Along the main highway between Portland and the Oregon Coast, there was an incident More than a dozen elk were killed early Thursday when a Banks man drove his truck through a small group attempting to cross Highway 26 … (the driver was uninjured in the crash …. The salvageable elk meat is reportedly being sent to food banks and senior centers in Astoria, Tillamook, and the Portland metro area.
Kind of dented up his truck. But it was an '04, time for a new one. The driver has DUIs on his record, but is not believed to have been drinking. Or even speeding.
I live in a city, but it is a little city, and we are never too far from wildlife. Tonight, I backed the car out of the driveway, drove up the street–and met a group of deer. They were crossing the street, and I stopped for them.
They went on their way, and I went on mine. “Deer in the headlights” doesn’t begin to describe what I saw. I only wish I had the presence of mind to get my phone out and take a photo.
I did not harm the deer, and they did not harm my truck. I went on my way when they passed. But gosh! I’d only ever seen deer that close up in the zoo.
A dozen or so years ago I had a close encounter with a male elk on Highway 191 north of West Yellowstone MT. We saw each other at the same moment, each did our best evasive maneuver, and missed colliding by about 6 inches.
The image of this huge animal, with antlers that looked to be every bit of 4 ft high, is burned in my brain. A collision would have been Very Bad for us both.
Deer are becoming more and more common in urban North America. When I came to my own small city thirty plus years ago they were a very rare sight. First year I was here I was on a bus passing the psychiatric hospital and there was a deer crossing in front of us. The driver was so excited he opened the door and yelled “hey everyone, look! There’s a deer!” (Poor creature, I thought later, realizing where exactly where we were; probably thought it was a deer.)
Today? Deer are a dime a dozen. There’s a deer crossing sign two blocks from me and I often see them in walks around the neighborhood—sometimes even in my own back yard. How times have changed.
No elk, though. I know there are herds in PA but they haven’t made it to this part of NYS yet.
I’ve seen deer cautiously walking along my sidewalk in my new neighborhood more than once. Oddly, I never see any carcasses on the major road way not far from here.
A “half-deer” is half a deer. The other half is elsewhere. Where he lives, there a numerous semis on the road, and most of them have [del]deer splitters[/del] great big brush guards on the front.
They are big, but they are not made to withstand collisions. Their legs in particular are a bad design flaw from a highway safety point of view. Hit a group bunched together for protection, and you will snap a lot of legs. You don’t even have to hit all of them with the car, just side swipe one and it will get enough energy to crash into a couple of others.
Remember, you don’t need to kill it to “kill” it. Just a broken leg is a death sentence.
I remember standing on a streetcorner in Banff, Alberta, reading a large sign that said something along the lines of, “It is mating season. The elk are ornery and aggressive. For your safety, stay at least 50 metres away from them.”
I turned around. There was an elk 20 metres away, looking at me.