I got burnt out on Mythbusters a while ago and haven’t seen one in years. Maybe I should tune back in. :smack:
A buddy of mine is a sheriff in our (rural) county. He has put quite a few injured deer out of their misery. ( I guess he’s allowed.) He shoots them right behind the ear.
When I hit (and instantly killed) the deer, the Wisconsin state trooper said, “Do you want the deer? Legally, you have rights to it, since you killed it.” “Ummm, thanks, but I don’t think I have any way to get it home” (my car was drivable, but it was also a little Mazda Protege).
Hit a deer with my truck once. After 2K worth of repairs, I purchased a very nice grill guard. Since I bought the grill guard, I’ve two deer run into the SIDE of my truck.
Dumb deer.
And around here, if they get there within a certain amount of time, they’ll take it in the trunk of the squad car somewhere to get it skinned and cleaned up and then take the meat to the food pantry/homeless shelter where they’ll refrigerate it and serve it over the next few days.
Glad you’re all right. We hit a 14 or 16 point buck last summer in the minivan. Damn was that scary. He sped up to hit it, so it bounced. Nearly destroyed the entire car; the radiator was leaking and the whole front end was completely destroyed, axles broken and I couldn’t get out of my side. The repair bill was 1k less than the total replacement value of the car.
ETA:
That’s bizarre, that can’t possibly be PA law not to kill it because it was clear from our situation that they had a whole procedure outlined; maybe they only do it if they can salvage the meat. Our deer was shot by the North Versailles cops no more than 10 minutes after our accident and quickly loaded into the trunk one squad car so they could get it cleaned up and refridgerated.
The navigation lady kept her cool though. 
The antlered bastards know.
Deer seem to like certain cars. With my Ford Fiesta I hit two and had plenty of almost-crashes. They were just running straight to my car. When I drove my sister’s car or now my new car they are running away.
I hit a deer maybe 3 years ago on a state road near the IL/WI border. We were slowing down to stop at a red light, so by the time I hit him, I was only going maybe 5 mph. Barely glanced him - he ran away, and there was no damage to the car, not even a scratch.
I was pretty shaken up, though, so I pulled into the gas station on the other side of the intersection, both to gather my wits and to call my friend whose house we were going to - she is a huge animal person, so I knew she’d know who to call about the injured deer.
Much to my surprise, she couldn’t have cared less about the deer - “they’re like forest rats around here,” was her first reaction. But then she was a little preoccupied, and I didn’t know why until we left the gas station to continue on our way to her house. I’d heard a loud noise while we were parked in the gas station, and apparently in the few minutes we’d been stopped, a semi had overturned, blocking most of the road we’d been traveling on. We discovered later that it had been double-stacked with horses on their way to a slaughterhouse in Canada. My friend is on the horse rescue phone tree and had just gotten a call and left her own Hallooween party to go rescue injured horses that had to be cut out of the trailer; she had nightmares about the carnage at the scene for months afterward.
Of course, when we finally got to her house and explained to another friend what had happened, his first response was “so where’s the venison?”