Hitting deer was sobering experience ~ February 26, 1998

David Heiller

Cindy and I drove home from book club on Monday night, February 9, just like we always do. Cruising along at about 55 miles an hour. Talking a little, listening to the radio.

Just after we crossed the Kettle River Bridge on County Road 46, a deer ran in front of the car. One second the road was clear, and the next our headlights were full of a frightened, wild animal.

Cindy screamed. I hollered. I swerved to the right. All in a split second. The deer’s head hit the left headlight of the car. Its body smashed into the left front side of the car, and spun away into the night.

I fought for control of the car. We were in snow on the shoulder of the road. For a second I thought we’d go in the ditch, but I was able to pull the Taurus back onto the road.

I stopped the car. Cindy and I both sat there in a state of shock. But we were OK. No one was hurt.

‘I took the flashlight out of the glove compartment and got out of the car. I checked it over. The headlight was broken. The side had a big dent. The windshield was cracked.

I walked back where we had hit the deer. It was a big doe. She lay in the other lane, her eyes still bright, but the life gone from her body. She must have died instantly.

I dragged the deer onto the shoulder of the road. We drove home. Cindy called DNR game warden Curt Rossow in Willow River, and left a message on his answering machine.

I woke up my 14-year-old son, Noah, and told him what had happened. I needed his help with the deer.

After Noah dressed, we drove back to the deer in my truck. Twο teenagers pulled up as we were getting ready to lift the deer into the back of the truck. I recognized them as Joe Gibson and Matt Peterson.

Joe said he had stopped to see if we needed help. He thought the truck might have been damaged. I told them we had hit it with the car, I felt like a criminal, standing next to the deer late at night. I was worried that someone might think we had poached it.

We took the deer home. Since we hadn’t heard from Curt, I decided to go ahead and gut and skin the deer. I didn’t want to waste the meat. We hung it in the pole barn from the same hook that Noah’s deer had hung from two months earlier during hunting season. It seemed strange having another one there in the middle of February.

Sometimes road-killed deer are badly bruised, and a lot of the meat is unusable. But this one seemed to have barely a bad spot on it. It must have died from a broken neck.

The next day we drove the car to Alberg Auto Body in Sturgeon Lake. I called the insurance company. They received an estimate of $2,300 from Alberg to fix the car.

On Tuesday night, I saw Curt Rossow at the Willow River School Board meeting. I asked him about the deer. He told me I could have it, and that I did the right thing by going ahead and using it. He said he would send me a permit for it.

On Wednesday, February 11, the insurance company gave the go-ahead to me to  fix the car. Luckily the car had collision insurance, so we would only have to pay the deductible. If we had hit it with either other two vehicles, we would have had to pay for all of the repairs.

I was busy with work and a fishing trip the deer hung for a week in the pole barn. It was perfect weather for that, with temperatures in the 20s and 30s.

When I got home from the fishing trip, I quartered the deer with a saw, then Cindy and I cut it up. Cindy canned 17 ½ pints of meat. The rest went into the freezer as steaks, grind meat.

If we hit another deer, we are going to give it to Curt, who can give it to someone else. It’s a lot of work processing a deer. We do not need any more deer meat, especially if it means hitting one with a car.

We picked up the car at Alberg’s on February 20. They had it fixed in nine days. It smells of fresh paint, and looked brand new

I feel bad that the deer was killed. It’s a sickening feeling, hitting an animal, large or small, with a car.

Someone told me once that sometimes it’s unavoidable hitting a deer. I won’t argue that. I’ve had a lot of close calls with deer over the years. We do a lot of driving. But there was no way I could have missed that deer on February 9.

We were lucky. The accident could have been much worse. If we had hit it head on the car would have been badly damaged. We could have been hurt too.