From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@turbont.net)
Date: Sat Apr 01 2000 - 01:52:48 MST
EvMick@aol.com wrote:
>
> In a message dated 3/29/00 2:39:31 PM Central Standard Time,
> mike@datamann.com writes:
>
> > If your property trespesses on my property without your knowledge
> > (i.e. if it is livestock that has gotten out of its pen starts eating my garden), then I
> > could still kill it IF it was causing damage to my property. Conversion only
> works with livestock, because of the so-called animal cruelty issue, and only if
> > its not causing damage.
> >
>
> There are problems with this...
>
> Recently cattle escaped near where my son lives....they got on the
> road....he was driving down that road....it was a muddy road....it was foggy.
>
> Ker bam...
>
> Bent Pick up.
>
> Free Range....
>
> The owner of the property....(cows) was not liable for the damage done to my
> son's pickup...
>
If that was the case, you should have been able to claim the carcass. A
freind of mine had a similar case here in NH, and got the wildlife laws
changed as a result.
<story follows>
Ol' Billy Donovan is an old retired refrigeration man, who has a cabin a
few miles from mine in upstate Na' Hampsha'. Billy has a preference for
his likker, and he loves to hang out with his buddy Captain Morgan, with
or without ice or other fixin's. Now, Billy is a happy drunk, and
because the roads get quite foggy often, he figgers that if its that
foggy, then the cops can't see him driving in the middle of the road...
Billy and his dear departed father had developed a reputation as men of
a type who knew how to obtain wilderness delicacies in the off season,
so he knew when opportunity presented itself in odd circumstances, and
he was well known by the local constablulary for his predelictions, but
he had been caught only once in his life. His hunting philosophy is "If
its brown, its down."
This one evening, he was riding the dashed yellow mono-rail home with
his pickup from an evening of carousing. It was a foggy eve, so he had
little to occupy his mind but Clint Black on the radio, about twenty
feet of yellow monorail, and a viscous white blur of illumiated fog, as
he drove down route 16 through the 13 Mile Woods. Suddenly, he sees a
dark, large mass in front of him then THUMP!!! and he wakes up a few
minutes later to find that he's totalled his pickup on the carcass of a
Moose. Now, the Moose is still alive, but just barely, so he goes and
puts it out of its misery, then gets on his radio and calls on channel
13 for some assistance.
Apparently the game warden had heard the report on the scanner, so he
showed up a few minutes after the Errol constabulary, hoping to have
caught Billy in another compromising position. Fortunately, the cops
cleared him. He didn't get dinged for DUI, probably because they figured
that he had totalled his truck anyways, so he wouldn't be driving for a
long while as it is, then again, I doubt any of those cops had ever met
Billy when he WASNT pissed to the wind, so they didn't have any base
reference to rely on. Billy asked if he could take the carcass, but the
Game Warden, who had had it in for Billy for years (they've had a
backwoods version of Spy vs. Spy going for about thirty years by then),
says "No. The Moose herd in New Hampshire belongs to the state." Billy
thinks 'is that so?'
The next week, after recuperating, Billy gets on the horn with his local
attorney, and says he wants to sue the state for the replacement cost of
his pickup truck and his medical expenses. The Attorney asks why, and
Billy explains the claims of the game warden, that the moose herd
belongs to the state, and thus the state's property was obstructing
traffic, causing a public nuisance and hazardous conditions. That
sounded good, and eventually Billy won his case in court, and the State
bought him his new pickup truck. At which point, the state changed the
wildlife collision laws to allow people who hit deer or moose on the
roads with their cars, etc. to claim the carcass as some sort of salvage
right...
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