Oh FFS, has no one here ever seen a corpse?! He cut the head off a dead animal he found. Call it weird, fair enough. I wouldn’t pass up a free whale skull to hang at camp. “Found this on the beach and cleaned it myself!” The only charge possible is transporting across state lines, and while illegal, ain’t really a big deal.
If I keep a feather off a dead songbird, same thing, prosecutable offense, but no DA is going after me without evidence I killed for it, and probably not then unless I was a serial bird murderer. This is exactly why we give prosecutors leeway in these sorts of things.
Bullshit controversies like this tell me y’all don’t get outside your suburbs.