At 1:48 a.m. while driving an overall pristine 2016 Dodge Grand Caravan with about 12000 kilometers on it southbound on Quebec Autoroute 15, about a mile north of the U.S. border, I was quite genuinely surprised when the hood of the van abruptly slammed open, shattering the windshield and incidentally reducing my visibility (which despite the late hour wasn’t that bad, with the highway lamp-posts and my own headlights and such) to zero. After a momentary and somewhat radical period of psychological re-adjustment, I brought the vehicle to a controlled stop without leaving my lane, turned on my hazard lights, and stepped out of my now-rather impressively reconfigured conveyance to find a recently-deceased ungulate of the family cervidae, probably a white-tail but I lack sufficient expertise to be certain. Whatever it was, it was large enough to require a more-than-trivial effort for myself and a friendly RCMP officer to drag its carcass (long enough nose-to-tail to stretch across nearly half a highway lane) to the shoulder.
It occurs to me that this is the first mammal I’ve personally killed, albeit unintentionally and would have happily kept my streak going if the stupid beast hadn’t panicked at the last possible millisecond and leapt from a dark and grass-filled highway median in precisely the worst possible direction. Had it just frozen in place and hid, I would have passed blissfully unaware of its existence, and not have had to spend part of my morning filling out an accident report.
And the airbag didn’t even go off, which several people commented on, though I guess that’s a good thing since I might have ended up similarly uninjured but with a broken pair of glasses.
Just about 20 years ago and while on vacation, I briefly met a guy from New Jersey (we were at a hunting club in Montana, of all places) who described deer as “rats with antlers”. I begin to understand his disdain. What bugs me more is I had been extra careful to avoid hitting skunks and cats, and I’d seen several of them on these roads already, alive and dead.
Anyone else had an abrupt baptism in the inelastic kinetics of deer-car physics?
And that’s why deer are the scariest thing on the road!!! I’m so glad you made it out OK, there have been FAR worse stories…
My first mammal was a bird. I was working at a car dealership at the time and I was using the company van to drive a customer somewhere. We were driving down the road a-ok when a bird falls out of a tree right in front of us. I’ll never forget the “bump-bump” sound as if I was driving over a crack in the road.
I must have reacted to the weirdness because after a beat I heard the customer say “uhhh, I think it was, like, sick or something”. We both chuckled and that broke up the awkwardness of it.
Probably not just yours. Because in the entire history of zoology, no bird was ever a mammal until yours.
My first mammalian roadkill was a cute little skunk who decided to cross the highway at 9 PM in deep-rural Kansas just as my Pinto was coming down the road. Little guy never looked up, never sped up, never did nothing until I heard the thump of his cute stripey black-and-white body on the inside of the driver-side front wheel well. And then the smell… the smell I had to take with me all the way back into Nebraska, and beyond.
My first mammal was a squirrel. I was 16, driving through Griffith Park in LA. I pulled into the Ranger’s Station, in tears. They were lovely and did not make me feel like an idiot for crying over a squirrel. One of them went out to check on the health of said squirrel and then came back to report on its unfortunate demise. They sent me on my way with kleenex and sympathy.
Did you keep the deer? When my uncle hit one in Ontario the RCMP officer told him that he could take it home if he was so inclined. My uncle told me that the side of the deer that didn’t connect with his bumper was very tasty.
I think the first mammal I hit was also a deer. I had a 1967 Chevrolet BelAir and was going to back to college. Smacked a deer, got out and to survey the damage to the car and there wasn’t any at all. Couldn’t say the same for the deer though. Dragged the deer off to the side of the road and went on my merry way.
Quebec doesn’t have mule deer so it’s a white tail. If it were a moose or elk, you’d know.
I’ve probably unintentionally killed half a dozen animals by car before 18. Jackrabbits, skunks, birds. And more since, probably many I didn’t even notice (kangaroo rats seem nimble, but they love cutting it close).
Squirrel. Big rocks that fall off of a cliffside right in front of you don’t count, but one totaled my car once. I feel your pain.
I knew someone, once (same area), who had a deer drop (or jump) off of a cliff on top of their car. Buckled the roof completely. The insurance company didn’t believe her at first.
I’ve never hit a deer but my brother hit so many of them he decided to put “deer whistles” on his truck. Supposedly they make a noise when you’re driving that warns the deer to get off the road. He said they didn’t work.
A few years ago I was on the freeway off ramp near my house in the US Midwest and had slowed to about 45mph. The area had a bunch of woods about and deer were fairly common. It was approaching dusk in early Dec. IOW feeding time in mating season.
As I came around the curve I saw 2 deer cross from left to right maybe 100 yards in front of me, so I slowed a bunch more, looking for more deer. Then suddenly there was a big thump and my vehicle jumped sideways. I was driving a late 90’s big Ford Bronco (wiki) that weighed a good 4500 lbs. I had seen nothing. In the rearview I saw a deer pick itself up off the road and continue unsteadily left to right.
I stopped and found my left rear quarter panel caved in and the left taillight broken. I also found a hunk of deer hide wedged between the left rear tire and wheel. The shop ended up having to de-mount the tire off the wheel to get the hide out.
That’s right; I didn’t hit the deer. The deer ran headlong into the side of my truck. He hit me. Since the bastard was uninsured my insurance ended up eating the $1500 repair bill. I didn’t even have the satisfaction of killing the reckless pedestrian as he so richly deserved.
There’s an interstate off ramp in a town down on I-90 that is by a stand of trees. One year the deer in that stand of trees were so plentiful the interstate at that spot looked like a slaughterhouse from all the deer jumping out in front of vehicles. There was blood everywhere.
I have hit So many deer, I don’t know the number, seriously! I hit 2 at once,one time. Totalled probably 3 vehicles. My last vehicle was a jeep Wrangler, my hubs put a cattle guard on it thinking that might do the trick. But I hit a big buck last winter it flipped the jeep off the road,and I hung upside down for 2 hrs before the rare passerby called the police. I had a broken jaw and and messed up neck and broken collar bones out of the deal! Car was totalled! I have a ford Escape now. I have clipped 2 deer already with it. I hate deer and especially during deer season. A rutting buck has no brains and will run into the road with abandon. I swear deer will kill me yet, they got it out for me!
