After a Laramie man totaled his car colliding with a moose early Monday on Wyoming Highway 230, he and his fiancée thought they’d at least get some moose meat out of the mishap.
It’s legal in Wyoming to claim a roadkill carcass for meat, after checking in with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and filing a form to claim the carcass.
But before Tim Wyland and Lindsey Williams could return to the scene to recover the carcass, somebody else came along, stole much of the meat and ruined the rest.
“Well, we lost our car, and then we lost the moose,” Williams told Cowboy State Daily.
‘I’m Fine’
Wyland was commuting to work in Saratoga in a 2004 Volkswagen Passat when he hit the moose at about 5:20 a.m. near WyoColo, close to the Wyoming-Colorado state line.
Williams had gone through her usual morning routine of getting up and seeing Wyland off on his way to work before going back to bed.
A call from Wyland woke her at about 6 a.m.
“He told me, ‘I just hit an effing moose,” she said. "I’m fine. The car is not, the moose is not, but I am.’"
Lucky To Have Walked Away
Wyland said he bought the Passat as a commuter car.
“One, because it was cheap, and two, because it has all-wheel drive,” he told Cowboy State Daily.
That made his commute to Saratoga safer and easier in rain or snow.
On Monday, it was still dark as he came around a corner, saw three moose in one lane of the highway and swerved into the other lane.
But there was a fourth moose there, and it was unavoidable.
He hit the brakes, without locking the tires up, and figured he was still doing about 45 mph when he collided with the moose.
“The (moose’s) head was over the roofline of the car, and I was thinking, ‘This is gonna hurt,'” he said.
The car stuck the moose in the right shoulder, and it’s entire body whipped around toward the Passat’s driver side.
“When its body came around, it sounded like a gunshot went off, and the driver’s side door window exploded on me,” Wyland said.
The moose was killed instantly. Luckily, Wyler suffered only a glass cut near his left eye and some minor cuts on his back.
The driver’s side door was essentially jammed shut.
“I had to climb out of the shattered window, and that’s not a fun thing to do in the dark, I’ll tell you,” Wyland said.
He called the accident in at 5:30 a.m. Local firefighters and a Wyoming Game and Fish warden responded.
A firefighter examined him and determined that Wyland wasn’t seriously hurt.
He said he feels fortunate to have struck a moose with a smaller car and walked away from it.
"It’s a miracle of God,” he said. "There’s people who get into moose accidents and don’t make it out nearly as good."
Steaks In The Freezer?
Williams, along with Wyland’s father, also came to the scene.
The game warden determined that the moose was probably a yearling, Wyland said, and told him that he could file a form to claim the carcass for meat if he wanted.
At first, Wyland wasn’t sure, but his father convinced him that some moose steaks could at least help make up for the loss of the car.
At about 8 a.m., he and Williams headed back to Laramie, planning to come back with his pickup and trailer to haul off the Passat and the moose carcass.
Ruined Meat
They returned a little before 11 a.m. only to find that somebody else had gotten to the carcass first.
The thieves had apparently hooked it up to a cable winch and dragged it from the side of the highway to the middle of a nearby U.S. Forest Service Road, pulling it over a cattle guard and gravel in the process.
The dragging ruined much of the meat on the carcass, and the thieves cut off a quarter of the good meat that remained, Wyland said.
“It looks like they did it quick, fast and in a hurry, like they didn’t have permission to do it,” he said.
Williams said it was disappointing to see that the carcass had been handled so carelessly.
“It showed no respect for the animal or anything like that,” she said. “We had prayed over it and showed it respect for sacrificing its life.”
It was also disappointing to lose the meat, she added.
“We sacrificed our car for this,” she said. "At least we could have gotten some meat, something to go into our freezer."
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
