Deer in urban street - sad result.

[Fairportfan]

On the way home from dropping Kate at work this morning, i passed this sad sight.

I've mentioned seeing numerous deer on the lawns and roads where we live, which is pretty semi-rural, even if inside the Gainesville city limits.

Well, this was over where we used to live, which is a lot more urbanised. Not a good place for deer.

[Dave]

Och... sorry to see that happen!

A few months ago, my wife and were cycling out to a Sunday breakfast, and saw a female deer running along the local 4-lane expressway, looking desperately for a way to escape the road. We stopped, and a minute or so later she ran by us, no more than 6' away. Police and Animal Control were stopping traffic to keep vehicles away, and trying to chivvy the deer in a safe direction. My best guess is that she followed one of the streambed culverts down from the Santa Cruz hills towards the Bay, and eventually escaped out of the channel into the residential lowlands neighborhoods.

I called A.C. the next day to enquire and was told of a happy ending. They didn't have to try to snare and transport her (the stress of which tends to kill the deer). They were able to steer her westward and upwards, until she reached the more rural neighborhoods... she took off into the woods and was not seen again.

[NOTDilbert]

Those inexperienced rural deer, hanging out on corners already staked as gang turf....

I had to use care a few nights ago, a couple of deer ran across a five-lane boulevard near the airport as I drove - not exactly downtown, but not rural either, solid suburbs on all sides...

[Atomic]

Here in suburban Pennsylvania near Harrisburg, we've had deer in our neighborhood. Driving back from work in the evenings (about 20 minutes), my path through the country side will regularly (at least once a week or so) have deer visible from the roadside.

[Julie]

Wow...I honestly don't think I've ever seen a deer killed by a vehicle. I got hit by a deer once (and yes...I said that right...I had stopped to avoid hitting deer that were crossing the road, and after the road was clear I started up again...and a buck hit the driver's side door). My SUV was pretty heavily damaged, but the deer just shook it off and wandered away. It's possible that he died later, but I don't know.

[jwhouk]

Hit a deer, car was out of commission for weeks.

Dead deer lying by the side of the road are too common a sight here in WI. I have deer whistles on my front bumper to discourage them from running in front of my car on the rural highways and byways we have up here.

[chibichibi01]

I don't see many of the on the side of the road down here. That's usually because the people that hit them, pick them up and take them to the butcher.

[bmonk]

We get a certain number of dead deer every year--but usually only in certain crossing spots.

Of course, there was that caller last fall near Fargo (may be legit or a hoax, nobody is saying) who said they should move the deer crossing signs to less dangerous spots. . . .

[Fairportfan]

Saddest deer story in my personal experience - i was coming back from Louisville - or maybe Nashville - anyway, i was on I-20 east coming down Monteagle Mountain.

The eastbound grade on Monteagle uses the old US-41 route; three lanes wide, up against the mountainside on the left, several miles long ... and so steep and twisty that there is a mandatory video brake check stop for all trucks.

About halfway down, a buck had somehow gotten onto the roadway from the uphill side, and was frantically twisting and turning in medium-heavy traffic.

He almost got hit several times, but dodged them all, and made it to the other side of the road - and made a single absolutely magnificent leap over the low wall on the shoulder.

Into several hundred feet of empty air.

[MerchManDan]

That's awful!

A couple of Easters ago, my brother was driving me home in his truck. Going from Selkirk to Winnipeg - 20 miles, give or take, through snowy conditions. The area used to be mostly farmland, but lately seems to be slowly being converted to residential.
About halfway to the city limits, a pair of deer jumped in front of us: One rebounded off our front right fender into the ditch, but the other managed to dodge us entirely...only to get hit by a car coming the other way. We only knew this because we heard it happen, so we turned around to see how the other driver was. She had pulled over & was pretty shaken up; the deer she had hit was still on the road. Purely by chance, an RCMP cruiser pulled up to see what was going on; they were patrolling the highway & saw all of us parked on the edge. They handled the clean-up so the rest of us could go on our way.

[Fairportfan]

I don't know how other jurisdictions handle it, but i have been semi-reliably informed that Georgia decides where to pur up "Deer Crossing" signs by keeping track of how many deer strikes occur at a given location, and if there were more than a certain number, they'd put up the signs..

Okay, fine.

Then, one day, i saw this sign:

[lake_wrangler]

I don't know how other jurisdictions handle it, but i have been semi-reliably informed that Georgia decides where to pur up "Deer Crossing" signs by keeping track of how many deer strikes occur at a given location, and if there were more than a certain number, they'd put up the signs..

Okay, fine.

Then, one day, i saw this sign:

http://electronictiger.net/avail/horse.png

Of course, some other animals are dangerous, too...

[Graybeard]

Saddest deer story in my personal experience - i was coming back from Louisville - or maybe Nashville - anyway, i was on I-20 east coming down Monteagle Mountain.

That is indeed a sad story, but something happened to a friend of mine that put a black-humor twist on the same into-thin-air thing and may lighten the mood a bit, in a bizarre kind of way.

Wildlife encounters on the road are common here in New Mexico. I've hit an elk while driving an SUV, and if you think a deer makes a mess of a car, consider an encounter with something that weighs three times as much. (Fortunately I had time to see it about to happen, and neither car nor elk were severely damaged, although the car smelled of scared elk for about two weeks.) I also nearly hit a deer while on my bicycle, powering down a mountain hill with my head buried in the handlebars to build up a head of steam for the next uphill. And then, not on the road by any means, there was what happened to Steve (not his real name, for reasons that will be apparent)...

He was rock climbing in the Organ Mountains of southern New Mexico and was seconding a pitch on "Sugarloaf," one of the classic technical peaks there, where his partner led out onto a near-vertical face. The partner is about half way up the lead, everything going routinely, when he forgets one of the important maxims of climbing in the Organs: clap your hands or make other noise every now and then, so that any rattlesnakes on the route will let you know they're there so you can avoid them. So the guy is making a move and does one of those things you Just Don't Do when climbing in the desert, and puts a hand onto an unseen ledge above his head ... only to find that it's already occupied.

From there it came down to a contest of reaction speed, and Steve's climbing buddy won. The snake rattled (polite enough, they don't always do that before striking -- that's another story...), the climber had an "OH CRAP" moment, and he pulled back his hand, resulting in a leader fall, which was no huge deal since Steve was belaying him, after all. However, the snake wasn't satisfied with that response, and it struck at the disappearing hand. It missed, with the result that the momentum of the strike carried it off the ledge ...

... So the next thing that Steve sees as he's catching his pal on the belay is this snake going by, falling 500 feet in free space to the bottom of Sugarloaf.

He didn't let the other guy lead any more pitches that day after that.

There is a sad post script. Steve, who could tell this story far better than I if he was available, would experience the breakup of two marriages in the few years after that incident. Neither ex could live with his Bipolar Disorder, nor succeed in getting him to seek treatment for it, although at least the first one did try. After the second marriage broke up, he went off into the forest with his dog and a hunting rifle. Only the dog came back.

Miss you, guy.

[Julie]

My parents also tell the story of one of their visits to Yellowstone with my father's sister, her husband, my father's younger brother and his wife... My uncle had (rather foolishly) driven his company car down to Yellowstone from Oregon (which was apparently against company policy) while my parents and my aunt and her husband were in rental vehicles. It was their last day in the park and my uncle (again foolishly) was letting his wife drive his company car out (also against company policy) while my parents followed a little ways back. You can imagine the surprise they felt when they rounded a corner and saw my uncle's car looking quite the mess...and the smug "you should have known better from the start" amusement my father felt upon hearing that my uncle's wife had hit an elk with the car that she shouldn't have been driving...and that shouldn't have been there in the first place.

Well, my uncle got the car started again (which by all accounts was a miracle) and this time my parents took the lead while my uncle very carefully drove his company car. He was driving so carefully that my parents soon lost sight of him in their rearview. When they got to the end of the road, there was a slight traffic build up. Apparently park rangers were stopping everyone and asking if the people knew anything about an elk being hit on that road a little further into the park. Given that my family hadn't seen anyone around the incident, and that they hadn't called anyone, perhaps you can guess that my dad (who was driving the rental) was a little unnerved... so when he pulled up next to the park ranger and was asked, "Do you know anything about an elk being hit by a vehicle on this road?" his deadpan response was, "No sir, but I think the car behind me does" and he drove off without looking back.

I have a special family.

(Apparently the elk wasn't seriously wounded, but they did want to hear the details from the driver who hit the animal and they wanted to check on the safety of those who'd been in the car. I also don't know what kind of reception my uncle got at work when he got back to Oregon...which I'm kind of disappointed about, but I'm betting my uncle had no interest in giving his big brother more fodder for poking fun.)