This is topic Anybody ever have a run in with a deer? in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.


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Posted by Scott D. Neff (Member # 185) on 09-14-2005, 08:21 PM:
 
I had the joy of meeting a deer last night that thought that it was frogger. Driving home on the freeway from a night audit, I was on the phone (headset) with Adam Martin when I noticed a deer make a break for the other side of the highway.

*edit* I forgot to mention - this was a highway running through the middle of DOWNTOWN!!!! *edit*

Further proving you can't stop my great comedic timing, I yelled out "Oh dear!" as it made friends with my front fender and scurried off into the night. My car kept driving, I was fine and thankful that I didn't have a reenactment of the viscious deer scene in "The Long Kiss Goodnight".

I surveyed the damage, broken headlight, heavily dented fender, a portion of my hood was crumbled and my passenger door (mostly unharmed) would not open because of the fender. I went and got quotes today for repairs $4125.77 for my little 2002 VW Golf.

Luckily my insurance deductible is only $500 and not $1000 like I had feared at the time... so I'm not as screwed as I originally thought.

Anybody else have any run ins with the fauna?
 

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Posted by Adam Heath (Member # 2910) on 09-14-2005, 08:33 PM:
 
I hit one about a year and a half ago. I knew my time was coming because I have just missed one several times. I was driving home after closing one night and hit a doe as it was running acrossed the street. Luckily no damage to me and my car, except the license plate is all bent to hell. The deer died.

I almost hit another one last week. So I'm sure eventually I'll get one.
 

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Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 09-14-2005, 09:13 PM:
 

quote: Scott D. Neff

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Anybody else have any run ins with the fauna?

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You hit a baby deer... meanie!

I was once in a little- -box imported SUV that hit a cow.
 

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Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 09-14-2005, 09:39 PM:
 
Only one close call, also in the middle of a city. Driving down from the Griffith Park Observatory in Los Angeles after closing one night, a deer darted out right in front of me in my '68 VW Type 1 (the bug). Fortunately all I had to replace were my seat covers.

As for actually flattened fauna, I did nail a rabbit on a suicide mission one night on the highway near Bonnie Springs Ranch in Redrock Canyon here. Little bugger matched speed and closed from the side on my left front wheel. Same car. Thump thump.
 

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Posted by R. Andrew Diercks (Member # 1725) on 09-14-2005, 09:50 PM:
 
I have hit two and I had one hit me in the back door. It's kind of expected in Iowa, I don't know many adults that haven't hit one. Since I hit my three in just over a year and 1/2 my father got me vanity plates that say DEERKLR.
 

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Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 09-14-2005, 09:51 PM:
 
Did that one as well - hit a horse that got out of the farmer's field onto a highway when I was getting off and heading home at the Drive-In I was working at the time, that black morning without any moon at all.

Horse ran in front of me, smashed the right front fender and the horse landed on the hood smashing that one in as well, busting the windshield in the process.

The impact broke both of the rear legs of the horse, which hobbled down in the borrow pit along the road. Walked into this small town, called the State Police being on a state highway and did the report. They had to shoot the animal and the farmer was seriously fined for not maintaining his property's fenceline that lined the highway, plus had to pay for my car's damages and towing since the impact jammed the fender into the front tire and ripped it up pretty good.

Luckilly,I wasn't hurt, just shook up pretty bad being my first auto accident.

Lotsa fun when hitting things...Jackrabbits are fun to hit - they leave skidmarks on the highway (lol) - Monte
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 09-14-2005, 10:44 PM:
 
I've never hit a deer (knock on wood). But have had a couple odd encounters with them in Quantico, VA during my high school days.

One was during football practice. This is no lie; it really happened. We were running some simple plays and hitting. This medium sized 8-point buck comes running across the field, right through the middle of our group and then trots off the other end of the field into the woods. We're just standing there dumbfounded.

Another encounter was more scary. I was walking home fairly late at night after my brother left me on mainside of the Quantico Marine base with no ride home. It's really dark. I can barely see the road. An angry sounding scream comes from the woods. It sounds kind of like a really pissed off man. But the scream was followed by some heavy bashing through the trees. I stop, not knowing what I heard. Then I hear the scream again, followed by more of that bashing trees and brush crap. Someone or something was obviously coming toward me in a very pissed off manner. I ran my ass off all the way home. Only after describing the account to my father did I get clued in on what was in the woods. Just some territorial buck.

But to get back to cars versus deers stories, there was a good one on the Quantico Marine Corps base around that time. A Marine hit a deer on Russel Road not far from the Base Exchange. Thinking the deer was dead, he put it in his car with the intentions of taking it home and carving it up for the freezer. The deer wasn't dead. Just stunned. It came to and immediately began to demolish the interior of the poor guy's vehicle. He ran to a pay phone booth to call the MPs (this was in the early 1980's, well before cellphones were common and affordable). To make matters worse he got pinned in the phone booth by a neighbor's Doberman that got loose. That's some freaking bad luck.
 

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Posted by John Hegel (Member # 628) on 09-14-2005, 11:35 PM:
 
I’ve hit two and had countless close calls. As of recently the deer have been leaving me alone. I think the know that my car is now worthless because of them, and they save the suicide missions for something more expensive.
 

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Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 09-14-2005, 11:44 PM:
 
My brother hit THREE deer in the same spot during a two week period!

It was a spot about a mile from the house where a corn field comes right up to the road. He KNEW that was a spot for deer to do the "Two-Step" across the road. But he nailed one on the night before Thanksgiving about 5 years ago.

He came home all shook up and told me what happened. I pretty much laughed at him. (It's a brother's privilege.) We went back to take a look at it. He creamed it. All of its legs were broken. Its front legs were up around its head. The neck was twisted all the way around. All of the ribs were broken. Baically, he turned it into a maracca. He told me when he hit it it FLEW about 20-30 feet. He must have been clipping pretty good to do that! In PA if you hit a deer you can ask the game warden to let you take it home. (You have to turn in the head and the hide.) We took a pass on this one. It was so badly mangled up there would have been little or no edible meat.

So, we make the requisite calls to the game warden and the insurance company. He gets the car to the shop the next day. I took him to get a rental car. Everything was going well. Two days later, he did it AGAIN! It was virtually an exact duplicate of what happened before! Thank God he signed the CDW on the rental car!

Now we are on the second rental car. It was the night before he was supposed to get his car back from the shop. Same spot.... BAM!!! He does it again! This time he only nicked the deer. It made it from the scene but we figure it went into the woods and died. He says he's sure it broke a leg.

I had a close call one time. I was rounding a corner on a back country road when I saw a couple deer Two-step it across in front of me. I downshifted and slowed to a stop. Those deer made it across with room to spare. Next thing I know, there is a big, loud sound of a, "SNORT!!", in my left ear and I felt a strange wet mist on the side of my face. I look over and there is a deer head INSIDE my car! (Window was rolled down.) He was literally less than a foot away! I was so focused on the two deer in front of me I didn't see the third until it was right in my face!

He made a quick U-Turn and hot footed it back into the brush. I grabbed a napkin from the glove compartment. By the time I cleaned my face off there was no sign of the deer. I just settled myself, put the car in gear and went home.

From that day forward, I ALWAYS drive slowly on Bear Creek Road at night!
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-15-2005, 02:16 AM:
 
I've hit three over the past 20 years, all on the same road. Two were in the evening, one was in broad daylight.

There is some open area between the main part of town and our house, and I have to dodge deer on my way home several times a week, moreso in the winter. I hate the friggin' things. I wish the hunting season were year-round, because the deer population is out of control, around here at least.
 

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Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 09-15-2005, 03:23 AM:
 
Randy, does your brother just not learn???
 

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Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 09-15-2005, 08:22 AM:
 
I have never hit a deer.... but a dear once hit me.
 

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Posted by Matt Fields (Member # 3211) on 09-15-2005, 08:35 AM:
 
I used to deliver film in West Virginia and would often see whole herds of deer along the sides of the highway. Only hit (and killed) one though...

Here in Appalachia there are deer everywhere, sometimes literally in my back yard.
 

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Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 09-15-2005, 09:41 AM:
 
I don't think I've ever hit any deer, because I usually see them before they have a chance to do anything. Since I've been driving a big truck, I have to look even farther down the road (stopping distance) and whenever I see one, I start giving short, quick blasts on the air horn to get their attention. So far, it's worked like a charm. They start beating a hasty retreat well before I'm on them.
 

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Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 09-15-2005, 12:41 PM:
 
If you think this is bad.

Try this:
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-15-2005, 02:17 PM:
 
Our local UPS driver once hit a black cow, at night, going 55MPH.

Due to the tank-like construction of UPS trucks, the only one who got injured was the cow.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 09-15-2005, 08:59 PM:
 
Yeah, John, hitting a Moose would be bad. You would surely damage your vehicle badly. And then there would be a decent chance the moose would still be alive and in well enough shape to get really mad and total the vehicle the rest of the way trying to get to you.

I saw a funny clip from a documentary about grizzly bears. This bear goes barreling down a hill toward a parked jeep and rams his head right into the passenger side door.

Elk are another bad road hazard -even if they're already dead. My first drive up to Colorado was a very close call. It was late at night. I was heading north out of Raton after just getting on I-25. Normally I like to drive in the left lane when passing by exits. For some odd reason I kept my Camaro in the right lane. Good thing I did. Before I could even see it, I blew past a huge dead elk laying across the left lane. My car would have been toast (and me possibly in the hospital) if I had hit its carcass.
 

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Posted by Sam Graham (Member # 2889) on 09-15-2005, 09:16 PM:
 
I nicked a deer one night on I-84 in Utah. Foggy night and suddenly there it was right in front of me. I barely had time to hit the horn before it jumped to the right and I heard it clip the bumper. No damage. Deer probably had a sore leg. I've had dozens of near misses over the years, but that's the one I can still see clearly.

A cow once damaged that same car. It was parked at the time. The cow, escaped from my uncle's pasture, head-butted the thing. Left a nice round egg-shaped dent in the fender and pushed the whole thing towards the hood. We managed to realign the fender. The egg dent remained for the rest of the car's life.

But my favorite encounter was with a bear and her cubs in my Alaska days. I chased them up the road toward the house at a pretty decent rate of speed. Next morning, there was a bunch of white foam down the fender...where Mama Bear had pissed on it.
 

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Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 09-15-2005, 09:57 PM:
 

quote: Brad Miller

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Randy, does your brother just not learn???

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Well, that's ONE way to put it!

I've never seen a moose or an elk on the road where I live. We're just a bit too far south and/or east. However, I have read stories about people getting KILLED when they hit one with their cars.

The way I understand, the front of the car goes under the animals belly. The impact sweeps it off its feet and it rolls up the hood of the vehicle. Shortly after that, a 1,000 pound animal crashes through the windshield and is deposited directly into the driver's lap... at high speed! So, basically the occupants of the car get crushed by a flying pile of mangled moose meat.

So, this is totally conjecture on my part, based solely on what I read... But, the way I hear it, when a collision is imminent, if the driver has the time and the forethought, he should try to aim for the animal's ass end. That way, instead of it rolling up the hood and landing on you, there's a better chance of spinning the thing around sideways. Your car will still be fucked up but, at least, you will survive.

Moose/Car collision physics... What a weird branch of science THAT is! It's almost as funny as launching chickens out of an air cannon to test jet engines!
 

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 09-15-2005, 11:05 PM:
 
Only once so far. I was hit by a deer bounding over the highway(thats right, the deer hit me ... I didn't hit it) on I-94 heading south near Baraboo, WI. I was at 65 mph and the deer literally ran up into the left front fender of my 95 Dodge pickup..... we both had about a half second of eye to eye contact as its head made it up to windshield level.... before it slid down the entire left side of the truck. The deer lay in the middle of the road and in my rear view mirror I observed the guy behind me driving an old Chevy Nova go right over the top of its remains... he couldn't stop. The deer was a mess and the entire left side of my truck was torn up... I didn't stop to see what happened to the other guy because traffic was very heavy but I phoned it in to State Police and got off at the next exit and waited. No one was injured except the deer. The trooper informed me that the Nova was a total loss!

Mark
 

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Posted by Carl Martin (Member # 1146) on 09-16-2005, 03:19 AM:
 
i often come across deer on my bike ride home on city streets. they're pretty skittish, though. never had an incident with one. raccoons are worse. i braked suddenly to avoid one, hit it anyways, and flew over the handlebars. messed my knee up good. the coon got away.

carl
 

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Posted by Aaron Mehocic (Member # 15) on 09-16-2005, 01:19 PM:
 
I've hit three deer but none of them ever damaged my car. Here in Pennsylvania a lot of people get into one vehicle accidents for what ever reasons, but blame deer on the reports or insurance claims. Thats one reason a few years back the Game Commission issued bonus tags to hunters so they may harvest more than one animal. Its not out of the ordinary for deer to live in cities since they are one of the most adaptive animals in natural history. We even hunt them in downtown Philadelphia. On average hunters there take about 25 buck and twice as many doe during the respective archery, rifle, and muzzle loader seasons.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 09-16-2005, 07:05 PM:
 

quote: Carl Martin

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raccoons are worse. i braked suddenly to avoid one, hit it anyways, and flew over the handlebars. messed my knee up good. the coon got away.

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quote: Bobby Henderson

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Raccoons are just stupid when it comes to the road. I see so many of those things turned into road pizza around here they could be used to stripe the outside lanes if they didn't decompose. One example of the stupidity, I'm driving at night from Altus back to Lawton. A lady is driving a Honda a few car lengths ahead. I see this fairly large raccoon at the side of the road and he waits until the Honda's headlights are almost right on top of him. Then he bolts right out in front of the car! He got hit of course -spun like a top.

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squirrels and cats do that shit too. i think it's a survival strategy of quick small critters gone awry. the assumption is that the large fast moving object wants to eat them, so they provide a stationary target to aim at, and then at the last instant dart away in the direction that the large object should no longer be heading in. the problem is, the large object is trying not to hit the critter. natural selection is way too slow to deal with the unintended consequences of technology.

carl
 

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 09-19-2005, 03:43 AM:
 
Thankfully I haven't hit one, but a friend of mine nearly did, on a rural single carriageway between Helperby and Flawith (in the middle of nowhere in Yorkshire). He had to swerve and brake hard to avoid an impact, with the result that he went into the ditch and the car was buggered. Thankfully, he wasn't hurt. When I was living in Devon I also heard of an accident in which several passengers in a tourist minibus were killed after it hit a sheep driving in foggy weather on Dartmoor. It was doing 50mph at the point of impact, which made me wonder what sort of moron would drive like that in those conditions.

Around this time last year I had a phenomenally lucky escape while following a very big lorry (about the biggest you can get without it being articulated) on a single carriageway stretch of the A19. I noticed that one of the rear nearside wheels started wobbling, and a few seconds later it suddenly flew off the axle and into a field by the side of the road. The driver didn't realise that he'd lost a wheel, and just kept on going. I slowed down to increase my distance to him as much as possible, whereupon several morons behind me started overtaking. A few seconds later a second wheel flew off the same axle, and rolled along the road behind it for 100 yards or so before going off the side of the road. At this point the lorry driver did realise that something was wrong and pulled over, but it was a very lucky escape for all involved. If either of those two wheels had hit another car, or if they'd flown off in a built up area, there could easily have been fatalities.
 

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Posted by David Buckley (Member # 2600) on 09-19-2005, 05:58 AM:
 
In my UK days I had the pleasure of being a passenger in a mini which had the misfortune to hit a sheep at a fair old pace.

This was not good for the mini, which was severely dented, leading to its scrapping, or the sheep, which exploded.

I did once see a horse take a fit on a car,m and that looked like a scrapper after the event too.
 

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Posted by William Leland III (Member # 1400) on 09-20-2005, 10:21 AM:
 
i've never hit a deer, come close many times. i caught a deer one time. i was cutting grass and saw my dog running around. thought nothing of it, i looked closer and saw she was chasing a baby deer.

i got off the lawn mover and ran after her, she had just pinned it under a gate. i pulled her off and picked up the deer and put it in our garage. i let it got a few hour later. it ran away fine.
 

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Posted by Andy Summers (Member # 3207) on 09-20-2005, 12:51 PM:
 
Well since where the most dangerous, and the fact that the deer was around before we where the deer as first refusal to cross the road, when you see the deer with her new born you break and wait, don’t be an ass, thinking you have the right to kill the deer, if god gave the deer hands I think deer deserves some payback……

Where the most destructive species to walk this planet, and so it’s time we leave the deer and her newborns alone…..

And with that in mind drive carefully and take care….
 

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Posted by Evans A Criswell (Member # 381) on 09-22-2005, 10:19 PM:
 
I hit one in late 1992 on US 72 about 3 or 4 miles west of Scottsboro, AL where there's a lake. My car was drivable, but it cost $1800 then to fix, but there was no deductable on my insurance then if you hit an animal (the deductable was waived).
 

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