Confessions of a Road Kill Addict

My predilection for road kill began when I was a very young man. While I was growing up in West Virginia, my parents owned a 1975 VW bus. One fall day two days before deer season opened, we were driving home from my grandmother's house when a nice-sized eight point buck jumped off of a hill and hit us. The deer was severely injured and after my father cleared it with the state police, a passer-by who was carrying a rifle in his truck, dispatched the deer for us. My dad and this other fellow threw the deer in the back of our bus and we took it to my Aunt Linda's house where my uncle proceeded to turn the roadkill into vittles. We enjoyed the meat all winter long. And until we got it fixed, the bus had a headlight that pointed up to the left. I guess it served as a warning to any more would be deer suicideists. Later in high school I got in on the action myself. My buddy had a VW Bug convertible that we used to cruise around town. Once, as we were driving to a football game, he ran over a large raccoon that had run out into the road. We pulled over to see whether or not we had killed it and saw that it was still alive, but barely. I had desired to make a coon skin cap for some time and thought this might be a good place to start. We looked for something to finish off the raccoon and soon decided on a 1 wood out of my buddy’s golf bag. I whacked the ailing critter and we wrapped him in a bag and I took him to my parent’s house. I skinned him and stretched on a board to dry out the hide. I scraped and scraped and eventually got all the fatty tissue off of the skin. I salted him down and days later when he was dried, I rubbed some boot oil in to keep the skin pliable. I had never eaten raccoon, so my mom helped me cook him. I stuffed him with some kielbasa sausage to add some flavor. Big mistake. I had no idea that raccoons were so greasy. That dude had more fat on him than Paula Deen’s sausage gravy and we ended up tossing it out. I have since found out that these critters need to be stuffed with bread or peanuts to help absorb the fat and grease. Live and learn. After joining the Army and being posted to Germany, I started fly-fishing and eventually tying my own flies. This is when I began collecting road kill in earnest. One popular fly pattern calls for the fur from the ear of a European hare. How convenient that I was living in an area that had an abundance of such creatures. On one particular field problem, I was driving for my commander, also coincidentally a fellow West Virginian and fly tier, when we came upon a large recently deceased hare. We tossed him in the back of the Humvee and while the commander was in a meeting I went about shaving the rabbit’s ears and saving the fur in a baggie. Also during this tour of Germany, I was able to acquire a pheasant hide because our housing area was overrun with the big colorful birds. Yes, it was a road kill. I didn’t get into bagging birds until later. We came back to the states for Thanksgiving one year and I was able to obtain several whitetail deer tails while visiting a friend in West Virginia. When I got back to our place in Germany, I dried them out and had them sitting on a book case on my fly tying desk. Once when my ex-wife came home with a friend she had went to lunch with, she discovered a pile of white and brown hair on the floor near the desk. Her friend shrieked in horror at the sight of the carnage. My dog Max had shredded the tails, but she thought that she was looking at the remains of a guinea pig or some other small pet. She wasn’t any more amused when she found out what it really was. As a going away gift from Germany, some members of my unit presented me with a stuffed toy rabbit sporting a sling around its arm, one leg in gauze, and two shaved ears. I have to say, it was very creative of them. The next place that I was stationed that offered a variety of critters was Arizona. I had a thirty mile drive to and from work on a lonely stretch of highway and came across a number of different specimens. I collected deer tails and coyote tails that I cut off of the animals on the side of the road. These I let dry out before storing them in plastic bags in my “fur tub.” I had learned my lesson and did not leave the skins lying around. The most unusual critter I got to skin was a six and a half foot long rattlesnake that one of my soldiers had killed with a tent pole. I tanned the snake hide and gave it to the soldier to make a belt or hat band. I dressed out the meat, fried it up and we had it for lunch later that week. Colorado, my next stop in the Army, provided a plethora of species. I collected fox fur, badger fur, elk hides. Some of these were honest to goodness road kill and some were animals that I killed while hunting. It was in Colorado that I added to my feather collection as well. I hunted two species of quail as well as pheasants. I also began hunting ducks in Colorado for the first time. My collection continued to grow. A friend of mine gave me feathers from game birds that he had killed and soon I had to get a larger container. I learned to use Borax instead of salt to preserve the hides and that I needed to microwave the skins to kill any bug larvae. I also had to shampoo and clean some fur to make it usable. I purchased a book on dying and bleaching materials and soon had feathers in all colors of the rainbow. I even have a couple of green squirrel skins. My most embarassing moment involving road kill has to be the time that I got stuck in a ditch when I had turned around in the road to pick up a fox that I had just ran over. I was traveling to Ohio to visit my sister and her family for Christmas, when not more than twenty minutes from their house a fox ran across the road right in front of me. I couldn't leave a prime winter fox hide to rot, so I did a U turn to come back and pick it up. When I performed the second U turn to head back in the direction I had originally been going, I got too far off of the road and couldn't get my little Ranger pickup back on the road. This was before I had a cell phone, so it took me awhile to get to a phone. My brother in law howled when I told him what happened. He and my sister came out and were soon followed by a friend of theirs who had an F-250 pickup. Well, I was soon out of the ditch and back on my way to my sister's. The travesty of the story is that I never retrieved the fox. I still collect skins of the animals I hunt as well as ones that are recently road deceased, but I only cook the ones that I kill myself. My family always inquires as to how the animal we might be eating came to his demise. I don't know if they are really concerned for their well being or if they just enjoy giving me a hard time. I have even been given a cook book on the preparation of road kill. I take it all in stride. If I'm going to have a strange hobby, I have to be willing to take the ribbing. Road kill is not for everyone, but I'm from West Virginia, so for me it just comes naturally.