About 8PM last night I was driving along a little country lane with 6ft hedgerows on either side. Suddenly a dark shadow appeared on my left and I hit the brakes hard. A fallow deer had leapt over the hedge and landed a few feet in front of me. It stood there for 30 seconds or so with that classic ‘deer in headlights’ look and then trotted off.
I started to move off again and I had barely moved a cars length when another deer did the same thing. This one landed so close that she brushed my bonnet with her tail.
I’m used to the deer around here and you see them by the side of the road several times a week. It’s also quite common to have to brake hard as one runs in front of you, or is standing in the middle of the road on a bend. But if they’ve taken hints from Rudolph and can now fly, I will have to start thinking 3 dimensionally!
When I read your thread title, I thought of this: My father was driving in a wooded area behind another car. That car hit a deer, which was flung up in the air and landed on the hood of my father’s car! The windshield was smashed and front totalled, but my dad was not injured, by a matter of inches. Talk about raining deer!!
I would love to be somewhere I could see deer all the time; leaping out of nowhere whilst I’m driving down the road, not so much. Also, I have never seen a deer leap IRL, so if you could kindly video it next time it would be greatly appreciated
I watched a group of white tailed does in a rural area, running through back yards and leaping over eight foot chain link fencing as you or I would step over a crack in the sidewalk.
They seem to show up in threes around my place. So, if one crosses in front of me, I stop if I can’t see the other two. I figured that abiding by that rule has saved me at least 3 accidents.
When my daughter was a tween she was riding in the front passenger seat of the car I was driving and one jumped over a hedge and hit our car in her side window. I had never heard her scream so loud.
The deer did thousands of dollars in damage to the side of the car and ran off like nothing had happened.
That would be awesome. Also, just in case it sounded like it, I wasn’t challenging JSwans’suse of the word leaping; I know they do this I’ve just never been fortunate enough to see it up close and personal. Also also, I cannot hear anyone mention deer without supressing the urge to say “a leaf eating, doe eyed, little deer?” a la Marissa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny.
I live in an area where deer collisions are depressingly common. I’d managed to avoid such for a very long time, but fate caught up to me last year in the form of a doe, 30 minutes past sunset, doing 30 mph straight into the side of my van. She got up and ran off, though I have to believe she wasn’t feeling real well the next day.
It’s a bad time of year to be a deer. They’re out and about just as everyone is driving home from work, so there are a lot of casualties. Haven’t seen any big ones dead lately, but I’ve passed 5 or 6 dead muntjacs in the last week. These are about the size of a medium dog and as dumb as anything.
The field they leapt from is quite steep, so the hedge was probably only 2 or 3 feet higher than their launching off point. They must have been confused to discover the 6 foot drop at the other side.
I’ve been lucky not to hit one so far. But I’ve killed my share of bunnies and peasants since moving here 20 years ago. Sorry, I mean pheasants.
I also follow the rule that deer are always in groups. If one runs in front of me, I stop and wait for its friends. There are always suicidal friends.
We did have one incident here where a big buck jumped in front of a small bus on campus. He was trying to shake off the mountain lion that was in pursuit.
I have also had to dodge the odd horse or steer. Bison on a memorable occasion. Once a bear who seemed to be too young to be playing in traffic. No Big Foot yet.
A previous house I lived in had a five-foot retaining wall in the back, behind which was a steep slope. Deer would wander about the slope and yard. I startled one on the patio once, and it more or less teleported onto the top of the retaining wall – I didn’t even see it tense from a standing start.
