I'm in Alabama and the answer is no. I find it to be a backwards policy for several reasons:
Curious to see how other states handle it and what y'all's thoughts are.
- CWD. It makes no sense now that we have CWD in the state to remove a deer carcass from where it fell. If I've read the rules right, they changed it last year for the CWDMZs, and we haven't allowed brain/spinal tissue into the state for years. But thousands of carcasses get transported across the state every year.
- Public relations. Instead of butchering a deer where it fell (as far away from humans as it could get) on a WMA, standard practice seems to be to either illegally clean it and dump the remains in a parking lot, or drive to the nearest bridge and give it a heave. I've seen dozens of bridges with hundreds of vultures perched nearby eating rotted carcasses. Hardly a good look for hunters.
- Hunter access. My wife and I believe most women would be very hard-pressed to drag a deer out of the woods. My dad is getting to the point where he can't do it. My granddad hasn't been able to do it for decades. I believe there are way more individuals that can pack out deboned meat on their back than can drag one.
- Conservation. As we continue to develop the countryside, WMAs become islands. You're already not allowed to remove soil, mulch, leaf litter, plants, etc from the WMAs here, which makes sense. You're exporting biomass off the site. But you can absolutely take a 100lb chunk of processed vegetation off the site. Leaving the remains ensures at least a partially closed loop.
- Allow for harvest data collection. I'm only aware of 1 WMA in our state that actually has you weigh and age your deer, and a few SOAs. I think you could fairly easily keep collecting data without dragging out whole deer.
- Keep people from dumping carcasses at the edge of the parking area. Again, easy problem to solve I'd think.
Curious to see how other states handle it and what y'all's thoughts are.