Hit my first deer.

[GM_Guy]

Deer are fast motherfuckers. I've had a number of close calls over the years. At least it looks like things came out relatively good all things considered.

Alex.

[Lincolnmania]

unfortunately, new repop header panels are obsolete. there may be some floating around


http://www.amazon.com/Replacement-Me...Agrand+marquis

let me know if you need help finding one.

[Mainemantom]

Good to hear you are not hurt. It is a shame about your car. At least it can be fixed without too much problems.

[His Royal Ghostliness]

I get back in, put the hazards on, and a couple people wind up going around me (thanks for stopping, assholes).

You can thank dishonest lowlife scum for that one - some will pull over and pretend they're in trouble just so they can jump whoever stops by to check up on them. People are aware of that scheme so they are more inclined to just move along, besides in this day and age it's pretty much assumed anyone and everyone has a cell phone on them thus help is only a call away.

I lucked out because technically she could have nailed me for speeding AND fleeing the scene since you're supposed to report all accidents with deer even if you don't have full coverage on the vehicle.

Oh they can go fawk themselves on that one - why the heck would you wanna report a deer accident if the only thing you'd be getting out of it is jacked up insurance rates? If the vehicle is safe to drive you take it home and you do with it whatever it is you think appropriate, if the insurance cartel ain't gonna be helping you with the repairs then they don't need to know about the accident.

All that aside, you lucked out, you only hit one deer. Think it was last year I was hauling thru NorCal towards Oregonia when I rounded a corner and there's a whole herd of them basterds just kinda chilling in the middle of the road - it was very late at night on a road not very much traveled so I guess they just decided to have a pow-wow right there. Idk how they didn't hear the diesel screaming up the mountain from like a mile away but I know they heard the air horns, still barely any reaction on their part - ain't never seen such spaced-out deer in my life, it's like they were drugged up or something. Ah well too bad, cleared a path 8ft wide right thru them, that got the survivors going finally... And the bumper now has steel mesh in front of the driving lights built into it - go ahead deer, try knocking them outta alignment again, would be fun to watch you go splat again... (not fun cleaning the aftermath tho, geez talk about blood-red paint job).

[DerekTheGreat]

LoL @ HRG's comment!
"Mowing through 'em like a John Deere through tall grass!"

[His Royal Ghostliness]

Nah dude, it was actually kinda creepy - they just sat there, I got four 6" Grovers running 150psi blaring at them and enough lights flashing to make someone a county away to wonder if maybe an UFO is about to land in their woods, yet they just sat there...

[DerekTheGreat]

Details that weren't there with your last comment! So did you actually run them over? That would be funny to me.

[Grand1]

Sorry to hear about that bro.....you did the right thing....here in MI plenty of people swerve to miss deers
only to critically injure/ kill themselves or others

[dmccaig]

Deer have night sensitive eyes and go blind - except in the road covered by your headlights. BLIND If you can stop and cut to parking or fogs they'll get out of the way. If you can't youll hit them and even if they run off they have enough internal injuries to die. I've killed a few and eaten fewer. Scariest was West Texas where the twolane limit was 70 and they'd mowed back maybe forty yards on either side which was, natch, where the deer had something. EVERYBODY had serious bullbars and most of them had seen action. Very much difference hitting a deer at 30 and 70.

Donald

[His Royal Ghostliness]

Details that weren't there with your last comment! So did you actually run them over? That would be funny to me.

Hit them head-on, well not all of them obviously, they're extremely skilled at taking off once spooked properly, but quite a few of them got pounded into the ground... Literally! And no, it's not really all that funny - like I said the cleanup is a mother, if I were a writer or something I could paint you a picture so vivid that would probably make you empty the contents of your stomach, just like I did when I was inspecting the "damages" afterwards.

Sorry to hear about that bro.....you did the right thing....here in MI plenty of people swerve to miss deers
only to critically injure/ kill themselves or others

It's an instinctive reaction - you see this big animal sitting in the middle of the road, of course you won't wanna hit it, and if the brakes ain't enough to avoid it you do the next thing that is almost certain to alter your course enough to avoid impacting the thing. Most people don't drive vehicles equipped well enough to take on large deer head on, when whatever you're about to hit stands above the hood of whatever you're driving it takes a pretty strong self-control to stay on course and plow onto the obstacle.

Deer have night sensitive eyes and go blind - except in the road covered by your headlights. BLIND If you can stop and cut to parking or fogs they'll get out of the way. If you can't youll hit them and even if they run off they have enough internal injuries to die. I've killed a few and eaten fewer. Scariest was West Texas where the twolane limit was 70 and they'd mowed back maybe forty yards on either side which was, natch, where the deer had something. EVERYBODY had serious bullbars and most of them had seen action. Very much difference hitting a deer at 30 and 70.

Yes I know they go blind, that's why I was flashing the highs, but I wasn't about to go all dim on account of them - mostly cause while I do have some wicked fog lights there's no way my eyes would adjust to the huge power drop quick enough, I'd rather see what I'm hitting than cripple my own vision in hopes of the obstacle relocating itself out of my way. And yes, absolutely huge difference between low-speed and high-speed animal strikes, I've hit a deer (I think it was a deer, never actually saw it) going 80+ and never even had time to lay off the throttle let alone apply any brakes, the result was a bloody mess, and not in the British sense of the word...

[Mainemantom]

I have seen a few animals go through windshields. Some legs first. It will make a person a believer in driving a big vehicle. Saw a CV last week that hit a moose. It hit into the windshield and top. Bent the A pillar. Driver was not hurt. Car won't be fixed.
Yeah big rigs vs anything smaller... big rig normally wins. I give them lots of room.

[t65neon5]

glad u r ok......bummer about the car

[His Royal Ghostliness]

I have seen a few animals go through windshields. Some legs first. It will make a person a believer in driving a big vehicle. Saw a CV last week that hit a moose. It hit into the windshield and top. Bent the A pillar. Driver was not hurt. Car won't be fixed.
Yeah big rigs vs anything smaller... big rig normally wins. I give them lots of room.

Yup, that's what it boils down to - hit a tall and top-heavy animal with a low-hooded vehicle, and said animal may very well come inside to hang out with you. Of course you can always try to hit the poor thing so hard that you send it flying up and all the way over your car

Large trucks generally do fare far better, but they have their own set of problems - hit something big enough to take out the air-to-air and you lose way too much engine power. If you're not a company driver, or you don't have friends with other big trucks who could come to the rescue and at least move the trailer for you while you limp the tractor back to home base, and depending on how your insurance is set up, you may quickly realize that assistance from the proper wrecker costs more than what you'd have spent on a bull-bar bumper. IMHO any single-truck owner-operator who runs around without good front protection against animal strikes is just tempting fate...

[a_d_a_m]

Glad you're okay, taters. It's the time of the year for those delicious animals to jump in front of cars.

I've got a good header panel if you need it, think I have a grille, turn signals and headlight bezels too. Let me know if you need any of it.

Ohio mini meet.

[DerekTheGreat]

..Of course you can always try to hit the poor thing so hard that you send it flying up and all the way over your car

I've heard that's actually the way to do it. Hitting the brakes causes your car to dip down even more whereas going faster might actually send up n over or at least bury them in the grille, not in your face.