Game laws, for the most part, exist for good reasons. Safety regulations, bag limits and seasons are all good things that have made our days afield more secure and conserved our wildlife resources. When a law makes sense, no one has a problem following it.
But sometimes a regulation is added to the books that, quite honestly, makes no sense. It seems the only thing these laws protect are the guarantee that hunters will be burdened.
One of the more peculiar laws in effect is a New Mexico rule requiring hunters to consume, trade, or legally sell game meat in their possession prior to the end of the license year—March 31. If a hunter still has game meat in his or her freezer after that date, then a conservation officer must be summoned, who will inspect the freezer and issue a 30-day permit authorizing possession. At the end of those 30 days, if the remainder of the meat has not been consumed, then the process must be repeated.
Without a doubt, hunters are supposed to know regulations. But if a hunter overlooks this obscure rule, or forgets to obtain a permit, then he or she is guilty of unlawful possession of game. For deer, the hunter is subject to a $400 fine; the penalty is even higher for possession of elk meat.
Essentially, this rule is an anti-poaching measure that is used by game wardens to verify whether or not meat is legally possessed if a search warrant is issued. Other states have similar laws stating that game must be consumed before the next hunting season, but an early spring turnaround seems awfully fast for even the most dedicated carnivore.
That’s not to say that game wardens are running around checking people’s freezers to ensure compliance. In fact, New Mexico Game & Fish admits this law is rarely used. But that doesn’t change the fact that a legal hunter could be made into a criminal simply because he or she didn’t eat like a pig.
And that’s exactly what a hunter would have to do in order to finish off a good-sized elk by the end of March. New Mexico’s elk hunting season begins in September and runs through December in some management units. Considering that the average bull elk weighs approximately 700 pounds on the hoof, and that the average meat yield is 40 percent of that weight, a hunter would take home roughly 280 pounds of meat.
Say a hunter was to get 280 pounds of meat from an elk legally harvested on Dec. 1. To polish off that much protein by March 31 would require each member of a family of four to eat quarter-pound portions of elk two meals a day, everyday, for four months.
I don’t know about you, but that’s a lot of elk. And that’s only one bull. What if several family members had a successful season?
To put this into perspective, a buddy of mine killed an elk in Colorado back in October. He has literally eaten elk almost every night for nine months and still has meat in the freezer. If he lived in New Mexico and followed the law, he’d be on his fourth meat possession permit.
Does it really benefit game management or law enforcement to force hunters to eat on the government’s schedule? We think not. Game laws should be tools to conserve our wildlife and manage it so that we can all enjoy hunting safely. After all, nitpicking how long it takes us to eat what we harvest does little to advance any of those goals.
