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I have 5.5 acres and the carcass is on my property. Any home is not that close but I would not be surprised if at least one neighbor gets a whiff.. We are used to animals getting harvested by nature here so I dont think any issue..
Can you just blow it up? 3-4 sticks of dynamite would take care of the problem. You might need a permit though.
Beware unintended consequences to dynamite. Obviously elk are smaller than whales, but there are some urban (rural?) legends about attempts to dynamite dead whales washing up on popular beaches. A classic one from OR:
My university mammalogy prof used to tell us stories about that one. Apparently, a chunk of the skull flattened an onlooker's VW Bug. Or maybe it was a chunk of the whale some crazy entrepreneur decided to haul back to his inland tourist trap/coffee house on a hired flatbed truck. The stinking carcass became a health hazard local authorities required him to dispose of. He resorted to dynamite in the middle of the night. It might have been his car...
Last edited by Parnassia; 04-18-2023 at 04:26 PM..
Still just flies that are harvesting the elk. We named the carcass Agnes since she may be around for a while.
So far, no real smell issue even though we are about 100 yards from Agnes. You can smell dead animal when you get close - like 50 ft or so. Spring is a bit windy here, that is helping with the smell. I keep meaning to call some wildlife office but have been busy with other things.
While I do like the idea of burning or blowing up the carcass (fun!! LOL), probably not practical. Blowing it up, I can imagine maggot "rain" at this point. Burying it might be an option but I would need permission to cross several lots with a bobcat or something like that which would likely be a pain. Lots of rocks make any manual digging difficult.
So.. Agnes is just hanging around being a fly factory. I wonder if the maggots help with the smell?
Here in Alaska, if a moose is walking around it belongs to the state. All kinds of regulations on who, when, and where they can be killed. If a moose is killed by a vehicle on the road, it still belongs to the state and they decide who is eligible to salvage the carcass for food.
However, if it falls over dead from natural causes in your yard - it belongs to you and you have to deal with it. Years back we had a bad winter in Anchorage and a fair amount of moose died of starvation. Many in people's yards. When they called Fish and Game they were told it was their problem now. Most of these carcasses were inedible by the time they were discovered and no longer had any food value.
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