Deer! Deer! Shit!

[Kalhoun]

So…Mr. K hit a deer on the way home from Bizarro World last night. He said it happened so fast that he wasn’t quite sure what happened until he was down the road a piece.

There’s an antler- or hoof-shaped hole in the windshield, the driver’s side headlight is freekin’ gone, the mirror is freekin’ gone, and the fender and door are fucked. Oh, yeah…the holidays have started. We always have a trauma going between November 1st and January 2nd. It’s what we do.

Officer friendly came by the house and filled out an accident report and said it was the third one they had yesterday. Yup…the critters are ruttin’, alright.

[FairyChatMom]

My husband went to claim his car from the body shop last week (he sideswiped a guardrail, no deer involved) and they told him in one day, five different customers came in with deer strike damage. 'Tis the season, for certain.

I hit one a year or so ago. Fortunately, I’d slowed way down to go around a group of deer who were standing in my lane. Just as I was starting to accellerate around them, another deer came running from the left and crossed directly in front of me. I wasn’t going fast enough to kill her, but it smashed $800 worth of plastic parts on the front of my van. Not that I spent the $800. I bought 2 new headlights, and we taped the plastic parts together. It’s an old van - the repairs would have been more than the Blue Book value of the vehicle!!

Stoopit deer…

[Kalhoun]

@FairyChatMom

My husband went to claim his car from the body shop last week (he sideswiped a guardrail, no deer involved) and they told him in one day, five different customers came in with deer strike damage. 'Tis the season, for certain.

I hit one a year or so ago. Fortunately, I’d slowed way down to go around a group of deer who were standing in my lane. Just as I was starting to accellerate around them, another deer came running from the left and crossed directly in front of me. I wasn’t going fast enough to kill her, but it smashed $800 worth of plastic parts on the front of my van. Not that I spent the $800. I bought 2 new headlights, and we taped the plastic parts together. It’s an old van - the repairs would have been more than the Blue Book value of the vehicle!!

Stoopit deer…

Yikes! There are so many of them. We normally know where the hot spots are, but Mr. K made an off-the-beaten-path stop and wasn’t expecting to see any deer right there (certainly wasn’t expecting to see one on the hood of the car!).

We’re guesstimating about $4K in damage. But of course! We just spent $1200 on an unrelated repair! The car is ten years old, but meticulously maintained.

Oh…did I mention a tree fell on this car last winter? Yeeeeaaaaahhhhh…

[VunderBob]

In my little corner of Nawth Carliner, it is said that if you go 2 years without hitting a deer, you’re an exceptional driver. Right now, 3 workdays out of five, I see at least one beside the road during the morning twilight commute time.

I haven’t hit one yet, having moved there in mid-July, but I have claimed 2 rabbits, a possum, and a skunk.

Scariest almost-hit was when I was doing 80+ MPH responding to a volunteer fire page at 2 AM… :eek: If I had hit them (3), I doubt that I’d be typing this now.

[Eve]

Glad the Mister is OK! Those deer are even more dangerous than ramming into hitch-hikers or politicians!

[Johnny_L.A]

Homer: D’oh!
Lisa: A deer!
Marge: A female deer!

[control-z]

I was at my child’s soccer game last year, and parents were comparing how many deer they had hit, some had hit 6!

I know probably half a dozen people who have hit deer. Or a deer hit them, a friend of mine was driving down the Interstate and one hit his driver’s side door.

[Lord_Il_Palazzo]

And here I was expecting some strange new take on Duck Duck Goose. What?

[Kalhoun]

@Eve

Glad the Mister is OK! Those deer are even more dangerous than ramming into hitch-hikers or politicians!

Truth be told, the thought crossed his mind that it could have been a person and not a deer. He said it happened so fast he didn’t actually see anything. Because we’re semi-rural (and the fact that the police didn’t return later in the evening to lock him up) we’re pretty sure it was a deer and not a straggler trick-or-treater.

Politicians? Feh. We should be so lucky.

[Bewildebeest]

My sister hit a deer a couple years ago in southern Maryland where she lives. The first person to stop didn’t ask if she was OK. They asked what was she going to do with the meat.

[Kalhoun]

@Bewildebeest

My sister hit a deer a couple years ago in southern Maryland where she lives. The first person to stop didn’t ask if she was OK. They asked what was she going to do with the meat.

I once new a guy who, after hitting a deer, jumped out of his car, slit the deer’s throat (to drain the blood…something about making it more edible that way) and…(shudder!) removed Bambi from her womb. :eek:

[Paul_in_Qatar]

Deer? Forget deer. Camels, now they are something. When you hit one they come through the windshield to visit. If you’re lucky you are getting fur out your teeth for days afterwards. If your not lucky you’re dead.

[carnivorousplant]

I saw six early in the morning last week. I hope that Daylight Savings puts their foraging and my driving to work on different schedules now.

[Subway_Prophet]

I have to tell this story. It’s trite, but still makes me chuckle.

My wife is driving me in her old Ford Escort along some back-mountain road in Utah one winter. (We’d been married for less than a year.) This car has a history of deer collisions, from when it was her brother’s. It’s twilight, and the snow is coming down hard. We’re doing like 40 MPH with 25 feet visibility, and I’m getting a little nervous.

So we’re chatting, and the topic of conversation is pet names people give each other. (You can probably see where this is going. Stick with me.)

We pass a couple of deer munching on snow-covered grass by the road. My wife (who was born and raised in the area) casually mentions to me (this outsider who still thinks mountains have a sharp pointy peak at the top), that when you see more than one deer up close like that, they’re likely part of a herd, and you need to be extra careful when driving through.

We pass a couple more standing on the other side of the road. Wife, going back to the previous conversation, remarks on how she likes it when I call her “sweetie”, but for some reason “honey” is not so welcome.

That’s about when I spot dozens of deer immediately in front of us, covering the road. My brain switches into full-on drowning-man panic mode, and I start thinking in monolyllabe words. I shout out… (wait for it…)

“DEER!”

Wife turns to me and says, “what? You’ve never called me dear…”

“No”, I say, “DEER!”

She looks forward, and sees the wall of pre-factory venison in front of us. I thought we were, at best, going to smash the car and end up walking through this snowstorm to the next town, and at worst, not have to worry about filling out an insurance report if you know what I mean. Lucky us, her panic mode is several magnitudes better than mine. She does this amazing half-slalom, half-donut thing with the car and manages to avoid hitting a single one.

We creep out of the herd and back down the road. She’s still just as cool as the air outside, but I’m still trying to figure out whether I pissed myself. It’s about a half hour before our speed is up past 10 MPH again.

Later, when we’re safely at our destination, she tells me, “you don’t have to call me ‘dear’ if you don’t want to. ‘Sweetie’ is just fine.”

[control-z]

@Paul in Saudi

Deer? Forget deer. Camels, now they are something. When you hit one they come through the windshield to visit. If you’re lucky you are getting fur out your teeth for days afterwards. If your not lucky you’re dead.

Deer do that too. Of course I’m sure camels are generally bigger than deer.

[Poysyn]

Hubby was travelling a few years ago and saw Greyhound bus that had hit a Moose , the animal had faced off against the bus and limped off (probably to die) in the bush.

The bus was completely out of commission, the first two rows of seats pushed back by the moose-shaped dent in the front of the bus. The busdriver was taken to hospital.

In a car you wouldn’t live to tell the tale.

[Oakminster]

Has anyone tried one of those deer whistle things? They mount on the car, and are supposed to emit a high pitched sound only audible to deer to scare them away…

[Kalhoun]

@Subway Prophet

I have to tell this story. It’s trite, but still makes me chuckle.

My wife is driving me in her old Ford Escort along some back-mountain road in Utah one winter. (We’d been married for less than a year.) This car has a history of deer collisions, from when it was her brother’s. It’s twilight, and the snow is coming down hard. We’re doing like 40 MPH with 25 feet visibility, and I’m getting a little nervous.

So we’re chatting, and the topic of conversation is pet names people give each other. (You can probably see where this is going. Stick with me.)

We pass a couple of deer munching on snow-covered grass by the road. My wife (who was born and raised in the area) casually mentions to me (this outsider who still thinks mountains have a sharp pointy peak at the top), that when you see more than one deer up close like that, they’re likely part of a herd, and you need to be extra careful when driving through.

We pass a couple more standing on the other side of the road. Wife, going back to the previous conversation, remarks on how she likes it when I call her “sweetie”, but for some reason “honey” is not so welcome.

That’s about when I spot dozens of deer immediately in front of us, covering the road. My brain switches into full-on drowning-man panic mode, and I start thinking in monolyllabe words. I shout out… (wait for it…)

“DEER!”

Wife turns to me and says, “what? You’ve never called me dear…”

“No”, I say, “DEER!”

She looks forward, and sees the wall of pre-factory venison in front of us. I thought we were, at best, going to smash the car and end up walking through this snowstorm to the next town, and at worst, not have to worry about filling out an insurance report if you know what I mean. Lucky us, her panic mode is several magnitudes better than mine. She does this amazing half-slalom, half-donut thing with the car and manages to avoid hitting a single one.

We creep out of the herd and back down the road. She’s still just as cool as the air outside, but I’m still trying to figure out whether I pissed myself. It’s about a half hour before our speed is up past 10 MPH again.

Later, when we’re safely at our destination, she tells me, “you don’t have to call me ‘dear’ if you don’t want to. ‘Sweetie’ is just fine.”

I always go into Ultra Panic Mode and start screamin’ “Deer! Deer! Deer!” Mr. K says I sound like the theme song from Deliverance.

[chowder]

Seems to me you Merkins are danged unlikely what with all these wild critters rampaging around all over the place.
I hit a fox once…oh and a rabbit ( not at the same time.)

My trusty car was undamaged.

[Musicat]

@Oakminster

Has anyone tried one of those deer whistle things? They mount on the car, and are supposed to emit a high pitched sound only audible to deer to scare them away…

Don’t work.

The manufacturers claim that two European studies proved that the whistles work. Not so. They were initially tried in Europe about 25 years ago but research did not prove them to be successful. Now they are being sold in the United States with European claims. The study from Finland, which the advertisers refer to, states that from all of the experiments conducted “it was unsure that the animals were not disturbed by the approach itself, so that the whistle sound was the only disturbing factor.” The second study from Switzerland concludes that the whistling sound, which is well within the human hearing range, is so weak that it is overlaid by the noise of the moving vehicle. A scientific advisory panel from the World Society for the Protection of Animals states, after extensive review, that there is no known data “that shows that such devices can actually stop an animal crossing the road, which is the main purpose of the device.”

So if you hit a deer with one of those thingies, it only rips off the hide a little better than a smooth fender.