When you tell someone that you hit and killed a deer, you
will get several different reactions but almost always someone will tell you
about their own incidents or near-incidents with deer. Every driver who lives anywhere
where deer are occasional road traversers will have seen deer on, next to or
crossing a road. It is also highly likely that these drivers will have seen the
carnage left on deer and cars alike from the frequent interactions between
members of the herd and varied vehicles. These “let me tell you what happened
to me” stories about deer encounters of the frightening kind are modern variants
of the “fisherman’s tale” along with their one-upmanship enhancements. It is a
strange and perverse form of accomplishment for drivers, akin to the “one that
got away” stories except that it takes the “didn’t get away” fatal plotline.
My story isn’t solely about one particular ‘car and deer’ collision. No, I have
a sequence of encounters which earned me the appellation of “The Deer Killer”
at work. This title resulted from commenting to some colleagues at lunch that I
had had a near-miss with a deer when leaving from our work location one day. On
that occasion, the interaction between my car and the deer was of the most
minimal nature. Upon seeing the deer bound out of the foliage and into the road
ahead of me, I slammed on the brakes and the car bumper just clipped a back hoof
as the deer passed with no meaningful harm done to either. Now this is not an
especially dramatic or noteworthy deer story; but it did bring up the afore-mentioned
one-upmanship competition.
The lunch group heard about a range of story lines dealing with
different contestants’ various offerings of their harrowing confrontations betwixt
car and deer. After we had heard the stories about:
· A deer jumping from the roadside right in-front of the car
· A deer standing in the road around a curve
· A deer bolting from behind bushes in people’s yards
· A herd of deer running onto the road and hitting one or even two
Most of the stories were some version of these themes. They
may have happened at night, in the morning or during the day. Stories took
place in suburban neighbors, around farm fields, in wooded areas (like around
the building I worked at), or on heavily traveled highways. There were stories
of the does and the many pronged bucks woven into the mix. The vehicles spanned
the gamut of new to old, of large and
small, and truck to family auto. The intensity of impact and its resulting
damage also covered a wide spectrum of outcomes, both for deer and vehicle. After
hearing each of the others’ adventures with our indigenous fauna of the bumper,
I though I may have the story that ‘one ups’.
At an opportune moment of silence, a rare incident indeed at the lunch table, I
calmly asked: “Who has hit the same deer twice?” One of the quicker skeptics asked with an
incredulous tone: “And how do you know it was the same deer on those two occasions?” Everyone took on the same expression of doubt.
“On no,” I said, “I did not mean on two separate occasions, I meant twice on
the same one.” I went on to explain.
I was driving from graduate school to my future wife’s house
to fetch her to a party that the graduate students were having during the holidays.
Most of the route was through state forests or undeveloped land. It was a late
fall evening and dark enough to require headlights. There was next to no
traffic on the road, so I was making a good run in the rather dated Volkswagen
I drove at that time. The first thing I saw was a rather large brownish form
immediately in front of the car’s windshield descend from the right side of the
road. I hit it dead on. I slammed on the brakes as fast as my brain could
react.
This is where the event gets unique. The deer hit the hood
and was driven straight forward and a little up in the air, just enough that it
landed on its legs just in time for my car to hit it dead on again. I can’t say
which hit killed the deer. But when the deer and the car came to a stop, it lay
in front of the car and did not move. The visual memory of the collision is
quite vivid. I got out of the car to see how much damage had been done, to see the
state of the deer, and to determine if I was going to be able to drive the car.
Fortunately, for me given the circumstance, I was able to
bend the right front fender up and away from the wheel thus allowing me to be
able to drive; albeit with only one headlight intact. I pulled the deer off the
road and then my car. Not to long after the accident, a passing truck stopped.
The driver asked if I was alright, and I indicated that I was fine. He then
asked me what I planned to do with the deer. I was a little taken aback and
said that I was just going to report the incident (it was required by law to
report hitting a deer and its location). The man asked if he could take it, and
I said that was fine with me. He then invited me to come to his house when I
was able to have some of the deer. I helped him load the deer in the back of
his truck and thanked him for stopping to help.
That story seemed to be the winner, but it wasn’t for that story that I earned
the dubious title of “Deer Killer”. There were some additional deer-involved
incidents that occurred over time. These occurrences would also get related to
my coworkers from time to time. Remember the one at the start of this sage, the
deer running out of the woods at work. Well, there was also one where a deer
jumped out onto the road (again from the right) during a drive into work where
I hit the hindquarters of the dear. The deer kept running after it recovered
from skidding over the road. I was hurt enough to prevent it from running but
did not seem to be running normally. Then there were at least two times when I
was driving home from work on one night and volleyball on another where I saw
the deer standing by the side of the road in someone’s yard. It was only when I
got close that each deer bolted right out into my car. One died, the other I
don’t know what happened after it hobbled off.
There have been a couple of near misses. Somewhere along the
line, it was suggested that I had developed the reputation in the deer community
for being “The Deer Killer”; and any deer that wanted to commit suicide would
come looking for me. I decide to write up this narrative when returning from a
night of summer evening volleyball, I passed three separate locations where
there was a deer just off the road that looked up as I approached and passed.
Fortunately, none of these apparently knew my reputation or where in a
death-wish state of mind.
I am hoping that I won’t be able to add any future ‘tails’
to my story.
