There I am, on the way home from San Antonio. It’s after dark, in the Hill Country, and I’ve already seen way too many Whack-Frack* deer on the side of the highway, so I’ve got my hi-beams on, looking for eyeshine on the median, and on each side of US 281.
Behind me is a blue luxury sedan who seems to be somewhat irritated by the fact that I am doing the speed limit, but won’t pull into the left lane and just go the hell around me.
Pretty soon I see that tell-tale glow off in the brush to the right, but it isn’t moving, so I ease on over into the left lane and start checking to make sure there aren’t any culverts in the median in case I have to juke that way.
Apparently blue luxury believes that this is just one step too far on my part, because I hear the downshift, and watch an expensive blue streak pass me (unlawfully) on the right.
Seems like the God of Deer is a Law And Order type, because as soon as Little Blue violates the Texas Transportation Code, the deer startles her happy little butt onto the highway.
I tap my brakes and whip in behind the sedan just in time to hear the car announce “WHACK!” (authoritatively); the driver shriek “FRACK!” (statistically), and watch the ex-deer high-speed pirouette towards the centre median.
Since my entire world has just gone slow-motion Panic Brake-Light Red, I slide left, punch the Go-Pedal, and — rather gracefully, if I do say so myself — thread the needle between the front of the luxury wreck and the counter-clockwise spinning 80+ pounds of insurance claim.
I get stopped, activate my hazard lights, and back up to the very expensive pile of parts now parked way out in the shoulder, get out and trot up to the driver’s side window.
Inside, I see what looks like — under all the dust from an airbag deployment — a teenage boy. He is locked onto the steering wheel, and looks rigid, so I try the door. Nope, locked. I cop-rap the window, he startles loose from his panic and opens the door.
“Got that ass, huh?”
“I-I-I- think I … hit something!”
I look towards the median. Not a twitch from the carcass. “I think you’re right.”
“OhMyGawd, I think I hit a deer! Did I kill it?”
“Don’t worry about it. They’re making more.”
He looks at me, and I see the gulping start. I point towards the passenger side floorboard, “If you’re going to yark, do it that way.” He flops sideways and start noisily getting reacquainted with his supper. I scan the headboard, spot a red button, and hit it. I am rewarded with a couple of tones, and then a professionally calm voice announces, “[Luxury Car] Assistance, is there an emergency?”
Bedamned, she doesn’t have an accent. “Yes. The blue [Luxury Model] this thing is attached to just kinetically interfaced with a deer on US 281 in [County] County, Texas.”
“I understand. Are you the driver?”
“Nope, he’s busy stress barfing. Hey, Scooter! If you taste rich Corinthian leather, swallow hard. That’ll be the seat, and you don’t want to puke that up.”
There are faint overtones of amusement, “Yes, sir, and what agency are you with?”
“Oh, I’m not. The scene is about 8 miles north of [City], on the northbound side. Run a DPS trooper out here, and probably an ambulance — he’s got airbag injuries.”
“Yes, sir. And your name is?”
“Nah, I’m good.”
“Sir.” The tone is Professionally Stern and No-Nonsense, “I need your name for the report.”
“Oh, my bad. First name ‘Millicent’ last name ‘Bystander’. Common spelling.”
“Yes, sir. ‘M’ ‘I’ ‘L’ … wait a minute.”
“You done puking, Scooter?” A shaky thumb appears, before he wipes his mouth. I look back towards my car, “Outstanding.”
“Sir.”
“Talk to the nice lady until the Woo-Woo Crew get here.”
He nods, but the disembodied voice is getting rather more insistent: “SIR.”
I wave to the kid, “Toodles.”
“SIR. SIR! SIR!”
And how was y’all’s evening?
LawDog
*The colloquial term for “Motor Vehicle Accident Involving Livestock or Game” amongst the children when I was still in Law Enforcement. The second word in the phrase isn’t “Frack”, but I’m trying to keep the old blog PG13. If you can’t guess, it rhymes with “Duck”.
He’s lucky that someone with your experience was there to help him.
And the advice about the leather was an excellent one.
Ah, yes, another successful operation of the TWDHLFCSS (Texas Whitetail Deer Highway Liberation Front Crack Suicide Squad).
I was in San Antonio for SpaceCon last weekend. Bummer to have missed you.
I’ve driven that highway. Following the speed limit seems to be an arbitrary choice, and most decide it’s not fast enough for their liking.
That’s the route I take to get to Austin and San Antonio from the Metromess (I hate 35). I am really surprised he didn’t pass you. I’ve never had a problem with people not passing me on that highway. But, I have never driven it at night.
Deer are now officially spooked as it’s the first weekend of deer season for rifles. Maybe the kid will learn a few lessons here. Maybe not. November through January is the repetitive : “I will dive the speed limit and use peripheral vision.”
In my years in EMS, I never made a call involving a deer. They weren’t too common in metro Houston.
It took me moving to rural Minnesota to even begin seeing them on the side of the road. So far, I’ve been fortunate enough not to hit any. Closest I’ve come was when I spent a few months driving for a railroad taxi company, and came around a bend on Iowa 60 to find three standing in the road. Did the brake/change-lanes maneuver instinctively, missed ’em, we went our separate ways. Got chewed out because I was going 3 miles under the speed limit instead of the company-mandated 5 for a nighttime trip.
Quite a few years back, the wife and I witnessed someone reduce the deer population by one in our rear view mirror. No speeding, no reckless driving, just a deer that decided to see what was on the other side of the road and this poor older woman out running her errands happened to be in the same place.
We turned around and went back, another car behind her pulled in to check on her, she managed to get into a parking lot. PD was called, we all were checking on the nice lady (other than airbag burns, she was OK.)
Her car, well… She wasn’t driving home at that point. Ms. Deer was, shall we say, doing a good impression of Bambi’s Mom.
Now when I’m out driving, I watch like a hawk for deer along the road and I know they can STILL pop up out of dang near nowhere…
Rifle season ends. Muzzleloader season is temporary. Archery season is fleeting. Only automobile season is permanent, but the ammo cost sucks.
In 45+ years of driving, I’ve hit one skunk, one possum, a couple of birds, and one squirrel. Got broadsided by a suicidal cat on my wedding day. And I’ve hit one deer.
Been sleepily driving for a couple of hours, and came around a corner about 6am on a country road, and a fawn was right in the middle of my lane. I hit the brakes and the clutch together, and my passengers woke up to the scream of rubber. Another three feet and I would have missed it. Just barely bumped it, but a “barely bump” from a 3,000 car was enough to knock it down and break both back legs. Another driver in a pickup pulled up behind us and put it on a blanket before pulling it off to the side of the road. We went another mile into town and I called the sheriff to report it. I was done driving after that, so one of the passengers finished taking us the last 30 miles. They knew how upset I was, so they called the sheriff later to check. The sheriff’s office called the forest service, and they went out and picked up the fawn and took it to a vet, who fixed its legs. It then went to a children’s zoo, where presumably, it had a pretty good life.
Whack-F… – also the alternate name for the game of Golf.
I almost had a similar encounter with a doe & her fawn in New Hampshire a few years ago. No harm, no foul. But I was slightly on edge afterwards, as were the distaff agents in the rental with me.
Good Times!
Ulises from the People’s Republik of Kalipornia
Got a doe with my old Subaru out in far western Flat State. I was very lucky, as I’d slowed to allow a livestock trailer to get past (he had his flashers on, so I assume sick animal on the way to the vet). I”d just started to accelerate again when the doe leaped into the road ahead of me. I did NOT hit the brakes, and she hit the headlight, bending the hood enough to deflect her from coming up to greet me. Also kept the airbag from arming or triggering. Car was driveable.
Had the airbag in the old Tacoma go off when I got T-boned. 0/5 stars, don’t recommend.
The only deer I’ve touched in 5 years of living in NW Wyoming (knock wood) was right here in the middle of Tiny Town™. I had turned a corner onto the side street after a stop sign; the street had diagonal parking. There was a lady getting out of her car a couple of spots down from the corner, when she slammed her door shut it startled the mule deer buck (great rack) that was between a couple of cars down.
It stepped into the street directly in front of me while looking back over its shoulder at the lady and I detonated the brakes on the truck. I was only doing about 10 MPH in a new truck, with new tires and new brakes, and the whole truck came to a stop without even screeching the tires. The front of the bumper just barely tapped the buck, but it was enough to knock him two side-steps away. He looked at me, looked at the lady, and then stepped further past the truck. This time he carefully looked both ways before crossing the street.
I got out to see if it had dinged any sheet metal, but everything was okay. The lady started to apologize for startling the deer and I told her it certainly wasn’t her fault, and we ended up laughing about how scared that deer looked afterwards, and how he checked for traffic before stepping out a second time.
I hate driving around here at night, and in town isn’t any better. The folks from other (even smaller) towns call this the “Tiny Town™ Petting Zoo” cause there are so many mule deer wandering around.
Dumb Drivers behind…
I recall an Icy Morning, that has some small snowfall atop the slippy road. I walked the road to gauge the traction and knew I could drive on it with my studded snow tires.
I made an executive decision to drive the kids to school in my car vs letting them ride on .GOV provided bus.
Driving the correct speed, I was nagged by the kids to go faster. After a quick STFU, I approached the straightaway on our country road.
The mental giant in the pickup behind me decided I was in the way, so he sped up. I directed the kids attention rearwards and sure enough, they got to witness him spin out and bang on the hillside to the left.
Fortunately, it wasn’t disastrous for the genius.
Kids learned 2 things:
1) Dad’s pretty smart after all.
2) Slow down in crappy weather
…For work we were outside of St Lewis. Had been snowing all day (the wet heavy slippery stuff). As we left on the 4 lane, a snowplow pulled in in front of us and started plowing. We fell in formation behind him at 30 mph (this was as going to be as the road would ever get). A pickup passed us and the plow in front in the left (unplowed) lane and disappeared in a cloud of snow in the distance. A few miles later, he was waay out in the ditch. My boss glanced over “If he was such a hurry, why did he pull over”?…
I lived the first half of my life in deer-infested rural Pennsylvania and never had a problem. Then 28 years ago I moved to Georgia, and my score is now four deer and a dog. I am officially a redneck ace.
When I was much younger I drove a box truck hauling a couple pallets of microbrew all over the Mid-Atlantic. When driving through Central Virginia on the way back to my parents house for a 2 day reset, I watched a red blur from the side of the road, and heard a small thump. I pull over, and sure enough a cardinal had decided to fall in love with the front grill of the truck. I pluck the now deceased bird, saw no radiator damage, and moved on towards home. The next morning I wake and meander out for coffee, and hear my mother discuss with my stepfather, she had never seen so many cardinals. I look out the window and there were 40 to 50 sitting in the tree, about 20 feet where I parked the truck. I decided to not come out of the house, just in case.
Being an overachiever (or an unlucky idiot, you decide), I’ve managed to tag deer on two occasions. Fortunately neither was enough to render my car hors de cervine.
We have roos, not whitetail, and they are the reason why every road vehicle that I own, sports protective bar-work on the front. Saved me some panel-damage over the years. Ditto for high-performance aftermarket lighting.
The latest survival recommendation in Australia is that if you find yourself lost in the howling wilderness, follow the first roo you see. No matter how remote your starting point, within 15 minutes, that roo will be in the middle of a major road.
Deer are not common where I live, but they are about and breeding. Sambar weigh up to 500lb and are tall enough to come over the bonnet into your screen. The same suburbanites who complain about hunting, are complaining about damage to their cars and gardens. I’d love to think they’d figure it out, but I’m not getting my hopes up.
Safe travels…… Peter.
Tom “Officer Vic” Benner, who did the traffic reports on KSFO when the late, great Lee Rogers was ticking off the Leftists in the SF Bay Area used to refer to the local mule deer (garden pests and traffic hazards par excellence) as “giant antlered rats.”
Some years back I was living in the DC suburbs and working in a Mall store. I was close enough (and traffic in the area mad enough) that I rode a bicycle to and from work. The route home was mostly through a sprawl of office/warehouse/oddball retail park. One night I was paced for quite a way by an antlered Buck.
At that time DC was being called ‘the murder capitol’…and more peop,e in the DC metropolitan area died from deer collisions.
Does TX at least give you a deer tag for harvesting the deer in the most expensive way possible? MN issues tags for roadkilled. There are states that give you a ticket for killing the state’s critter.
Wife had a co-worker that has a hobby farm outside of Rochester, MN – right at the transition from rural county to urban. And the school bus stopped there to pick up his kids.
Lots of deer hit at that spot too. So he’d see a road kill, check to see if it was warm (fresh) and call for a tag. Then field dress it on the side of the road.
Made it easy to identify the city kids vs the farm kids on the school bus.
In 1992 I lived in Bastrop, Tx and the local idiot deer population seem to want road rights. Stopped to pay car insurance and they had a box of deer whistles that had cut deer/auto problems by a significant amount so they were giving them to customers. Picked up two for us. Then saw a big buck leading about 5 does running flat out for the fence. I was coming over a hill and spotted them, his head came up and he turned and led his does back the way they came from. Someone said but they only work about 50% of the time. My answer is better 50% than Zero.
Nov. 28, 2024 – a Merry Thanksgiving, Mr. Dawg. Feed yer foxes!
Another LawDog Classic Tale!
I sense that there are a couple of more anthologies waiting to bubble out of you one of these days.
Friend of mine, who broke me into the medical business, was a legendary crap magnet. He was late to Wilderness Medic class (he was the instructor) one night, because he’d been the first on the scene of an extended family of 10 (ages 4 to 82) riding mostly in the back of a pickup truck who got in a bumper thumper accident with another vehicle on a local freeway right around supper time.
Good Buddy jumped out, assessed all patients, including a full set of vital signs, because he had a 5-size BP cuff kit for all sizes and ages from neonatal to XL Soccer hooligan, recorded all their basic data, medical history, allergies, and medical complaints, and just as he finished, the LAFD engine crew and paramedics rolled up.
So he immediately started giving the Capt and lead paramedic a complete rundown on all 10 patients from his notes. Which they wrote down as fast as they could without interrupting him, page after page after page.
When he finished, while the lead paramedic radoied for a couple extra ambulances, the fire captain looked at him and said “Thanks. Now…who the frack ARE you???”
(Apparently, they weren’t used to getting a textbook-perfect 10-patient handoff from Random Good Samaritans. Shocking.)
He told them “Oh, I’m an instructor for a Wilderness EMT class. In fact, I’m a little late for teaching it. You’ve got this, right? Okay if I go now?”
“Uh…yeah, sure. Thanks!”
Just like for you, for people in any side of the first responder biz, you never really escape it, even if you try. It finds its way to you anyways.
BTDTGTTS.
Best Wishes and Happy Thanksgiving,
Ya know. I grew up in rural Missouri. Never came close to hitting a deer. We moved to Ohio. I had one hide in the ditch then jump out in front of my SUV and I had one run into the side of my SUV and broke off the driver’s side mirror. Didn’t even stop to exchange insurance info.
When I look at your RSS feed it gives me a bunch of weird text,
is the problem on my side?