Where some see roadkill in Oregon, others find a feast

Note: This story contains graphic details about dead animals.

Anne Christmas moved to a five-acre farm near Sisters, Oregon, in 2017, seeking a different life.

“I grew up in Palos Verdes, California, and it was beautiful and wonderful,” said the retired teacher, “I felt like we had fresh air and land there. But nothing like Central Oregon fresh air.”

On a recent visit to Christmas’ homestead behind the Sisters Rodeo grounds, over a dozen chickens from her 40-plus flock were roosting near the wraparound patio, sending up a cacophony of crows and squawks.

Inside the house, Christmas was busy roasting, chopping, searing and prepping ingredients for a venison stew that would take all day. It’s a take on a family favorite.

“My grandmother used to do things like this,” Christmas said, “make the gravy, put some rosemary and salt in, onions, tomatoes, just kind of all from the garden.”

The air smelled delicious as the deer meat began to sizzle. But unlike her grandmother’s version, the meat in this stew wasn’t bought in a store.

“When people tell me that they have venison, I often tell them, you know, ‘Just tell me it’s roadkill and I’m good with it,’” she said, “I prefer roadkill.”

Christmas got the meat for the stew after a friend in her roadkill recovery network called to alert her of a fresh find.

“He loaded the deer into my truck and I had to gut it and skin it, and then a couple of days later, after hanging it, I had to butcher it.”

She was pleased with the results. The doe had been hit by a car, Christmas said, but had very little bruising — ideal for harvesting “beautiful meat.”

She is part of a small but growing trend in Oregon to salvage food from the state’s ribbons of roads. It’s a movement that gained visibility when Oregon lawmakers legalized the practice for deer and elk in 2019.

Since then, the state has issued more than 8,000 salvage permits to people recovering roadkill, with annual permit totals on the rise in recent years.

Most of the permits are from cities along Interstate 5, where more cars on the road mean more animals hit. But even without a high-traffic federal interstate, Bend ranks fifth among Oregon cities with the most people applying for permits

There are some rules. People must apply for a permit within 24 hours of salvaging an animal. They aren’t allowed to sell the meat. They must remove the entire carcass, including gut piles from the side of the road, and they must surrender the antlers and head of the animal to an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife office within five business days, so that it can be tested for diseases.

At the ODFW office in Bend, biologist Kristin Fratella pulled on blue latex gloves and strode toward a refrigerator. She removed a blood-stained grocery bag and peeked inside.

“This is usually how we get them,” she said with a laugh.

Fratella carried the bag to a tall metal table and pulled out the dismembered head of a spike mule deer. It was missing an eyeball. The bloated, blackened tongue flopped out.

“We’re just going to grab some lymph nodes and a tooth off of it,” she said, picking up a hand saw and quickly cutting into the head.

“Sometimes you get a surprise maggot,” she said. Blood splatter happens too, she added, looking down at her stained shirt.

Fratella takes lymph nodes for testing because that’s the part of the deer most likely to contain evidence of chronic wasting disease, a fatal neurodegenerative infection in deer and elk. The disease hasn’t been found in Oregon yet, but it’s in all neighboring states.

“The deer start to lose their mental faculties,” Fratella said. “They’re not able to eat, and they’re also more likely to be struck by vehicles, which is why we’re really interested in getting those samples from roadkill salvage.”

There isn’t any proof people can get sick from eating or handling an infected animal. But Fratella said that the official recommendation is to wait for the testing results from ODFW before eating roadkill. Similar diseases, like mad cow, have been shown to transmit to humans.

“It’s not something that you can simply cook out of the meat or just rinse off,” she said.

Still, assuming an animal tests negative, is harvested fresh and doesn’t have too much damage or ruptured organs, Fratella sees no harm in eating roadkill. She’s even tried it herself at a barbecue where deer ribs were served.

Social media groups attest to the niche popularity of roadkill recovery. A Facebook group, “Oregon Roadkill Recovery,” boasts around 11,000 people with regular posts notifying would-be salvagers of recent sightings. There’s an offshoot of the group, “Central Oregon Roadkill Recovery,” with a few hundred members.

On most posts in the groups, users note where and when they saw a dead animal, the state of the body, how decomposed or bloated it appeared and usually, a picture.

Shelby Boal, who lives in La Pine, is a member of the Central Oregon Facebook group who has salvaged numerous deer. Boal said recovering roadkill was an easy decision.

“For my family, it’s a useful way to put meat in the freezer instead of it rotting away on the side of the road,” Boal said. “Venison has a high protein content and is a great alternative to other red meats since it’s also lower in fat content.”

She added that it helps to have a background in hunting and to be knowledgeable about red flags for when the meat has turned.

“Not every deer is salvageable. If it has obvious trauma to organs, they may be ruptured, which would render the meat no good. You also want to check for tissue damage and the overall smell of the animal,” she said.

When Central Oregon roadkill doesn’t become food, the bodies of deer and elk often get dragged away to rot on the nearest patch of public land, according to state transportation managers. There’s a dumping ground full of carcasses down the road from Ann Christmas’ homestead near Sisters.

At first blush, the barren landscape looks like any other stretch of undeveloped woods. But in the Christmas family, it’s known as “The Boneyard.”

Rib cages and limbs scatter the landscape, bones picked clean by scavengers.

Christmas actually likes walking around here. She’s fascinated by the relationships between life and death, predator and prey. To her, roadkill recovery is part of being in harmony with nature. Other than the eggs from her chickens, it’s the only type of meat she eats.

“Growing animals to eat? Just doesn’t seem right to me,” she said.

At her house, roadkill is also a crowd-pleaser. The stew she made from the salvaged doe fed her entire family for a special celebration.

This story was produced in partnership with The Source Weekly in Bend.

OPB is a nonprofit, statewide news organization with a mission to tell stories for communities in all parts of Oregon and Southwest Washington. As part of that goal, we work with partner news organizations and freelancers to identify stories like this that might otherwise go untold.

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