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Hitting deer

N

Northvale PA

Member
Well I hit another deer on my drive home last Thursday night. I slammed the brakes and swerved into the oncoming lane (no traffic coming) got slowed down to about 35 and struck it with the right lower bumper. Damage is the plastic bumper cover cracked and the windshield washer reservoir cracked. Very minimal. This is my 5th in about 10 years. And this time of year is brutal.
 
I know its a hard choice but swerving is dangerous. It could have been a lot worse for you. And you still it the deer.
 
(quoted from post at 18:36:28 11/17/19) I know its a hard choice but swerving is dangerous. It could have been a lot worse for you. And you still it the deer.
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werving is probably not a good idea, but it's a knee jerk reaction. It's just something you automatically do when a deer jumps in front of you. Several years ago my daughter swerved to avoid a deer, and went into the ditch. She did manage to miss the deer, but ended up in the ditch. Called the sheriff, he came and called the tow truck. My daughter was charged with failure to maintain control. THAT PI$$ED ME OFF, but what are you gonna do. The sheriff said there was no proof of the deer. In Illinois, during harvest, why do you need proof. I didn't say he was a very bright sheriff, and I told him that. THAT PI$$ED HIM OFF. I guess it would have been better if she had hit the deer, killed it, caused damage to her car, possibly gotten hurt. Then there would have been proof of the deer.
 
never swerve hit the brakes turn the light off and hit the horn it will be gone - no matter which direction you go if your lights are on they will follow and before you tell me that wont work I drove semis for 30years with 3.5 million accident free miles and have dodged a lot of animals
 
Starting to see the odd pickup truck with a deer deflecter/grill guard on the road. Just like you see on the tractor trailers. Last year around this time one of my boys hit a deer,$8,000.00 damage done to his truck. He has a $1,000.00 deductible. He didn?t have the cash to pay the deductible, so dear old dad was on the hook again. So far I have got half the doe back, keeps him from asking for more $$ for other things, lol.
 
I have hit deer twice. The first time was 1965. The only telephone was a nearby bar. Two sheriff deputies responded and we finally found the carcas in the median of the expressway. Hood, left fender and left door damaged.
This late summer I hit a fawn. Damage to my car was a plastic section of the grill. I did not call the police and I did not find a carcas later.
My son hit a deer about 5 years ago and a week later a deer ran into the side of his truck in the same area of the road.
Two weeks ago I was in New Braunfels, Texas, to visit my sister in the hospital. When I left to go back to my hotel, I went around a corner and 3 deer were circling in the middle of the street, a doe and 2 bucks. Fortunatly I was able to stop.
I try to not be on the road at dusk during rut.
 

Northvale I will give you credit for being able to check the other lane before swerving into it, but so far as guys being able to turn headlights off and then sound the horn when a deer jumps out 10 feet in front of them while driving 60 MPH,.................................I don't think so.
 
(quoted from post at 21:02:21 11/17/19) never swerve hit the brakes turn the light off and hit the horn it will be gone - no matter which direction you go if your lights are on they will follow and before you tell me that wont work I drove semis for 30years with 3.5 million accident free miles and have dodged a lot of animals
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Trouble with that theory is that there's no way to turn the lights off on a "modern" car or pickup.

At least not QUICKLY.
 
I have hit four. No serious vehicle damage though, a headlight in the van, side mirror on a car, a light bump to a fawn, it knocked the fawn down but it ran away, and one deer that the out rigger on a combine trailer caught. That one was ground into sausage in about two seconds as it rolled under the whole 53 foot length of the trailer. Lately I have seen quite a few running in the ditch but they did not seen interested in me.
 
several years ago, my son lived on same road as me,1 mi away. One evening he called me, to come see a deer he 'hit', with his Blazer. I looked, and then asked why there was grass & dirt hanging from the vehicle. He said, Well,it almost got away !!(true)!
 
(quoted from post at 19:14:33 11/17/19)
Northvale I will give you credit for being able to check the other lane before swerving into it, but so far as guys being able to turn headlights off and then sound the horn when a deer jumps out 10 feet in front of them while driving 60 MPH,.................................I don't think so.
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Even at 50 I don't think I"d have time to do any more than hit the brakes and maybe try some avoidance. I've only been hit twice in almost 50 years of driving. First time a buck ran up out of the ditch and banged his head into the front fender of the old IH pickup. I think I left a little tire rubber on the pavement that time. Second time I did not even have a chance to hit the brakes. Doing maybe 50 on the gravel grid in the dark and another deer runs up the steep incline of the ditch and hit my Blazer just behind the left rear door. Heck of a bang but I could not find any more than a paint smudge in it. No time to even touch the brakes on that one. Deer are bad enough but moose can kill you when they come up over the hood into the windshield.
 
It happens so fast it's a wonder you can do anything. I had one crossing the road left to right last year at night. I saw his face like a flash bulb and before I could even think of what to do, bang he hit the side of my van. I went back to look for it but never found any trace.
 
I started drilling in to my girls heads before they had a license, that you try to stop and then hit the deer straight on. There has been several rollovers here in the last few months,all from people trying to miss deer. Comprehensive insurance pays for a deer hit, you must have collision for a drive off the road damage. Comp is cheap if you live in deer country.
 
Deer are super thick in my area. It's really a bad time of year to be driving. Several years ago, four women were killed just a few miles from me when the car they were driving hit a deer and they veered off into an oncoming car. Yes, they were all wearing their seat belts.
Just a few weeks ago, I was helping to finish up harvesting for my brother when I had to slam on the brakes with his Ford grain truck. The truck has air brakes, was empty, and was on a gravel road and I nearly slid off in the ditch. The big buck very nearly hit the bumper, but I guess both of us were lucky late that night.
I see blood smears all over the local highways of a deer that got hit and drug. It's the time of year to drive slow.
 
Try not to slam the brakes. Could be even worse. Everyone hits deer around here. And nearly everyone has a grill guard at the very least. Many have cow catchers, the big steel or aluminum bumper replacement grill guards. They are nice for protection. Doesn't stop them from running into the side but at least when you're out in the middle of nowhere you can still drive home.

Put a full replacement on my International 9900 truck after hitting one square in the nose. Wrecked the hood, grill, other minor things and the antler went through a front tire. Hit 2 so far head on after the replacement... Couple pieces of hair and excrement and no sign of the deer. Doing 65. Zero damage. $4000 well spent. Sure, insurance will cover it. But it's the down time and being out in the middle of everywhere in the plains of South Dakota in the middle of the night and not being able to keep the engine running in -20 weather that makes it pretty cheap really.

We really like deer hunting around our area but it's not keeping up.
 
I installed those little plastic dual deer "horns" below the bumper, and have seen deer running toward me on a collision course and stop, and go in the opposite direction, We are loaded with deer around here in northwestern Washtenaw county, MI...
 
In all the years I have been driving/riding and 1.9 million miles on my record I have only hit 1 deer and that was at 2AM on a rural hwy here in Missouri. Don't know it if luck or reaction time but I have always been one to see things and react fast but I have also been trained in those arts.
 
I agree with Grizz. Shutting off the lites works unless the deer is really close, then nothing works. That works for Jack rabbits too. For some reason cottontails seem to be smarter. I almost never see a cottontail get hit.
 
(quoted from post at 20:51:53 11/17/19) In all the years I have been driving/riding and 1.9 million miles on my record I have only hit 1 deer and that was at 2AM on a rural hwy here in Missouri. Don't know it if luck or reaction time but I have always been one to see things and react fast but I have also been trained in those arts.
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Old, I though that you were a machinist's mate in the Navy, not a Seal.
 


I forget how many deer I've hit, it was either 33 or 37, plus 2 owls and a cow. (It was my cow I hit the one time I took my wifes mini-van to work and the cow was just over the crest of a hill on a snow covered road! No damage to plastic hood of van or the cow!) When you drive for a living in horrible weather, stuff happens. Some of those deer were in groups FWIW. I've never heard of anyone recommending "turning off the lights" and I'm not sure who would have the time to do that since most of my deer hits were split second affairs where they jumped in front of me out of no where. Most of the hits were at night while enroute to a call someplace, some were on blue bird days in the summer. I've avoided probably a thousand deer over the years by braking and by swerving when I could. All our Troop cars had the "deer whistles" on them for a few years. They made absolutely no difference in the number of deer hits we had- zilch, nada, zero! Complete waste of money IMO. I've tried to drill into my kids heads that if you see a deer on one side of the road, his buddy may well be on the other side and one of them will likely want to cross to the other. I can't think of too many people I know that haven't hit deer up here.
 
Had a deer hit me this summer....ran out of the ditch at full speed (I was doing 60...). I just got a glimpse of it before she hit me over the passenger side rear wheel. Hit hard enough to move the car (2016 Ford Escape) sideways a bit. It was a hard enough hit, that I figured the whole rear quarter was bashed in. I stopped to see, and found the plastic pieces "popped" apart. I got home, cleaned it out/off with the garden hose, then popped everything back together. You can't even tell! If it had been metal, the whole side would have been cratered.
 
i never hit a deer that I saw first.It was always a blur and a crash.I was in a Mack one morning,about 3 AM and had a big thump.lost my right headlight and some debri came up over the hood and into the windshield.I pulled over and found the whole front lower quarter of my nose missing,headlight bucket and all.A state trooper pulled up and took a look,we figured out I had hit a deer.We walked back to where I had hit it,he had the idea to put it out of it's misery if it was still alive.It jumped up in front of us and ran off,so it must have been stunned.The guy I was working for had spent a lot of time hauling out of western Pennsylvania and every truck he owned had the front bumpers trimmed off just a couple of inches outside of the frames.He had been through the experience of deer bending the bumper ends into the steering tires more than once.The trucks he bought later had rubber bumpers from the frame out.
 
If you live in Indiana, either you've hit a deer or know someone who has.
Another rule, if you see one deer cross the road. Wait good change there will be more to follow.
You will see more dead deer close to a bridge on I70. I guess deer don't want to get wet, so they so they get hit when using a bridge.

So far I've been lucky. I'm the one of those who knows someone that's hit a deer. Actually I know many who have hit a deer. And a guy that a deer hit him.
geo.
 
Swerving is the most dangerous thing you can do. Into oncoming traffic or off the road you go - especially if you strike the deer while you car is "off balance". I almost most hit two deer last Saturday - the bucks were fighting in the road and I slid within 10 feet of them. They continued fighting in the high beams and only left the road when I blew the horn for 20 seconds.

Given the numbers in Kansas I still haven't understood why they haven't declared an open season (forget this tag business) for 3 months straight and see if they can hunt the numbers down to something realistic. When I was kid seeing a deer was an event - now your lucky if you don't see a deer when driving at night.
 
Yeah when you travel in densely populated deer areas you almost never will hit the deer you see. Almost all the ones I hit have come full tilt out of the woods, out of field of view and landed on the road in front of me, or on the
hood, or into the door/fender, etc. As I've mentioned before, gets very costly in a car. I've been looking at adding a brush guard. Current commuter car I just changed the rad and headlight, bent fender and hood back close
enough as it was the second big hit in a year. Previous one was 7500$ to fix so didn't want another claim.

The 1 ton has been better, all the hits so far I've been able to pull out the bumper with the tractor.
 
(quoted from post at 09:41:37 11/18/19)
Given the numbers in Kansas I still haven't understood why they haven't declared an open season (forget this tag business) for 3 months straight ...
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I agree about KS, too many white tails. I try to shoot as many as I legally can each year on my property. Used to have two guys help me but I got tired of picking up their trash and one of them was drunk half the time he was in the blind!

This year, I was taking the trash to road one night at dusk and saw a car in the road with the hazards on about 100 yards from the end of my drive. I walked down there and a woman was there with a dead doe. She was pretty shook up. She had seen the deer get hit and watched it die. It looked pretty good and was still warm, so I took it home and dressed it. The doe had a big patch of fur missing on her side and a bunch of broken ribs were obvious when I skinned her. The innards were a little rattled and the liver was damaged but none of the digestive tract had ruptured. I let her hang for a few days and then ground all but the loins and backstrap

Gutting a road-kill deer and seeing that hole in the side of the ribs, makes one reconsider riding a motorcycle on the road.
 
......Gutting a road-kill deer and seeing that hole in the side of the ribs, makes one reconsider riding a motorcycle on the road.
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I hit a deer at about 80mph on my motorcycle in 1990. Pretty exciting. I remember a moment where I was probably doing a handstand over bars thinking "I can save it". Next thing I was sliding/rolling/spinning on the asphalt seeing trees, sky, asphalt over and over again. Had full leathers and full helmet on and ended up with a broken finger, a few scuff marks, and a whole lot of aches and pains the next day. And here I am thinking about getting a new motorcycle. Guess I didn't learn.
 

When I wrote that I was thinking about being on a motorcycle and getting hit by a car. I've had one bad motorcycle accident where motorcycle left the road with me on it. After seeing what that car did to the insides of a deer I couldn't help think about what would happen to my insides if I got t-boned by a car while riding a motorcycle.
 
(quoted from post at 12:36:48 11/18/19)
......Gutting a road-kill deer and seeing that hole in the side of the ribs, makes one reconsider riding a motorcycle on the road.
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I hit a deer at about 80mph on my motorcycle in 1990. Pretty exciting. I remember a moment where I was probably doing a handstand over bars thinking "I can save it". Next thing I was sliding/rolling/spinning on the asphalt seeing trees, sky, asphalt over and over again. Had full leathers and full helmet on and ended up with a broken finger, a few scuff marks, and a whole lot of aches and pains the next day. And here I am thinking about getting a new motorcycle. Guess I didn't learn.
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Oliver 500, that sounds like the famous Flying W! I remember once doing the handstand and looking up as far as I could and all I could see was my front fender.
 
Most of my motorcycle riding is at night.It is the deer,moose,and bear that keep me driving slow.There are some secondary state highways I like to run at night,ones that used to
be more travelled than they are now.Sometimes around 10:pm I can run 10-15 miles without meeting a car.There are some nice long stretches that I would kind of like to let it
go,60 MPH would just feel like a fast walk.I don't though,I ride with the idea in my head that a deer is going to jump out at any minute.Most nights I ride I see 5-10 deer.My
closest calls were a pair of little bear cubs,and one time an owl dove at me and just nicked the top of my head.
 
Hit one going 82 mph on the highway last month. Car did what it was supposed to, crumpled into a ball, I walked away without a bruise. Saw more than 30 dead along the highway this morning in a hour drive on the highway. We're thick with the furry little critters.
 
(quoted from post at 13:12:19 11/18/19)
(quoted from post at 09:41:37 11/18/19)
Given the numbers in Kansas I still haven't understood why they haven't declared an open season (forget this tag business) for 3 months straight ...
Click to expand...

I agree about KS, too many white tails.

If you think it is bad in your area, come on over to Eastern Kansas. Worse yet.
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So one day back when I was still gainfully employed as a NYS Trooper, I get a call for a car-deer accident. I had another guy riding with me at the time and we got to the accident pretty quickly. It's a mom about 30 or so in the mini van and she's standing there beside her mashed up car. The other guy goes to get her info and start the report. Bambi is 50 yards or so behind the van in the ditch with her guts hanging out and busted legs, etc. She's still kicking and flailing around. So I draw my gun and shoot the poor thing. HOLY SMOKES!!!!! The lady driver starts screaming "OMG!!!! OMG!!!! YOU KILLED IT!!!! YOU KILLED IT!!!!!" We get her calmed down and she says she thought we were going to somehow take this deer to a veterinarian for surgery or something. Amazing.
 
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