‘Accidental meat’: should carnivores embrace eating roadkill?

My parents have been eating pheasants killed on the roads for years and encouraging me to try them. Is this the most ethical approach to meat-eating?

Motorists shoot me funny looks as I sheepishly cross a scrubby verge, trying my best to conceal the dead pheasant under my arm. I am in a part of Saddleworth Moor called the Isle of Skye by locals, and have just collected a free meal from the middle of the road.

Nobody can agree on how this area of moorland, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, earned its nickname. Some think it comes from a Victorian navvy, who exclaimed in a broad Irish brogue: Look, there's an 'ole in the sky," as he considered a parting in the thick mist above him. Others think it was named after an inn of the same name. But either way, the area should be immediately renamed Pheasant Cemetery. Because, before I picked up my own bird, I counted 46 pheasant carcasses in various stages of decomposition, scattered and splattered on the road over several miles as I drove to Holmfirth for a day out.