I just have to vent this morning I got up and I got a call that some one hit spike in velvet not even 2 miles from my house when I got there it was a nice litle buck that must have been hit by multiple cars beacause his antlers were smash just like the rest of his body I just had to say what a waste he was a nice deer.
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Do you mourn box turtles, terrapins, raccoons, skunks, possums, rabbits, squirrels, ad nauseum? Doubtful. Yet the box turtles are close to being endangered. Do you know how much YOUR personal car insurance goes up each year because of deer/car collisions? Trust me, you don't want to. The Insurance Institute for Highway safety reported in 2004 that there were over 1.5 million vehicle/animal collisions (92% of the total were listed as vehicle/deer collisions) that cost automobile insurance companies $1.5 BILLION and at a human cost of 350 people.
Now had one of your loved ones been in that 350, would you be mourning this deer? And when I find my insurance rates raised again next year, as they have for the last 25 or so, I'm going to be less sympathetic.
of the deer or feeling bad because he couldn't get there for the fresh specimen for taxidermy purposes.
Like George says, thousands of deer are killed every year on our highways. It is a fact of life. Check the interstates. One tractor trailer can do everthing but package the meat!
Whatever you do don't ever travel Rt 52 in Ohio because it's like a whitetail graveyard. I don't like to see them dead along the side of the road Stanley, but as smart as deer are would think they would be smart enough not to run out in front of a car going 60 miles an hour!
smart deer come see me last night she came into my yard past the deer food ..then she walked up on to the front porch and over to where we had an opened bag or bird seed she was eating and my springer spaniel Hannah noticed and went off like a car alarm, the deer was so frightened that she tripped over her self and stumbled over her self to get away. It was really sad but at the same time kinda funny.... I have seen a deer get hit by a car and it was so extemely SAD the poor girl was running across a really busy street and and the person couldnt stop because there was way to many cars that he would hit,and she kinda flew up and landed on the side of the road, if there werent so many cars I would have asked my mom to pull over so I could get the cape. Kayla
It isn't just dumb luck that all these deer get hit. We have a feeding, bedding route right in front of our house where the deer cross back and forth every morning and evening. We sit in our livingroom and watch them. They'll be walking along casually, browsing and they'll hear a car, this is Ohio and you can hear a car coming from about a mile away. They start getting agitated and begin jumping back and forth and darting and just when the car gets to them they leap out onto the road in front of the car. They get so panic stricken. They don't understand the cars stay on the road (usually). We have seen many cars and trucks have to lock them up to avoid the collision.
You should see what a moose does to a car. I pass a sign every day with a moose kill count. 278 this last winter in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough(bigger than many states) Similiar count in other boroughs. I remember one winter, '85-'86 I think, when close to 600 were killed by trains. That's a lot of steaks...
I live in the Missouri Ozarks and every summer all the roads are full of road killed animals. What bothers me is more than a few of the smaller critters are actually hit intentionally. I don't know of anyone dumb enough to hit a deer on purpose but I have seen Idiots go out of their way to hit coons, squirrels, opossums and such and more than anything Box Turtles. I seen a guy swerve all the way accross the road to hit a turtle then I got myself in trouble because when he got to the C-store to buy more beer I beat the Sh-t out of him. I have lived here all my life and in 20 years of driving I have hit one deer that was unavoidable and although I have had numerous close calls I have never hit a smaller animal. I'm the hillbilly that stops in the road and moves the turtle to the side and when I see an animal on the side of the road I slow down just incase even if the people behind me don't like it. To me the saddest fact is that most of the drivers act like an animal on or close to the road is no more than an insignificant pot hole and they barrel on through at 70 mph with no concern at all about the animal unless it happens to be big enough to cause damage to their car. Now if that was a child on the side of the road I would bet or at least hope most of them would slow down and take every precaution to avoid hitting them but because it's an animal it doesn't matter. Don't confuse me as one of those PETA Idiots as I am an avid outdoorsman and hunting is a major part of my life but like most hunters I respect life and most of the road killed animals are a cruel waste that could have been avoided with a little common sense and precausion. After all how many times has a turtle ran out in front of your car.
I would say that you are one of my heros, I love animals and thats why I started trying taxidermy so that I could make dead animals look alive again. And that guy who ran over the box turtle DESERVED having the $#!% knocked out of him. about 5 years ago I was vistiting my Grandmother in West Virginia and I took a box turtle from the road and he went on the plane home with me to Texas, I still have that little guy to this day and it breaks my heart that an drunk (Expleteve Deleted)could do such a thing to one of Gods Creatures(*tear*).
Thank you for the compliment but I'm no hero, I'm just a person like you who has respect and love for animals. As a matter of fact I'm willing to bet that most of us who are Taxidermist have the same feelings about nature.
Way back in the '50's all our roads were dirt and to get to my grandmothers, we had to travel through about 10 miles of swamp on one of those sandy old, two rutted roads. When we rounded a bend one day, my Mom stopped the car to see what it was thrashing around int the road ahead. We got out of the old 40 Ford and walked up to a snapping turtle that must have weighed 30 to 40 pounds. Some scumbag had taken an axle and driven it right down through the carapace of this turtle and just driven off to let it die. I remember my Mom saying it must have taken a real brave soul to kill this hapless giant up on that dirt road and that's she'd have loved to have seen that person swimming in the swamp with this snapper in ITS habitat and seen how the fight might have gone. I'm nearly 60 and every time I see a turtle crossing the road, I think about that snapper that died horribly nearly 50 years ago. I stop myself, when I can do it safely.
I have always had alot of respect for you and I agree with your Mom I would have loved to see that. I bet the Man upstairs has a few paybacks in mind for people who do cruel things like that to animals.
but them opposums, coons, and skunks better take heed, nest robbing critters that they are. They kill more turkeys,ducks, and pheasants before they have a chance at life than I can stand to bear. I trap just to kill them on my property. The coons were so bad last year they ate a complete acre of field corn before the deer had a chance at it. With the fur prices down and very little interest in trapping or hunting to control the predator numbers I do everything legally possible to erradicate them.
A local friendly farmer with a little roadside stand had three acres of field corn that were just getting trashed by coons. He set some traps and killed 24 in two weeks. That's a major problem. He caught 5 the first night.
My neighbor was out in his backyard a couple of weeks ago and he had three coons by his pond trying to get some nesting mallards. He went out to shoo them away and the big boar chased him into his garage. It was on his heels right up to the inner door. He said he never ran so fast, lol. That really scared the crap out of him! He used his turkey gun to end that one's life. He's watching for the other ones.
It makes me wonder why PETA or Friends of Animals haven't tried to outlaw driving on roads with so many animals killed everyday.
ARE YOU FROM PENNSYLVANIA?
New York!