I Hit A Deer :(

In reply to ebonyandivory:

Id be more pissed that i couldn't find the deer to eat it than the post on facepalm.

Deer are suicidal lunatics. The Facebook guy is a busybody shiny happy person, who seems to be making massive jumps in logic to reach the conclusion he did. People who wanna play DIY traffic enforcement are a huge pet peeve of mine.

On the bright side, at least you didn't have to cut the "paw" out of your grill or anything

I ran over a deer once. It was already dead.

At night, I was behind a truck and didn't see the deer until too late so I straddled it. I could hear the rubbing.

Every thing seemed ok so I drove the few miles to home.

The next day I checked underneath for damage. Other than a little hair ,a few red spots, no damage. So I left it alone.

This was with my ZX2SR so ground clearance was not great.

Must have been a small deer.

A few more deer hit stories:

A few years ago, a friend hit one on the highway with his Ram 3500 at ~70 mph. Deer landed far enough into the woods off the side of the highway that it took him and the cop a good 10 minutes to find it. The guy's girlfriend was riding shotgun and the deer was so small relative to the truck that after the hit, she looked up and asked him "did we just hit a squirrel?"

Another friend hit a deer with his Suburban. Fixed the damage and then within 3 months, hit another deer. The second deer was clearly suicidal... It jumped off a 10+ foot tall ledge next to the road and landed less than 20 feet in front of him!

Deer are really, really stupid creatures, probably among the least intelligent mammals, which is frightening considering their size. "Rats on stilts" is far too generous in terms of intelligence.

GameboyRMH wrote: Deer are really, really stupid creatures, probably among the least intelligent mammals,

Yes, and that slots them just above the average human and below the average chimp on the intelligence hierarchy.

As for that "nosy neighbour," it was probably an uneducated guess in terms of speed. A small bit of my midpipe let go last week (crappy quality flex joint), and the school got quite a few complaints from surrounding residents. I told them I'd fix it over the spring break, and that appears to have been good enough to get them off my back for a bit.

In the days before dashcams and digital camera I had my own run ins with deer.

The first killed my Sonoma, after getting it rebuilt from rear ending a work van that was just stopped in the snow on the highway. I was coming home one night, never saw a thing just heard a bang. When I pulled into my driveway 2 minutes away, you could see the imprint on the grill, hood, and front bumper of the truck where the deer had just stepped out onto the road. Head cocked, legs walking, like a picture. On my first night home with this truck, my first vehicle, a buck had actually tried to charge it in the road but ran off. Like beeline charge right at me like we were playing chicken.

Couple years later, in the red Saturn before I bought it, we were heading to the after hours club from work on some back roads and a buck jumped off the hill, did a dukes of hazard slide over the hood and took off. Couple scratches on the hood and a nose print in the windshield, deer and car survived.

Coming home through an S bend in my cavalier, at night, under the speed limit, I saw a deer on the driver's side and swerved right, right into a deer coming from the passenger side. From the fur in my headlights, I managed to clip both of them. No damage to the car though.

Finally, one that didn't happen to me. I was heading to the concrete shop at 730 one summer morning for blocks and about 100 yards ahead watched a deer jump down off the bank, land/bounce off the hood of a moving vehicle back onto the hillside. The car hit the brakes then just kept going. It was so fast I don't think they even know what happened. And this wasn't a back road, but route 30, the 55mph "main highway" through town.

Summary, deer are stupid, suicidal beings that happen to taste delicious. As long as the vehicle is fine, you did a good deed.

Two stories of note. In around '92 or so I was driving an ambulance (HMMWV) on an abandoned runway on a moonless night wearing NVGs. I caught just a flash of movement from the right and turned into it, just getting behind a deer running full tilt across my "bow". I could have touched it if I'd extended my left arm (we had the doors off cause it was hot).

The other ended less well. I was following a BMW rider on a rural highway (55 zone) about 200 feet behind him. Mid corner a huge buck leaps across the road and he hits it square on the side with his chest and face. He stops as his bike goes out from under him and into a ditch. The deer popped up and scampered off into the woods and I stopped to check on the dude. No road rash but badly shaken up and sore. Bike probably took the worst of it....

In reply to KyAllroad:

A guy I was playing silly tag games with over at ADV is still recovering from hitting one on his FJR last August. Cut it right in half. He posted this the next day.

ebonyandivory wrote: I feel better after these replies! Some funny ones too! I've had close calls but never a real strike like this one.

Deer strikes are a common occurrence around here, and the deer hit the cars just as often as the cars hit the deer. I've two family members that have had Kamikaze deer hit them on motorcycles; my uncle got tagged on the knee by a fawn, and my aunt had a deer hit her right by the triple tree and get tangled up in the bike. That one resulted in ankle surgery...

I've been lucky- the only thing I've clobbered was a skunk hellbent on his own destruction... my truck smelled for a week.

In reply to Recon1342:

I almost collected a flying berkeleying turkey last fall while it crossed the road and have also tested the ABS avoiding a bolting fawn but so far... still shiny side up. I am a convert on the subject of motorcycle ABS as a result too. I left the asphalt and moved onto the dirt shoulder and back onto the road with a full handful of lever at maybe 30 mph and stayed up. Technology FTMFW!

It wasn't really all that dramatic either time - but it registers as a strong what-if scenario for slowing the hell down as the green closes in close to the road.

the only notable animal i've hit was a decent sized owl in my old F250, luckily (for me) it hit the metal bumper and not the grill or headlight because it hit hard

In reply to Huckleberry:

Luckily, around here it's largely fields with a fairly clear view, so if one pays attention, it's fairly easy to spot the 20 or so head milling about, and slow accordingly.

Never ridden a Bike with ABS on it. My current scoot is a 1970 Honda CB750. Good at going, garbage at stopping (unless you utilize the braking power of that inline four)...

Biggest animal I've ever hit was a small chicken. It ran out close in front of the Samurai on a little residential road, I dodged left then right and the chicken dodged the same way both times. Probably could've avoided it if I went for maximum braking right away.

I was on the freeway. I saw it coming up the hill to the road and had time to slow to 15-20 mph before it hit me. Shoulder went into the fender and it's butt bounced into the door.

My first car was a Plymouth Sundance. Once on the way to work, a fawn ran out in front of my car, tripped, and fell flat on his face. I couldn't stop in time and RAN IT OVER. No damage to the car, fortunately.

berkeley deer.

I was riding with a friend in his Firebird when we hit a deer. We got out to check damage to the car and the deer and were preparing to throw the deer in the trunk when it got up and ran away.

Had only 1100 miles on a '12 Sierra when a small deer ran into the right front at dusk. I stopped and there was no deer to be seen and the car following didn't see it either. Drove the couple miles down the road to my folks place, dropped their meds and drove the 5 miles back to home.

Before I got in my driveway Dad was on the phone as to where did this deer in their driveway come from. Evidently got stuck under the truck in a crossmember or sumthin' and fell out when I backed outta the driveway. Good thing too, that woulda stunk after a while. $1400 damage in all, no undercarriage damage.

Hunted deer for 35 years, they're wily as hell in their element but dumb as berkeley out of it.

Deer always run into you, you don't run into them.

In the many years of driving in upstate NY I have hit two deer. Both seemed to be in panic mode. One jumped off a high bank and landed right in front of me. the other one shot out of some brush. I almost missed it. Hit in the hip area. No where in sight when I stopped.

Fender and hood in that one.

My wife didn't even see this one coming. It ran out from behind a building into the side of the car.

I hit one three years ago with a Subaru Forester, coming home from band practice at night. It jumped off a bank and landed right in front of the car and tripped, I hit it doing 40. Not that much mechanical damage, the car was drivable, no broken glass, no misalignment of the chassis, easy repair, no big deal right? Wrong. All the air bags went off. Destroyed both front seats, the dash, steering wheel and headliner. Totaled the car. Body shop says the manufacturers have set the trigger levels to go off in more gentle collisions to avoid lawsuits where the bags didn't go off, they see lots of air bag deployments these days. Insurance company treated me very well and the car was replaced with a very good settlement (the agents all sat with me and we swapped deer collision stories). So this is another "deer fell out of the sky" story - I'm not a big fan of air bags after that, I always wear my belts and the belt would have been plenty of protection.

E&I, have you seen People of Earth?

I can personally attest to what happenes to the underside of a highway patrol p71 when it runs over an already dead 300-pound 12 pointer at 90 miles an hour. The antlers punched the transmission and oil coolers all the way through the radiator, and the power steering cooler was gone entirely. There was bits of hair and chunks of skin and meat and guts from the radiator all the way out the back of the car. That 36 M3 was nasty.

WildScotsRacing wrote: I can personally attest to what happenes to the underside of a highway patrol p71 when it runs over an already dead 300-pound 12 pointer at 90 miles an hour. The antlers punched the transmission and oil coolers all the way through the radiator, and the power steering cooler was gone entirely. There was bits of hair and chunks of skin and meat and guts from the radiator all the way out the back of the car. That 36 M3 was nasty.

There you go...another case of police brutality... The deer need to gather and protest...