"You'll be happy to hear we didn't kill a dear," my son Daniel's friend Dan told me two weeks ago when the two Daniels hauled their bright orange hunting gear and folding chairs into our house. It was a cold December morning, and they'd been outside in a blind waiting to spot and kill a doe for hours already on top of a few hours at dusk the night before.
"I am happy," I admitted, while putting on the kettle for him. While I completely understand the need to control the deer population in Kansas, plus I eat meat regularly (although usually chicken I don't kill myself), I'm a complete hypocrite. I can swat a fly without a thought, but I've got a Bambi complex when it comes to the beautiful grace of the many deer who live here.
Just last week I called Ken to stand silently with me at our bedroom window and watch a young buck make his way through the woods. I marvel at the fawns playing deer tag in the field and I admire the sweet doe ferrying two young ones from the edge of the woods across the prairie.
When people are coming to hunt deer here (although it's only happened twice so far), I always go out ahead of the hunters' arrival and call out, "Hey, deer, and especially you does, you might want to make yourself scarce if you don't want to take one for the team."
Karma has a wicked sense of humor and timing. The woman who would prefer not to kill deer just killed a deer Sunday night with her car. He was a young buck with one-year-old antlers, and I first saw him out the windshield as my car hit him. One moment, I was listening to Jimmy Carter on NPR talk about how he never would have been elected president in 1976 without the Allman Brothers. The next moment, a loud thump, the groceries beside me smashing into the floor, and a just-hit deer running across the road.
He raced up and down the fenced-in trees, looking for an opening, clearly not able to soar over fences anymore although flying over the fence on the other side of the road got him here. I wanted to see if it was okay, which Ken later explained would have been dangerous since he was in a panic and had hoofs, but I needed first to call Ken. Then I called the sheriff since this buck was limping and he might need to be shot. I also was gingerly picking up hard plastic pieces strew across the road from my car's grill while keeping an eye out for traffic.
Within a few minutes, the deer collapsed to the ground. I walked over to where he was and said I was sorry while looking at his handsome white face, his large black eye still open, and especially his torso, where I couldn't detect a beating heart.
About forty years ago, in the same stretch of road, I hit another buck on another late winter's afternoon. That deer couldn't walk after I hit him with Vampire, my Dodge Dart thus named because it sucked the juice out of other cars trying to jump-start it. Ken showed up and explained to me calmly, as if I was a child, that it was necessary for the sheriff to come shoot the deer because the other deer wouldn't push their parapalegic peer in a wheelchair through the woods. When the sheriff arrived, I stepped away from the actual killing but heard the shot, telling myself it was a mercy.
There was also a large buck that hit me as I drove in a small Toyota, in town no less, with toddler Daniel in his carseat behind me. That deer smashed into the left side of our car, breaking the safety glass all over my baby, leapt over the now-totaled car, and keep going. Luckily, Daniel and I were okay, just very surprised.
This deer I just hit didn't need to be shot, having died on his own. I handed the deputy my license and insurance info., he gave me his card, and I drove home after taking photos of the distorted front side flank of my car and the smashed plastic grill still holding some deer hair to file an insurance claim.
I know in the big picture hitting a deer with a car is a super common experience -- just about everyone I know has done the deed without meaning to -- and yes, deer leaping in front of oncoming traffic is part of the overpopulation problem. But I'm sad that this energetic young man of a buck is dead.
Excellent write up I too have had close encounters. One almost resulted in my car being totaled.
I've hit a deer too. It ran away, but left a crackled windshield I couldn't see through. All of a sudden it had gone gray. I was only a few miles from home, but had to drive back with my head out the door window. Awkward!!! The car wasn't damaged, just the windshield. I see new bones in my pasture every year, so I know there is some balance going on, but not enough.