[quote=“CalMeacham, post:6, topic:843369”]
Years before i met her, my wife Pepper Mill literally hit a deer into the next town with her car.
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Mrs. Plant (v.3.0) did the same in between our relationships. She called a friend who took the meat.
While watching a doe when I lived in the woods, I almost stepped on the fawn hidden in the leaves who she was leading me away from. I thought a bomb had gone off. The reason I didn’t scream like a girl was that I was frightened speechless.
Well, he did carry on as though I had caught him in the act … of … something.
I saw at least a dozen deer while driving 30 miles or so last night, including 2 that strolled across the road and totally ignored me. Had to completely stop for the second one.
Ever since someone torched our house with us in it, I get twitchy about hearing sounds outside, with mrAru working evenings I am here alone til about midnight. We have some motion detection lighting on 2 sides of the barn so we don’t have lights on outside all the time.
My habit is to turn on my phone, call a friend to chat via bluretooth earpiece, shove my feet into a pair of shitkickers, add a belly band holster that holds my daily carry and my phone, grab crutches and head outside with a flashlight. I normally don’t bother with any lights right away outside, but as soon as I round the end of the barn I click on the flashlight. I have one of those fairly highpower ‘tactical’ sort that we got as a christmas present from ghu knows who …
more times than not I am face to face with one or more deer grazing though I did startle 4 goats that ran away from the neighbor, both bambi and the goats are after the salt block we had for our sheep =) It isn’t unknown to come outside in the morning to find a small flock of turkeys in our field, or some of hte feral guineas or chickens around either.
It is not just deer hunting season. It’s rutting season. As the days get shorter those tiny little brains turn much of their limited processing power to getting laid. For the bucks that also means being more aggressive as they are fighting over access to does.
The does will go into heat a second time, four weeks later, if they aren’t bred the first time they go into heat. They aren’t all on the same schedule. Add on the early jockeying for mates before the first does go into heat and the deer are more active and traveling around more for close to 3 months. We just happen to drop a bunch of predators into the woods thanks to deer season in the middle of that. The deer are going to be more stupid for the entire period even outside of the days of deer season though. They are more active and dangerous even in areas with little or no hunting.
Hunting season is the riskiest part of the rut. It is useful to remember that the risk from deer is up for pretty much the entirety of autumn. They are out cruising the woods for a piece of (white)tail and less concerned about “trivial” things like cars. It is not until second/late rut gets over in early to mid December that they get back to normal levels of stupid.
Once in while, they havetheir revenge.
I like to brag that I actually bagged a wild turkey with my (future) wife’s car while I was tooling around CT. The damn thing just flew out of the woods across the interstate and I caught it with the grill. I didn’t go back to check on it, but I’m 100% certain it didn’t get up and hobble away. Scared the crap out of me because it was below my line of sight and so I had no idea at all what I hit until I looked back and saw it (still airborne) being tossed to the side of the road.
Three separate fatals on the main north-south state highway yesterday, two of which involved deer.
Gonna be a long winter…
Oh, yes. I know all this.
Deer in my neck of the woods are actively trying to kill me. It may be rut and lust in their pea brains but it’s murderous intent in mine.
Mr.Wrekker and Son-of-a-wrek and the deer camp denizens are getting their bag limits. There are still plenty on the roads.
And may I add “bears”?
My sister and brother-in-law live in one of the outer suburbs of Sault Sainte Marie, Ontario. Their house is only a few hundred metres from the literal edge of town, where the suburb ends and fields begin.
Many week days, my brother-in-law goes out to start his truck at three in the morning, to be on the road early to pick up a load at the mine. He has encountered bears in the yard, and now maintains a close watch for them both when starting the truck, and when pulling out onto the road. There’s a reason those big trucks have bush bars on the front…
I’m glad I don’t live where moose roam. They’re basically a half ton slab of meat on stilts. Hit one in a car, you take out the legs and now you have a 500 lb ass cheek crashing through the windshield.
My husband tells the story of when he was a new driver, while he was driving home he saw a pair of eyes, so stopped the vehicle. Dumb deer came and head-butted the passenger side door which was never the same.
Year later we met a deer just outside of town. Did a great job on the pop-up headlamp, hood and side panels, and managed to leave crap and hair stuck in the passenger side mirror.
Due to the crap and hair, there was no problems with the insurance adjuster, even though we had failed to get a police report.
It had occurred to me that I didn’t bother getting a police report. Car was driveable and I didn’t see any reason to hang about. Came home and called the insurance company and they didn’t require any ‘proof’ beyond my word. Now it’s in the shop and they just approved the repair. With some luck, I’ll have the car back by the end of next week, salvaging the father/son weekend and official key handing off ceremony. Now, if I could just manage to avoid another such incident, I’ll reconsider the personal vendetta against the furry bastards.
Having seen no small number of demi-carcasses along the shoulders particularly in Montana, I have taken to calling those bars “deer splitters”. The one critter I have yet to see hit by traffic, though, is a pronghorn. Those beasties are fast, and apparently pretty smart.
Sure, go ahead 
I can only imagine how bad it’d be if whitetail deer had rear legs like kangaroo…
Does Australia have larger ruminants like moose (Moose bites kan be pretty nasti!), think of a deer on ultra-mega steroids, moose can take out entire cars
Oh yes, moose… My friend’s parents once totaled their '69 Mercedes against a moose on Weslemkoon Lake Rd south of Bancroft, Ontario. The moose walked away.
I surprised a moose once, walking along a trail in Algonquin Park. It was huge. Its shoulders were well above my head. Fortunately, it walked back into the bushes as I backed away.
My sister told me once that a moose had been seen walking down the main street of Sault Sainte Marie, a city of around 70 000 people. This is not that uncommon. Here are two incidents, neither of which is the one I was thinking of.
I once took a bus* north from Quebec City to Jonquière, around a three-hour trip. Much of it was through wilderness that was almost mountainous. The highway was fenced against moose, with warning signs everywhere. The fences had one-way gates that led outwards, so that it would be much easier for animals to escape the highway than to get back in.
Quebec intercity bus travel is much nicer than Ontario intercity bus travel. Of course, with the ongoing slow collapse* of Greyhound Canada after it bought out most of its competitors, Quebec intercity bus travel can be much nicer than Ontario intercity bus travel simply by existing. There are more and more places that have no intercity bus travel at all.
**An example of Greyhound’s stupidity: Greyhound removed it’s agency and stop from Belleville, Ontario’s city bus terminal, where all the other buses stop… Including competing intercity buses… to the “Ten Acre Truck Stop” beyond the edge of town by a freeway exit. You can’t even get there by local bus. You have to drive or take a taxi. This has a huge deterrent effect, as the people who are likely to take a bus are likely to want to take the local buses as well.
It’s a lot easier, faster, and more comfortable to take the train.
Charlottesville has a noticeable deer problem. When I’m driving home from work at night, I am always on high alert for the little bastards, because my typical route has some stretches that are rather woody and dark. I got hit a few years ago (oddly enough, in a far more well-lit place). Two of them tried to cross the road in front of me. The adult cleared the front of my car just fine, but the younger one introduced itself most unpleasantly to the driver’s side. Later, when folks around here were thinking about passing an urban hunting law to help get rid of them, I really wanted to get me a bow and take a little revenge.
I once opened my front and was held captive by a mother doe and her two fawns. Held captive figuratively because they were so beautiful, and literally because I knew if I moved one finger the doe would come at me full throttle. She looked up, spotted me, and bound away, followed by the fawns.