Can You Keep The Antlers Of A Deer You Hit In Louisiana?

As I drove east on I-20 final week, I used to be considerably amazed on the sheer variety of whitetail deer I noticed mendacity lifeless on the aspect of the interstate.

I make the weekly trek from Haughton to Arcadia every fall as I’m going deer searching, so I am used to seeing just a few deer that made an unsuccessful try and cross the freeway, however this previous week I noticed at least 5 unlucky deer that at the moment are grazing within the oak bottoms of Heaven.

That sobering expertise left me with a burning query. If I have been to hit a deer with my truck in Louisiana, may I preserve the deer? If he was too messed as much as preserve, may I a minimum of preserve his antlers? I am a licensed deer hunter, so it must be authorized, proper?

In line with the web site, deeranddeerhunting.com, that may be an enormous fats destructive ghost rider.

Here is what they write:

in Louisiana it’s unlawful to pickup a roadkill deer with out first having prior consent of a recreation warden.

So, there’s a option to preserve the deer or the antlers, but it surely’s totally on the discretion of the agent you contact with Louisiana Division of Wildlife and Fisheries.

That appears considerably counterintuitive to me, however I assume Louisiana lawmakers had their causes for imposing this one.

I might assume that they might really need deer that weren’t too mangled to be put to good use as an alternative of being hauled off by buzzards or coyotes.

I additionally came upon simply how huge of an issue that is nationally.  Deeranddeerhunters.com goes on to say that there are 1.5 million deer hit by cars on US roadways yearly.  And with the common minimal price of $2,000 to restore these automobiles after hanging a deer, that is $3 billion {dollars} annually in injury.

You’d assume that with these sorts of losses, preserving the deer, or simply his antlers, could be the least of worries for Louisiana wildlife.  However, they did not ask me for my opinion.