Yep when I moved to the New Forest, my housemates cooked me a special roast dinner on the first night. I thought I was being royally treated to roast venison until they mentioned it was roast roadkill.

One of them commuted long distances to work every day, setting off at 5.30am some days, and would often see a freshly hit dead deer beside the road. Not being squeamish he would sling it in the boot and deal with it when he got home. The dogs got a lot of the choice innards and the rest was cut into pieces for the freezer.

I have to day he did a great job and it was so very fresh, that when he dealt with a carcass that had been in the car boot all day, on a very cold winter's day, it was still steaming when he was doing the cutting up.

(Sorry, veggies....)

I'm not sure if there's anything legal, it may be a grey area though. Certainly there's nothing illegal about picking up dead pheasants from the road and taking them home.

Far as I know, it belongs to whoever's land it is on at the time it is killed.

When I was growing up we had a pheasant used to come into the garden every morning, he was beeeeaautiful, we often joked we'd have him for dinner, because if he was on our land when shot, then that was legal... but we didn't have a gun and he was too gorgeous

The only other piece of law I know about roadkill is that if you hit it yourself with your car you are not allowed to take it, but any later cars can.

Probably the most interesting roadkill I've encountered was last year on the road from Portsmouth to Chichester.... a dead Wallaby on the hard shoulder Yes there is a wild colony there and they do occasionally get hit by cars.... very sadly there was nowhere to stop or I'd have been the first out the car to have a look and take photos!

I think its the same for deer - although I could be wrong, I thought the only law was - if you had ran it down you couldnt then pick it off the road and take home? and if you did hit it and then pick it up it would only be to take for treatment? There is no problem with the next car picking it up if the car infront ran it down though.

once when driving along the a41 i swear i saw a wallaby too.thought i imagined it but doing 70 so couldnt double check.
Lol

if i could stomach cutting it up the deer or if its a pheasant plucking it an all that ..then yes i would feed fresh road kill to the dogs....but i cant

It would definitely cross my mind... but i couldnt do it.

Saw a deer get hit by a lorry on my way to work one morning... picked it up on my way home... had venison for weeks and the doggies got the bits n pieces

wouldn't do it if i didn't see it get hit... or didn't know how long it had been there, but it just seemed a crying shame to waste that good venison!... It was just a little muncjak

back when they could catch them, often took the odd bunny home for the doglets, or me if they hadn't mangled them, but then we bumped into the warden one day who said it was hunting with dogs if we took them home and made me put the ones I had back in the field... spoil sport.. Although you are allowed to take them as food for birds of prey, so when my friend's harris hawks take them, we can take those ones home.

Yes - we have picked up a few deer and fed them to the dogs. Also rabbits that have been clipped get picked up and fed to one of the dogs or the ferret.

Yes I would.

I know of the law that says if you hit it then you can not take it, its an old ancient law.
In ancient times on Kings/Queens land a dead deer couldn't be taken it was thier property and it was classed as poaching, poaching could carry the hanging sentence if caught.
I have some great books of real stories of famous poachers, who in time met thier match.

Alot of the ancient laws have been changed, if it was National Park land, you can ask the rangers if you can take it, I know of a RSPCA inspector (now retired) that often had dead deer in his freezer with the compliments of rangers after it had been killed or injured badly by cars.

I couldn't do it, too squeamish!!