The Absurdity of the Dead Deer Law A photographer is prosecuted for picking up a road-killed deer to eat, despite believing the landowner would consent. The case reveals the inflexibility of modern British officialdom and the waste of resources on trivial matters. It is amazing what is legal. For example, politicians are free to tell flat lies in their campaigns, and nothing will happen to them. But it is sometimes just as astounding to find out what is illegal. For instance, it is an actual crime to pick up a dead deer from the roadside and take it home to eat it. Yes, it really is, as photographer Guy Carpenter has recently discovered in detail. Most of us know that you are not supposed to run deer over so that you can carry them off, but that is a bit different. Let me explain how absurd the law is.When the same deer was alive and gambolling happily by the road, right up to the moment when it was killed, it legally belonged to nobody. As it breathed its last, its carcass instantly became the property of whoever owned the land on which it lay (we'll get to that). And so begins a sad, rather stupid story with a happy ending. Like all newspaper columnists, I receive distressing letters from readers, asking for help in some ghastly, miserable problem.Usually, I cannot help them, which makes it worse. Modern British officialdom is harder and less flexible than it once was. It is tough with the weak, and feeble with the strong. It is peopled with dogmatic liberals who have no trace of a sense of humour - nor any sense of proportion.Publicity And Official AbsurdityIt follows rules designed to remove almost all initiative. So it often cannot see what is wrong with itself. Many unpleasant or thoughtless people are not as afraid of publicity as you might think. They just do not realise how stupid they will look if the issue hits the headlines.It is an actual crime to pick up a dead deer from the roadside and take it home to eat it as photographer Guy Carpenter has recently discovered in detail But when Mr Carpenter wrote to me in August, I thought I should be able to assist. He is 42, a photographer, a quiet man who lives in a small North Yorkshire village on good terms with his neighbours.He told me he had been charged under the Deer Act of 1991. I checked, as far as I could, and could find no other such prosecution - anywhere, ever. There was never any suggestion that Mr Carpenter had been poaching. That is covered by other laws.He was eventually charged under Section 1(2) of the Act. This law specifically provides a defence where someone genuinely believes the landowner would have consented had they known the circumstances. This is what Mr Carpenter did believe. He had not himself killed it.Some other driver had done that, and gone whizzing off. I did not even know that his action was illegal when he described it to me. Would you have done? I am quite sure that the law was not designed to make life into a torment of sleeplessness and distress for a man like Mr Carpenter, who spent several weeks afraid of being branded with a criminal record for the rest of his life.Police Stop And Arrest PhotographerWe are not talking here about some tremendous antlered beast, of the sort that the late Queen used to stalk so skilfully near Balmoral. The animal was about the size of a large dog. Mr Carpenter reckoned he could butcher it into several reasonable meals. But no. As he was picking it up from beside the A66 near Barnard Castle, a police car appeared, as they never do when you need them.The car belonged to the Durham Constabulary (Mr Carpenter lives close to the boundary between Durham and Yorkshire) and they stopped and began to question him. Matters swiftly became deadly serious. Did he not know that it was illegal? Well, no actually, he didn't.Well, it was illegal. So he put it back, muttering that it was a bit of a shame. You might think it would have ended there. But after some to-and-fro, none of it rude or aggressive, the police said he'd be hearing from them.And he did. A letter plopped on to his doormat, announcing that he was being taken to court. It alleged that he did 'without the consent of the owner/occupier of the land, remove the carcass of a deer'. I'm not sure the police even knew for sure who was the owner or occupier of the land.They seem to have thought it was Durham County Council. But later it turned out that because the A66 is a trunk route, it belonged instead to the nationalised Highways Agency. Not that it mattered much. Neither the Council nor the Agency wanted to feast on roast venison at their HQs, with plenty of redcurrant sauce and a bottle or two of good red Burgundy.The illegal carcass was taken back to Barnard Castle police station, where it was then picked up by a council contractor - at a cost to the taxpayer of about £300. How futile. I never got the impression that the Highways Agency cared very much at all what happened to it. But, for some reason, the police just wouldn't let the matter drop.I tried quite hard to alert their press office to the absurdity of it when they had so many unsolved burglaries on their books. But they were quite unmoved. They said they had a statutory duty to protect wildlife under the 1991 Act, and that they had to act on evidence.'We must investigate and report all such matters to the relevant authority for a decision to be made as to whether a prosecution takes place,' they wrote to me. I could see where this was going. Mr Carpenter was not a criminal. He was an honest man with no record of wrongdoing, and no reason to want to avoid paying his council tax.But the law was the law. The case went to County Hall in Durham. The prosecutor offered to drop the charge if Mr Carpenter would admit that he had committed the crime. But he could not do that, because he had not.Legal Defence And Court RulingHis lawyer, James Thomas, said that Mr Carpenter 'strongly believed that the landowner (thought by him to be Durham County Council) would have consented to him taking the deer carcass and that was the reason he was picking it up'. Mr Thomas said that, although this might seem like a technical point, it meant that Mr Carpenter had a complete defence. It was true. Mr Thomas had been working for nearly 40 years as a solicitor in criminal law.He knew what he was talking about. The prosecutor was still not convinced. He said that the defence argument 'did not stack up', and that he had a 'strong case' against Mr Carpenter. But the magistrates disagreed.They found Mr Carpenter 'not guilty' and ordered that he should have his legal defence costs paid by the Government. The total bill came to nearly £900. The police could have dropped the whole thing at any point. Their attitude was quite wrong.They did not take account of the context in this particular case. Their rigid application of the rules showed no sense of proportion or judgement. But the most important thing is that Mr Carpenter won. He is back in good spirits and planning his next photo exhibition.Victory For Common SenseAs he says, 'I have been lucky. I could easily have been convicted of a crime I did not commit.' I think we are all lucky for this. It was a victory for common sense over bureaucratic nonsense.