Wisconsin wants its deer head back

Mike Paulus |

Last year, a guy named John Longo was out driving near Racine and happened across a common sight in rural Wisconsin: the ever-present dead deer on the roadside, tragically struck down before its time by a motor vehicle. So what’s a guy to do? If you’re John Longo, you throw it into the back of your truck, drive it on home, eat it, and mount the head. It must have had a nice rack. No big deal, right, man?

Wrong, man. In case you’re a Wisconsinite from the big city (Madison), and don’t know any better, let me fill you in on roadkill etiquette. If you see a dead animal you want, you’re gonna need a permit to pick that carcass up. John Longo had no such permit. So he got a $208 fine. Which he didn’t pay. And then, after some weird legal bickering between the DNR and a local county circuit judge, the DNR has decided it wants the mounted deer head, because it’s technically state property. (Source.)

So the state of Wisconsin is asking for its deer head back, please. The DNR probably just wants to test it for chronic wasting disease, but maybe it just wants a sweet deer head to hang on the office wall.