Anyone ever hit a deer??

[vajerzy]

Last night I'm driving home with my little girl on Rt. 6, a nice open country road with 2 lanes each way seperated by a grassy median. 4 deer run across the east bound lane and come into the westbound lane- it's dusk and I don't see them until they're in my lane......I'm doing 60 mph and I hit the second one right in the chest area with my right front of the car....the deer is now ahead of me going 60 mph, hits the road and starts skidding into the shoulder area- I pass it and all I see out of my rear mirror are legs going every which way........the other ones made it.

I pull over and my little girl is scared but ok- I'm ok.....

My car (1995 Mazda 626) is smashed all to heck on the right side- hood crumpled, radiator torn away from the mount, lights gone, quarter panel dented and twisted...engine slightly askewed....airbags didn't deploy thank goodness......the deer didn't really hit the bumper I guess.....could have been much worse with us being hit.......anyway the car was totalled since damages (~4,000) exceeded the worth of the car ($2500)...so now I have a check for $2000 (with deductable taken out) and no car. Bummer since it was running so well and I take good care of it and it was paid off 5 years ago.....was planning on keeping that for a long time.

There is SO many deer in the area where I live and hunting does nothing to dwindle the numbers- more and more I hear about this happening and see the results on the roads- now I'm a statistic.

Anyway- so has this happened to you??

[Big Wheel]

Ouch! Several decades ago one of my dad's cousins hit a moose. His car was totaled, too.

There are signs all over Maine and New Hampshire warning drivers to watch out for moose. I think they cause quite a few fatalities (of the people, not just the moose).

BTW, glad you and your daughter are ok.

Edited March 25, 2004 by Big Wheel

[connoisseur series500]

Sorry to hear the news.

It must be traumatic to hit a deer. I ran over a squirrel once a few months ago and I thought about if for a long time afterwards. Our cars are death machines.

[Jazzmoose]

Ouch! Several decades ago one of my dad's cousins hit a moose. His car was totaled, too.

...and I still walk with a limp.

[Free For All]

I haven't had any experiences other than hitting the occasional squirrel or bird (or armadillo when I lived in Austin), but it just makes me sick when I see a dead pet, especially a dog, on the side of the road. It makes me think of the family that's wondering where old Rex is, and I almost start bawlin'.

Excuse me.....I have to go hug our dog now...........

..and vaj, glad you and your daughter are OK! That's got to be a traumatic experience.

Edited March 25, 2004 by Free For All

[BeBop]

I've hit one on my (fast-moving) bicycle: I lost

I hit one on a motorcycle: tie

I hit one in a car: (Results roughly as described above by vajerzy)

While I seldom drive any more, I still worry about this when I'm back in the SF Bay Area where all the above-listed incidents occurred. My strategy now is to remember that I'm on their territory and drive - if driving is necessary - as if there're a deer around every turn. Also remember that deer seldom travel alone and young deer blindly follow their parents/elders into danger (across roads and such). All that said, sorry to hear about your incident. As we've now both proven, sometimes sh*t happens, as much as we'd rather it didn't. Having your daughter in the car made this one especially tough; sorry to hear about that in particular.

[Dan Gould]

Ouch! Several decades ago one of my dad's cousins hit a moose. His car was totaled, too.

...and I still walk with a limp.

A funny deer & traffic related story:

My mother is a political big-wig in our small Connecticut town. At a public meeting to discuss the deer/traffic situation, a woman spoke from the audience to say that "what the deer need is more 'deer crossing' signs to know where to cross."

My mother asked, incredulously, "Do you think the deer read the signs so they know where to cross the street?"

Being made to look foolish, the woman was not very happy, so she struck back at my mother in a way that might have been logical to her but was really even more foolish than her suggestion. She said:

"Well! I've never been so insulted! I'll have you know I voted for your last pay raise and I'll never do that again!"

(What this foolish resident didn't know is that aside from the First Selectman (Mayor), no member of a governing board in this town gets paid a dime for their work.)

My mother looked directly at her and said, "Madam, I have served in town government for over 20 years, and I have never received a single solitary paycheck."

That shut her up good.

Edited March 25, 2004 by Dan Gould

[Hardbopjazz]

On Long Island where I live, the deer have gotten so use to people feeding them that they run up to your car in some areas. Each spring along the shore line the county where I live post signs on how many deer were hit during the winter as a result of people feeding them. This winter the number was 29. There was also a sign saying 25 cars were totalled because of this. I've seen them while driving. They look at you from the side of the road, wondering if you're going to stop and give them food.

7 years ago while driving through Montana I almost his a buffalo. Just missed it. They don't move when they see you. The buffalo was anout the size of the car I was in. I'm pretty sure I would have lost if I hit him.

[7/4]

Another funny deer & traffic related story:

My mother is a political big-wig in our small Connecticut town. At a public meeting to discuss the deer/traffic situation, a woman who appeared to be only a short-term resident of the town rose to say that the answer lay in putting up more "deer crossing" signs.

My mother asked, incredulously, "Do you think the deer read the signs so they know where to cross the street?"

The signs are for the drivers. (I have to explain this?)

[pepe]

Ouch! Several decades ago one of my dad's cousins hit a moose. His car was totaled, too.

...and I still walk with a limp.

I hit a moose a few years ago (driving my wife's car) - or rather, the moose hit the car - and correct, when I got out the car (I was OK, the car quite a bit damaged) the moose got to her feet and disappeared into the forest, with a huge limp. Because she was hurt, I had to call the local authorities reporting the incident, and one hour later they located and shot her. The meat was donated to some home for retired people in the community.

Therefore. Jazzmoose, don't expose your limp.

[Dan Gould]

I told that part of the story poorly; the woman was referring to what 's necessary for the deer, not what's necessary for drivers. Edited.

[vajerzy]

Thanks for all your well wishes!

I felt bad for the deer- they are beautiful and Annie was worried about how "Bambi" was......quite precious actually to see the empathy in her.....

I don't hunt, don't care to, and I can't kill anything. I'm not against hunting- just can't do it myself.

[ghost of miles]

Ironic that this topic should come up--I worry a lot about this, driving in southern Indiana, and lately my concern has increased, as my wife & I are driving up to Indianapolis to visit my parents 1-2 times a week. I've never hit one, but I've passed wrecks & dead deer on the road several times, including one instance in which the deer had pretty much been obliterated--there was just a lake of blood covering the highway. I try to drive cautiously in areas where the woods come right up to the road; if I'm on a two-lane in the forest, I use my brights as much as possible. It's not always easy to stay vigilant and alert, though, if it's late at night and I've gone into that travel autopilot zone. And often, as in Vajerzy's case, the accident simply can't be avoided.

On a much lighter note, the other day my wife & I were driving to the library here in Bloomington on a two-way city street. I saw a squirrel approaching the road, and so I slowed down, as did the car coming toward us in the opposite lane. The squirrel then proceeded to use the crosswalk (!) as it carried a baby squirrel in its mouth to the other side of the street. Too damned cute!

Edited March 25, 2004 by ghost of miles

[Upright Bill]

I live in Michigan, everyone here with a valid driver's license has hit at least one deer.

My first was in 1984. I had owned the car exactly 4 hours when it happened. I saw him and stopped, he lowered his head and charged the car. He broke his neck, totalled the left front quarter panel, scared my son.

In a six hour period I landed the second biggest contract I had ever bid on, bought a brand new car, lost the second biggest contract I had ever bid on and crunched the new car (47 miles on it at the time of the accident).

[patricia]

My best friend's parents hit a moose on the highway years ago and it took out their windsheild when it was boosted by the hit, right up on to the hood of their car. Lucky they didn't get killed. Car totalled. Glass everywhere, including in their faces. A mess. Moose got killed. They were probably going around 70MPH.

We have to remember that urban sprawl has taken away much of the deer and moose' natural habitat.

BTW, Moose are HUGE and they can walk easily through four feet deep snow.

[undergroundagent]

If you think driving in the Northeast and Midwest for deer is bad, you should check out Northern Ontario and Newfoundland (only Moose here)!!

That's frickin' treacherous!!!! Hell, I bet moose and deer out number human beings in that neck of the woods.

Seriously, you're lucky neither one of you was hurt. Thanks goodness, it was just your car.

All the best.

[ralphie_boy]

I lived in Putnam County, about 50 miles North of NYC for 8 years. I bagged one and had at least 10 near misses. The one that I hit came out of nowhere, jumped a guard-rail and I clipped him in the hind quarters. He shook it off and kept running. Meanwhile, my right headlight assembly (retractable lights which were on at the time) was destroyed.

I also had two occasions when I got up and took the dog out about 5am and almost got run down by one that came through my property at full gallop.

I've since moved closer to the city and haven't seen one since. Down here though, we just had a coyote that ate someone's small dog in their backyard.

[Noj]

I almost hit a deer on I-395 near Mammoth Lakes about a month ago, missed him by just a few feet. Closest I've come.

My good friend's dad once hit a dead horse on a dark dirt road in Mexico while doing about 50mph--he never saw it. Clarence estimated he was airbourne for 100 feet or so, and had the extreme displeasure of cleaning the gore off the underside of his truck when he got home.

[sheldonm]

My better half hit a deer a month before Christmas. She said one minute it wasn't there, the next it was. It was at night on country road she didn't know the name of (don't ask me why), so when she called to tell me she hit a deer, it took a while to find out exactly where she was. She had just taken a new job about an hour away from our home and was trying a "new" way home but didn't know the street names (you know how the country roads are all 250 S and 420 W, none of which make any sense to me). The car had about $3500.00 worth of damage but she was ok. The deer actually got up and ran off into the woods, I'm sure it must have been pretty banged up also!

Mark

[DTMX]

I bumped a deer with my car. I was driving home during daylight hours, there was a song on the radio that I wanted to hear to its conclusion so I was just coasting along, letting gravity move the car - maybe 20 mph (home was over the next hill). A deer bounded out of a kudzu patch and ran along side me. I thought he might cut in front of me so I locked it down, when I had all but stopped, he jumped in front of me and sat his whitetailed ass right down on my front bumper doing a nice job of interlacing the bumper and grill in ways they were not meant to mesh. Then he sprayed green shit all over my bumper which went through the grill and onto my engine block (said shit turned to vapor upon contact with the block and was sucked into in interior of the car). Then he ran off, leaving a handful of flank hair between the bumper and grill and me about to puke. There's a herd of deer living in the woods on the edge of my property - Mr. Greenshit was probably one of them. And he's still out there.

Mocking me.

[Jazzmoose]

Wow. That is one serious asshole of a deer!

[chris olivarez]

Wow. That is one serious asshole of a deer!

If that occured during the rut deer are not very congenial.

[Dmitry]

Reading through the gory stories of dead deer and totalled cars made me wonder how the insurance companies approach these kinds of accidents?

[chris olivarez]

My closest encounter with a deer occured one night when I was driving home in a snowstorm. Visibility was already severely limited and I was thinking to myself-"Oh well at least I won't have to deal with any critters"-WRONG!!! Cutting across the road just a little ways in front of me was a mule deer buck-a fully grown one. A sudden stop under the conditions was out of the question and if that deer didn't see me and react in time I was screwed but fortunately he did react in time.

Another time I was a passenger with someone and we were coming home at night in an area that is heavily populated with deer and elk. This guy was driving too fast and we were barreling on top of three cow elk who were in the middle of the road and one of them was going down. I had just enough time to think "this is going to hurt!". One of the elk bounced from one end of the car to the other. Amazingly we weren't hurt and the car was still driveable but unfortunately the elk wasn't as lucky.

This summer I saw a strange sight in the town limits. There was a lot of traffic out there that day and I saw something spiraling in the air that I thought was a dog but it turned out to be a deer. It was hit by a car with out of state plates and the people inside the car were freaking. For it's part the deer picked itself up,looked at the people in the car as if to say "stupid tourists",walked across the street,climbed up a hill and disappeared.

During the rut deer become very belligerent and may view a car as an adversary-definitely a bummer. I've been lucky so far and have never personally hit a deer or elk. A fully grown bull elk is a very large animal and if you ever hit one of them you could consider your car totaled.

In Southwest Colorado most people drive with extra care because of the high population of deer and elk but if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time there's really nothing that you or the critter can do its a hazard that goes with the territory.

[chris olivarez]

Reading through the gory stories of dead deer and totalled cars made me wonder how the insurance companies approach these kinds of accidents?

Just like anything else if they pay for the repairs your rates go up. Insurance companies in Southwest Colorado are happy to clue drivers into information that might help avoid a collision with a critter. There are devices that hook up to your car that can alert deer to your approach. Some people also install grill guards that help lessen a collision . A lot of it is common sense like if your'e traveling through deer and elk country at night don't drive like its the first turn and first lap at Indy.