Where Every Claim on This Site Came From
Each statement about who is responsible for a carcass was taken from a government source that was open on a stated date: the Highway Maintenance Manual and the Car-Killed Deer page at WisDOT, the Statutes and the Administrative Code as the Legislature publishes them, the Department of Natural Resources, DATCP, and the city and county pages behind each metro. When a source turns up nothing, that is what the page reports. A rule that exists across a state line does not get carried over the border to fill the hole.
The short answers
| What we are | An advertising business whose calls route to independent operators, who do the work and set the price; also a standing record of who answers for a carcass in this state |
| What we are not | Not a removal operator, not a branch of government, not a testing lab; nothing here is medical or legal advice |
| Pricing | Absent. Nothing on this site carries a verified rate behind it, so the only figure that exists is the one an operator says out loud |
| Operator coverage | Recorded county by county. No county in the state is confirmed today, and each page repeats that |
| Operator capability | Settled on the call, not asserted by a page. No one reachable here opens a finished wall or ceiling |
| Road authority | WisDOT Highway Maintenance Manual 07-15-01 "Carcass Removal" (July 2025); the WisDOT Car-Killed Deer page; WisDOT's county highway department list |
| Wildlife authority | Wisconsin DNR: car-killed deer, sick or dead deer, wildlife health, carcass movement and disposal, baiting and feeding pages; Wis. Stat. § 29.349 and § 29.347 |
| Livestock statute | Wis. Stat. § 95.50, cited by section and held to the livestock and domestic animals it names; § 95.72 for the hauler license, § 95.99 for the penalties |
| County power | Wis. Stat. § 59.54(21), read as the permission it is; no screened county exercises it |
| Handling guidance | DNR's wildlife-health page: gloves or an inverted bag, never bare hands; exposure questions go to the local health department |
From an agency page to a sentence here
- The page is read, not recalled. The source sits open while the sentence is written, and the line carrying the weight is reproduced inside quotation marks. Everything published at launch was read on 2026-09-15, and that date travels with the claim.
- A quote keeps its own scope. Section 95.50 names the carcass of "a livestock animal or other domestic animal", so its 24-hour and 48-hour clocks run for a steer and for a dog and for nothing else. WisDOT's contract language buys deer removal on the state trunk system, so it is not stretched to a raccoon on a county trunk, and certainly not to anything lying on a lawn.
- Absence is written down as absence. No homeowner statute exists for a dead wild animal, and WisDOT publishes no way for a resident to report one. Both appear as gaps, with the chapters and pages that were checked to establish them. Where a city publishes nothing, its page lists what was reviewed and stops; no policy is reverse-engineered out of silence.
- Four questions are answered separately: who picks a carcass up, who may keep it, how far it may be moved, and where it may end up. Car-killed deer registration answers the second. DNR chronic wasting disease guidance answers the third and the fourth. Neither of them says anything about the first, which is the one most callers are actually asking.
- A recommendation stays a recommendation. The DNR's current carcass page recommends against moving a whole deer carcass beyond the county it died in or one adjacent to it. That word is kept, because a reader who needs a prohibition should only find one where a rule actually imposes it.
- Each city page prints its own limits: what the quoted source leaves unsettled, which is usually private property, deer, how long a pickup takes and what it costs. The quoted sentences sit next to the table they support, so the distance between what the city published and what you wanted to know is visible rather than papered over.
Why you will not find a figure here
Print a range and you have made a commitment on somebody else's behalf. No operator reachable through this line has given this site rates it could stand behind, and borrowing a figure from a directory, or from a state where landfill tipping works differently, would dress a guess up as research. The number gets built on the call out of what the animal is, where it is lying, what it takes to get to it, and which landfill or transfer station will accept it afterward. Nothing on this page previews that number or competes with it. The one place figures do appear is statutory: the penalties in § 95.99 and § 95.72 are printed where they bear on a question, labeled as penalties every time.
What was read
| Source | Used for |
|---|---|
| WisDOT Highway Maintenance Manual 07-15-01 "Carcass Removal"; the Car-Killed Deer page | Who removes deer from the state trunk system and how; the county and municipal split; 911 in the lane and the county highway department or sheriff otherwise |
| WisDOT county highway department list; region maintenance contacts | The county contact for a county trunk highway or a state highway shoulder |
| Wis. Stat. § 95.50, § 95.72, § 95.99 | The livestock and domestic-animal disposal statute's real scope, the hauler license, the penalties |
| Wis. Stat. § 29.349, § 29.347; DNR car-killed deer page; Go Wild | Who may take a car-killed deer, and the registration before removal |
| Wis. Stat. § 59.54(21), § 60.23(20) | The county and town power to remove a dead animal, read as a permission |
| Wis. Admin. Code NR 506.07, NR 506.095; DNR Carcass Disposal FAQ | Carcasses at a landfill; deer carcasses as solid waste; burial of a single carcass on private land |
| DNR wildlife health, sick or dead deer, carcass movement and disposal, baiting and feeding, nuisance wildlife pages | Homeowner handling and disposal guidance; DNR does not remove; CWD movement recommendation; the ban-county map; nuisance wildlife rules |
| DATCP carcass disposal page | The agency restatement of § 95.50 for farms |
| city.milwaukee.gov, cityofmadison.com, greenbaywi.gov, kenosha.org, cityofracinewi.gov, appletonwi.gov, oshkoshwi.gov, eauclairewi.gov, cityoflacrosse.org, and each county's highway, sheriff and animal-services pages | The wording each metro publishes for itself, reproduced on that city's page |
Everything in that table is a government publication. Every row's address and the day it was checked are printed with the guide that relies on it, again on the resources page, and again in the authority block of each city it touches. Nothing here is sourced from a directory, a review platform, a competitor's page or a generated summary.
What this site cannot tell you
- No page can quote you a price, confirm that an operator covers your address, or commit anyone to a particular job. Those three answers exist only in a conversation, and for the second one the honest answer in every county today is that no operator is confirmed.
- A rabies question is not ours to settle. If a person or a pet has had contact with the animal, that call belongs to the local health department or a physician, and nothing written here substitutes for either.
- Agency pages move. The date on a page is the only freshness claim it makes: it says when the source was last opened, not that the source still reads the same way this morning. Every page is opened again on a quarterly cycle, and anything a reader reports is checked at the source before the page changes.
- Some ground was deliberately left unread. Burial and cart-placement ordinances were pulled for some cities and not others, so a line here calling a rule local means only that: the local text behind it was not always opened. Two DNR resources exist only as maps, the deer waste disposal sites and the counties under a baiting and feeding ban, and neither is transcribed here: each is linked instead, so you read it on the day you need it.
How the sources are ranked against each other, and what happens once a correction arrives, is set out in the editorial policy. If a line here has gone out of date, send the source that supersedes it.