To feel disgusted that I ate roadkill.

[MaryPoppinsMassiveSack]

The other day I got back from work to find a beautiful chicken (I assumed) pie and honey roast veg waiting for me. It was only afterwards, when I saw the carnage in the kitchen, that I was informed that, following a bump on the way home, DH had claimed the life of an unsuspecting PHEASANT! "It was fresh" was his response.

It was also dead tasty, but I'm a bit grossed out by the whole thing, and the kitchen looks like Emu and Orville have been going at it.

Would I have eaten it if I'd known in advance? Probably not. Would you?

Yes I would eat, although I hope your DH managed to tidy up. DD has a mate whose dad regularly picks up roadkill & makes into dishes. I've promised myself to take him next pheasant I run over, if possible.

It depends on what it died of.

If it was slow and ill due to some sort of disease and that's how it managed to get bumped by a car...errr no!

Disease riddled? No thanks

I couldn't if I knew before hand or if it still had tyre marks on it

My mate is a taxidermist and regularly stuffs roadkill. Would that have been a better option?

Shooting season has just finished but there are still lots of dopey pheasants about so now is the time to eat them when they are nice and plump.

(Not so good in the spring and summer when it's breeding season and they get all scrawny.)

DH did tidy up, so all was fine, BUT, and I think this is a bit weird, he's kept the skull as a trophy of some sorts. It's hanging from the rear view mirror of the car, it's little beak gawping at me. I don't want a hedgerow morgue appearing in our Multipla.

Its not very likely it was diseased.
They really are stupid birds who forget they can fly and just walk out into traffic. Theres no end of them killed round here by cars.
DH got one through his front fog light recently that cost £££ to fix.
It died quickly and its only obvious injury was a broken neck, we gave it to someone to pluck and eat. Why not?

Yup. Grew up on a farm & ate roadkill & our own animals. You can tell if an animal is diseased!
I love pheasant & would honestly have swooned if my DP/DH prepared & cooked a pheasant pie for me.

No, but mainly because I'm a vegetarian

Could you make feather cushions? Or maybe sharpen the bigger feathers and sell them as quills for £100 each, Pedlars style?

did you know there's apparently several different laws on this?

can only run them over if you've got public liability insurance

can't deliberately run them over

can't take anything you've hit but can pick up something someone else has

but it's apparently theft if it was or could have been owned

but it's covered by the wildlife act if it wasn't

again - apparently. These may be myths

which has nothing to do with anything, apart from it's interesting how much thought has been put into it.

^^ He did kill it, yes.

^ and I'd say that he well and truly OWNED it ;-)

They have no sense of danger from cars. They're turfed out young every year to fatten up before they're shot. They're not around long enough to pick up road sense.

Wouldn't worry me one bit,

buying a chicken in the supermarket would worry me.

The shoots quite often consist of people on one side of the road shooing the birds towards 20 + guns on the other. They're not hard to kill.

You're not actually meant to pick them up if you killed them yourself (though personally it seems sensible). I'm stunned you couldn't tell it wasn't chicken when you ate it, though! Was it not a bit tough? If he'd just hit it and it hadn't had time to hang?

Yep, pheasant is lovely! When we stayed up in Northumberland a few years ago there were long stretches of road up in the hills that could have fed a family for the winter, more meat than a butcher's shop!
I thought though that if you killed something on the road you had to leave it for someone else to pick up rather than take it home yourself? Or is that deer? Or have I just made that up?

X post LRD.

I thought fresh pheasant wasn't very nice?

You're not allowed to pick up one's you've hit yourself because it's so easy to hot them deliberately. Country lanes in the areas they're raised are full of them.

Peeriebear - I think hung pheasant is nicer - the meat tends to be less chewy and the flavour is better. However, it isn't to everyone's taste & there isn't anything wrong with fresh pheasant.

Ones. Stupid iPad.

re: freshness / hanging.

It'd apparently been hanging in the shed for a couple of days. From his bike. After our earlier discussion about the skull / mirror thing, he's agreed to remove the skull from the car as it's a bit gory, but will mount it on the handlebars of his bike. I don't have to ride the bike so this is an improvement.