Just saw a fawn get mowed down by an SUV

And the thing that pissed me off was, the SUV didn't even stop, even though the fawn was not dead, at least not right away. I was driving behind the SUV, and a family of deer suddenly came out on the road in front of it. It wasn't really the driver's fault that he hit the deer, that could have happened to anybody, including me. But the driver barely even stopped. Only for a second, and then he just kept right on a-goin'. Meanwhile I pull up, not realizing that he had even hit a deer, only seeing the family of deer come out onto the road and the SUV driver kinda sorta stop very briefly. And then I get to where he was and see this baby fawn, twitching and thrashing on the road, not dead and clearly in agony.

I pull over, I really don't know what to do or even if there's anything I can do or what to do. The road is dark, cars are driving on it at 50 MPH, some faster. I look at the deer. It has stopped moving for now. Then another car comes up to it and stops, the fawn starts twitching again. It's still alive. The car sees this, and casually moves around it, and keeps going. I debate getting out of the car but again, not really having any idea what I'd do even if I did. Another truck comes up, the kind with the really huge monster wheels. This time, I think, but I can't really say for certain, it runs right over the fawn and doesn't even slow down. In a way, I'm actually grateful, I'd rather have it dead than twitching in pain in the middle of the road.

I watch the fawn for awhile. It doesn't move. More cars drive by, there is no more twitching from the fawn. I'm fairly certain it's dead by now. And if it isn't, it will be soon, I seriously hope. I decide to leave. I pull onto the road. Another truck that has to be going at least 60 on a narrow, windy, pitch black mountain road pulls up behind me right as I'm accelerating to about 40, and gets right on my ass. the speed limit is 45. I'm only 5 miles under it, and that is rectified within the next few seconds. But this guy is clearly in a hurry, and the fact that his truck is almost kissing the ass of my car is letting me know this. I wonder if he even noticed the dead deer. I wonder what kinds of emotions deer have. I had briefly seen at least one of its parents as they staggered out into the road in front of the SUV. I wonder if he or she is mourning the loss of their child. Most animals, mammals in particular, have an innate sense of caring and the desire to protect their offspring. I wonder if they are watching this spectacle from the side of the road, watching as their offspring is rammed by one of these speeding metal contraptions, and then watching as one by one, more of these metal contraptions either casually go around their kicking and thrashing offspring or simply run over it again. I wonder what they think, or if they even think at all, of the fact that only one of these metal contraptions even bothered to stop and at least debate whether or not there was anything he could do to help, even if in the end there wasn't.

I get home, rather ashamed to be a human.

that way you could dispatch the suffering beast and at least not let its meat go to waste.

But eating roadkill isn't usually a good idea. There are things inside that, if ruptured, will make the task of cleaning and dressing it for consumption very, very, unpleasant, and sometimes impossible.

My Dad was a hunter--never for sport, always for meat. I remember all too well his admonitions about making sure certain...internal parts...stayed intact as long as possible, so as not to ruin the meat. Ick.

If for no other reason, the cops would say "misuse of firearm" or some other buraeucratic mumbo jumbo.

Worse, until they followed up on the claim someone else hit it and thank goodness the OP had the license information, the OP would be charged with hitting the critter too. (the car not being damaged would get him cleared in the end, but for that charge only.)

I'm probably wrong, but shooting animals outside hunting season is probably a crime. :crazy:

Dr Kevorkian - he wasn't allowed to do mercy killings either.

you get rapid development of places that 10-20 years ago were wilderness or farmland.

the native creatures often get hit by soccer moms on their way to wal mart.

in West Des Moines, about a week after it opened. And yes, three months earlier it was a cornfield. And no, the SUV who hit it didn't stop, didn't react. After all, it's not the deer's home anymore, is it?

They DO work when applied properly and the deer aren't killed. I'm amazed SUVs don't end up as scrunched as they probably should be...

of game laws doing that. I carry a sidearm from time to time but would not shoot a wounded animal for any number of reasons.
Most states have laws on the books because of rednecks that state you cant shoot game animals so many feet from the road, cant discharge a weapon on the road, etc.

gunshots are loud depending on location you will annoy/scare/or piss off someone.
if someone sees you with a gun they could call police and set off a big mess.
it is dangerous to fire a weapon through something that is sitting on concrete of asphalt. you can get splattered with metal or gore.

Use you cell call animal control or sheriff.

The person in the SUV can do nothing but get injured by a hurt animal.

Deer on the road kill people. At least they did not swerve across the center line.

It was a pretty large buck, it tore up the guys car that hit it and it was still alive on the side of the road but clearly was not going to live. There were a few people standing around looking at it. When I walked up I asked if anyone objected to me ending it for the guy. One shot and it was over. It was more humane than letting his internal injuries kill him or waiting for a cop to arrive and do the same.
On a brighter note, I have seen a deer realize he was going to get hit and jump OVER the hood of a car. Lucky guy!

It was leaping into the road as I was coming down a mountain at 5:30 am. I managed to get in front of it, but it grazed a rear panel. Sent my front end spinning into tree 1. Bounced off of that, still spinning, and came to rest with my trunk against tree 2. Trunk took on the shape of a flying V. Front end smashed in. And on the other side of tree 2 was a 60-foot ravine.

It's a deer. They're cute and it's sad when something cute dies, but they can cause us as much damage as we do them. People don't set out to hit deers with their cars; all we can do when one gets in our path is try to avoid it without killing ourselves. The machine that kills the deer has become a necessity in our lives.

I'd be more pissed off about the truck driver.

I saw legs at the passenger side of my windshield as it did the most graceful turn in mid-air. It headed back in the field while it took me getting to the next town before I stopped shaking.

Either that or increase the bag limit during hunting season.

The type of deer around here are small and don't have much meat on them. They're not worth hunting. When people hunt deer they go further up north where the elk are.

When I see things like that I am absolutely haunted for days. It is awful to see and have to deal with.

You were so good to stop and at least be there.

I'm sorry you saw that happen Downtown Hound.

There really was little anyone could do..by the time authorities had been notified and the time it would take for them to arrive, the poor animal would have already experienced what it did.



:cry:

and nature will go on as intended, such it can be in an area where we've destroyed the habitat with our roads and houses and amber waves of grain.

Nothing you can do for a deer once you've hit it, except leave it there and call the cops to go pull it off the road.

I always stop for turtles. I work for a tool and die company and visit customer shops and drive commercial trucks if they need stuff. I used to do more domestic driving. I will lock up the brakes, reverse and park a ford f800 or similar large vehicle (garbage truck sized with crane to lift equipment) truck in the middle of the road (where I will not kill anyone) and get out and move turtles. Some guys I work with give me shit but I always stop.



They work for me so I joke around and tell them they better stop if I am not there.

None the less people tend to drive around it.

I have seen them get killed and it is strange that even with infantry training, and being a hunter, that I feel really bad for a helpless turtle.

It does piss you off that people could pay attention and not hit them, but they dont.

I'm ashamed to be human a lot lately, but I know a lot of people who feel the way you do so I know some of us are good. A few anyway.
I'm sorry you had to see that :hug:

It was my first trip there, and just about every place I traveled had deer signs (next 5 miles", "next 2 miles")

I was exhausting trying to watch for them constantly! One evening right before I left the area around Ithaca, I was driving to my B & B in Newfield, and saw one scampering off into the bushes on the other side of the road. If I'd been a few seconds faster, I would probably have hit him.

And hubby let me know after I got home that he'd heard that the Kia Sportage (my rent car) has one of the worst crash records in the business, so he would have made toast out of me.

So sorry you had to deal with that! :hug:

I would have just as upset as you were. You did everything you could. Poor little baby.

:hug:

Deer are real bad here where I live. I live in the Appalachians of NC where deer are overpopulating it seems. It wasn't so bad 20 years ago. I think the hunter population has a lot to do with it. Less hunters = more deer.

Its actually nerve-wracking to drive at night here though. I've seen several cars after hitting a deer. The worst was a friend who had his windshield broke. Scary stuff.

People function on different planes, and one is not necessarily better or worse than the other.

The driver may not have stopped for a number of reasons. They might have realized there wasn't anything they could do. Your stopping and watching it die is an expression of how you react to such things, but really, it's an internal comfort to you, it's nothing to the deer that you sat there.

You didn't say how close of a look you got at the driver, but you did say it was dark. If I were driving around alone and hit a deer, unless it was an area I was extremely comfortable in, I would not have stopped and gotten out of my car, because women are trained to recognize situations where they make themselves vulnerable. That's a whole other reason to be ashamed to be a human, that such a thought process has to exist for half the population, but it isn't the driver's fault.

The last accident I was in was an accident deliberately caused by someone else. The law requires me to stop and exchange info. I did not. I drove out of there, got off at the next exit and called 911, and when they asked me if I stayed at the scene, I told them, hell, no. If I'd have done that, the driver likely would have run me over. My safety comes first, and definitely comes before an ineffectual act (watching them die) that might mean something to a fellow human, but nothing to wild animal.

In other words, your actions came from a good place in you, empathy and caring. Their actions could be the cause of any number of things that you have no knowledge of, so part of your empathy can be in understanding that there may have been many reasons for them to not stop.

We had a similar experience on the way to work at dawn once, but we were in a Honda Civic. This time Bambi actually rammed us on the side of the car as she was running across the street. We went back and picked her up and took her to the vet, but she had to be put down because she was blind. She still had her spots and it stayed with me a long time.