'zactly. The one that ran into the side of my truck was #3. I had already slowed a bit so #s 1 & 2 could cross farther ahead.
Never hit a deer, although a few have leapt in front of my car over the years. Narrowly missed one black cow on a dark rainy road one night. And driving back from the Grampions to Melbourne at dusk, enough roos bounced in front of the car to turn me paranoid for the next 150km or so. Bad enough driving on the left on incredibly narrow, dark roads without overgrown suicidal rats leaping out of the bush.
Goddam Australian wildlife!
I’ve hit two kangaroos (and several near misses - those little bastards are fast and love to try and race cars), an emu, a goat (while driving a bus) and very narrowly missed several wombats - which are the animal equivalent of a small boulder.
One of the kangaroo incidents occurred late one night as I was driving home from a friends farm. Lots of 'roo’s around one particular spot so I slowed down to walking speed (literally 5km/h) when a small roo came flying out of the darkness, landed on top of the hood and bounced away into the scrub on the other side of the road. $3000 damage to the car, barely a bruise on the offending marsupial!
I have not hit one yet but I know it is just a matter of time. I try to pay close attention and go slower than the limit, but I still am sometimes startled by a deer nearby. I dread hitting a moose and just hope if I am crushed that I die.
Now they’ve put up a Bear Crossing sign on one section of 89 – deer, moose, bears, oh my!
First time was just bizarro! I had an Aerostar van at the time and I was going to work in the dark of the morning down country roads. I came up on a herd of deer standing in the middle of my lane. I saw them in plenty of time to stop, and even when I was right there, they didn’t move. I didn’t want to lay on the horn because there were some houses around and it was stupid early. So I decided to drive around them. Just as I was accelerating into the left lane, another deer came running across the lane from the field on the left, and I hit my brakes and hit the stupid deer at the same instant. I lost my headlights, but in the glow of the parking lights, I saw it get up and they all ran away. Fortunately for me, I still had high beams, so I turned around as soon as I was able and went home.
Apart from the headlights, the only damage was a bunch of broken plastic which would have cost $800+ to replace. We made do with a little tape, since the van had close to 200K miles on it.
The second collision was in my Scion xA. I was coming down a hill, again in the dark of the morning, and I saw movement out of the corner of my left eye. I got on my brakes, but it wasn’t enough to keep me from clipping the deer with the left front of the car. I still had headlights, but it was obvious the one on the left was wonky. I pulled over to check it out, and again, returned home. That little fiasco came to over $3K, but we just had to come up with the deductible. The repair was as good as new (the car was close to new anyway.)
Thanks to these two adventures, I’m very nervous driving this time of year. Just yesterday on my way to work down a much busier route, I saw a deer climbing up the slope on the right side of the road. Don’t trust 'em…
I’ve never hit a deer, but some of my cousins have. One has hit several deer, in fact. I suspect she’s not the best driver (based on many other incidents), though I don’t know if that had anything do with it or not.
I’ve hit 3, and a fourth hit me–a huge buck lowered his rack and charged at my Blazer’s headlights. Several grand in damage. I had a friend hit a deer; deer did $600 in damage to the front end, air bag did $3000 in damage to dashboard, windshield, side window, etc.
Those assholes should be hunted to extinction. I don’t think it’d hurt the ecosystem at all.
A few months back, a yearling deer attempted to perform Suicide By Rabbit ('07 VW Rabbit), luckily it was only a glancing blow that popped a piece of rubber trim on the front bumper, drivers side, out of its channel, the deer bounded back into the woods, to try another day
Stupid deer…
To make matters worse, we have 50 acres of land with a resident almost-tame population of deer, at least 8-10 of them, mom likes to watch them and considers them almost wild pets…
Yet she also hates them, as they are a vector for Lyme disease, and we lost Dad to chronic Lyme a few years back
I’ve been trying to get her to warm to the idea of me hunting/harvesting a few during deer season, but she’s been resistant for a while, however her resistance is fading…
If she ends up hitting one and wrecking her beloved Honda CR-V (2014) she’ll most likely ask to borrow one of my guns and join me on a hunt…
Totaled an Audi on one. Never drove a Fox again. Just seemed like bad mojo after that.
I have been saved from hitting a deer by the idiocy of others.
I was driving back on base - late for barracks check during my trades training when I was passed, at high speed on a blind corner of a little road the winds through the forest outside of CFS Alliston.
I slowed down as he passed me and I came around the corner to see a fairly young deer go flying across the road after being struck by his car, hit a lovely woman who was riding her bike and end up lying on the side of the road. Luckily the base MP’s took a while to respond and thus I was excused from being late since I was a witness to the accident.
Guy in front of me lost the front left quarter of his car and spent a lot more time with the MP’s. All in all, I’m calling it a win.
My mom and dad were out driving and they hit a deer , dad decided it take the deer home rather then leave it on the road and put it in the trunk .
They got pulled over by a police and he told dad to open his trunk b/c someone
reported he hit a person and put the body in the trunk! Dad said he hit a deer and was going to take it home to eat. The police took the deer and said it was going given to a soup kitchen , I bet the police kept it for himself. This was years ago so a person much had seen a police car on the road and reported my parents.
Oh, and I forgot this one – a friend had a couple of wild turkeys fly up in front of her, damaging her hood and breaking the windshield!
Almost got a black bear once too.
Ran over a dead black bear in the fog at night. The next day I had to hose out a couple of my wheels and undercarriage.
I’ve hit a deer twice. The first time I was driving a full sized truck, headed out deer hunting funnily enough. Cruising down the road towards where we were going to hunt when the silly creature jumped out of the brush and bound across the road just in time to get caught by my front bumper, grill and hood. No damage to the truck but the deer was hamstrung. Not how I thought I would fill my tag that day.
The second time, I was driving during the evening-move-to-water in a ford contour on a road that runs along a river. I was driving slower than the posted night-time deer crossing hazard speed limit because I lived on this road and knew very well the danger of deer and … some dipwad bimbo in a jacked up, curb hopping, grocery getter, on coming to me, with high beams and halogen fog lights lit up, had stopped to let the deer cross. I grazed a deer with my left fender and drivers side mirror resulting in a bit of wrinkled metal and bent mirror, cause I was blinded by her lights.
I’ve never hit a deer. But I don’t live around deer. However, I have also never hit a kangaroo, which would be the equivalent of hitting a deer.
I’ve never hit one yet. You get pretty good at spotting them living in Ohio.
Well, then you can curve off of me, as apparently deer believe (with some justification…) that I’m the smartest human alive, because I’ve hit 4 deer—in 3 different incidents.
Yep, they felt so threatened by me that their overlords once sent two of them to take me out simultaneously.
The first deer that felt it needed some external tenderizing was a small doe that jumped out in front of my little 2wd pickup when I was driving a little backwoods 2-lane road. It survived the impact, but was laying in the ditch very much alive. I went to the nearest house and asked the owner if I could call the sheriff’s office and request a trooper to come dispatch it (this was before cell phones were ubiquitous).
The fourth one was a mile or two from my parents home a few years ago. I was with my kids and rounded a bend in the road (small, country 2-lane blacktop) and one of the little fuckers jumped out in front of me again. I don’t remember the impact much, because moments later my 3-year-old exclaims at the top of his voice WOW, DAD!!! DEER CAN FLY!!! That took away all my anger in one fell swoop.
But the best one was when I hit two simultaneously. It was dark, and just a few hundred yards from where #4 met its end. It was raining hard, maybe 6pm. I rounded a corner and there in my headlights there were two deer crossing the road, nose to asshole. I hit one broadside with the grill of my car, the other I clipped its head with my driver’s side headlight. Killed them both instantly. I pulled over, one headlight completely gone (as in, ripped from the vehicle), the other pointing at a weird angle. I drove carefully back to my dad’s, and we straightened the one headlight out enough I could drive home. However the one thing that sticks out the most in my mind about that incident?
As I pulled over, I noticed a car was approaching. They had witnessed the impact. As I’m standing there in the poring rain, looking at a pile of broken glass and metal sitting on my mangled, blood-covered bumper this car stops next to me. It’s a 4-door sedan filled with teenage girls. The driver leans out and asks me if I wanted the two carcasses, because if not they would take them home to feed to their dogs. WTF??? I told them they were free to have them, although when I drove home some hours later they were still on sides of the road.
Please tell us that was not at Christmas! :eek: