Know what this is?

Read on to find out! Pictures are here!

Those who have known me for a decade or more probably know that I hit a deer about ten years ago when I was in Virginia on a business trip. On the way back from dinner in Brockville with Kathy Sunday evening, it happened again. That’s a piece of deer fur caught in the window frame on my Tracker.

Another stupid ruminant decided to try to cross the 416 whilst we were busy driving on it. I saw a blur of brown and white (i.e. the deer) at the very last second and was able to swerve enough so that I only clipped it with the driver’s side mirror. I slammed on the brakes while still on the pavement and we came to a stop on the gravel shoulder about 100′ later with the front bumper at the edge of the pavement perpendicular to the direction of traffic — basically, we rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise on the gravel.

A minivan travelling behind us pulled off and the driver and passenger came running back along the gravel, asking if we were ok. Fortunately, we were not injured. I called 9-1-1 and talked to the OPP dispatcher who took my report. They asked where we were and naturally there were no signs to be seen. Fortunately, I had my GPS, so I was at least able to give them my latitude and longitude. I have no idea if they were able to do anything with it, but I hope they were. I also set three flares on the shoulder to protect the vehicle.

While we waited, we observed the deer standing up and moving towards the road surface. One of the passers-by tried to encourage it not to walk back out into traffic. I guess that worked, because the last we saw of the deer, it was moving through the woods.

A tow truck showed up while I was on the phone with the CAA to let them know I might need a tow. (At this point, I didn’t know whether the vehicle was drivable or not.) He waited with us until the police showed up. I took a few pictures of my Tracker to pass the time.

Eventually, an OPP officer on a motorcycle showed up and together we looked at the damage and reviewed what happened. I filled out a statement for him and he took various notes. Because it looks like the damage is less than $1000, it’s not a reportable accident.

After determining that the Tracker was drivable, we continued on to Ottawa, taking the backroads rather than the 416. If something was wrong, I wanted it to go wrong at 70 km/h rather than 100 km/h!

I dropped Kathy off at home and headed home myself. I took a closer look at things in the parking garage and it looks like there’s another piece of moulding that’s damaged along with some scratches and a small dent in one of the side panels.

All in all, we were very lucky. It could have gone much worse. The deer could have been a little faster, meaning we would have hit it more head on; we could have gone down the embankment into the ditch; we could have flipped or someone could have hit us.

I think I’m going to get some custom vinyl decals of deer heads made for my Tracker so I can keep track of them like fighter planes do.