office wouldn’t comment on the request Monday. But the game officer, Greg Johnson, says he took much less meat than Kramer estimates and that it was rotten to begin with.

In June 2003, Kramer was charged for unlawful possession of a big game animal he had hauled from the highway after one of his employees nearly rolled her Mustang when swerving to avoid it.

The bull moose had been smashed by a semi-truck – an 18-wheeler that dragged it for a distance, scraping it bald and leaving skid marks in its wake. By the time Idaho State Police Trooper Brian Zimmerman arrived at the scene, the carcass had stewed 15 hours in the summer heat. He declared the moose, which had started to bloat, “unfit for consumption,” and attempted to shove its 800- to 900-pound carcass farther off the road.

A few hours later, Kramer lugged the abraded animal to his property for disposal, but found meat on the hindquarters that was possibly edible. Salvaging what he could, he hosted an impromptu moose “festival” for friends and neighbors before freezing the leftover meat and burying the rotting carcass.

A week later, Idaho Fish and Game Department officers went undercover to Kramer’s resort on suspicion that he was serving roadkill to unsuspecting customers. They seized the meat and Kramer was charged with unlawful possession of a big game animal.

Boundary County 1st District Court Judge Justin Julian threw out the charges and offered no evidence in his opinion that Kramer had served the meat in his restaurant. He directed the fish and game department to “return all seized meat to Kramer with a salvage permit.”

But sometime between the meat’s confiscation and the court’s ruling, the evidence had vanished from the Bonners Ferry meat locker where state Fish and Game Conservation Officer Greg Johnson had reportedly stored it. According to Kramer, “too many unanswered questions” remain regarding the roadkill’s fate. He has requested a criminal investigation of Johnson in hopes of finding some answers.

Kramer contends Johnson let the meat spoil during its two-hour transportation from his residence to the meat locker. “I don’t believe he had any intention of it coming back,” he said of Johnson’s actions.

But Johnson said the meat was spoiled prior to its confiscation.

“The meat he’d had had been on the road a long time and it was unfit for consumption to begin with,” he said. “Our handling of the meat didn’t cause it to spoil. When you take a little bit of meat and it thaws some on the surface, it’s still fine. But take meat that’s spoiled… it smelled before it started to thaw the least bit.”

Kramer’s lawyer, Fred Gabourie, argues that Kramer, a longtime hunter, wouldn’t have packaged up meat for himself and everybody else had it been bad. He said as far as he knew, no one got sick from eating it, and Johnson should have taken an inventory of the meat but left it at Kramer’s until he had the proper means to move it.

“He could have held it as criminal evidence then left to get coolers to transport it,” Gabourie said. “It was careless.”

Kramer is seeking damages of $10,000 for what he estimates as 300 pounds of lost meat. But according to an Idaho Department of Fish and Game enforcement report, the officers only confiscated 56 packaged round steaks, in addition to 10 small packages of cooked and shredded meat.

“We’re talking maybe 40 pounds of meat,” Johnson said, noting Gabourie didn’t dispute the amount at Kramer’s previous trial.

But Kramer still wants to see someone accountable for the missing meat, which he said is hard to come by. It’s illegal to sell moose meat in the United States, said Steve Agte, a regional conservation officer for the state’s fish and game department. Hunting wild game such as moose requires a permit, which are awarded only by lottery and are difficult to come by. Otherwise, you can only possess it if given it.

“A guy’s out all of his meat, but where did it go?” Gabourie said. “Who pays for it? We don’t see immunity for this officer to be careless with meat and not account for it.”

But Johnson doesn’t feel the suit is warranted.

“The meat was unfit for consumption to begin with. Where we had to store it, they thought it was spoiled and someone threw it out. That’s unfortunate but there’s nothing we can do about it at this point,” he said. “And if we had still had possession of it when it was over, we would not have given that meat to anybody to consume.”