Slow down, drive defensively, save money, fuel & a deer's life

A tag is needed to keep a car-killed deer.

A buddy called today, and his spring deer report wasn't good. He was shocked by the carnage on Michigan's highways.

He'd driven from near Cadillac down highway M-115 to US-10, and then east to Bay City, down I-75 to Flint and back, all in one day. What he saw over 300 round-trip miles was sad.

He saw deer. Dead dead. Lots and lots of dead deer & other animals.

"There were dead animals everywhere," he said. "Leaving Cadillac, I began counting carcasses and major bloody pieces of pavement where deer and other critters had been hit. There were an incredible number of flattened deer.

"I saw 67 dead deer, coons, possums, and other critters between Cadillac and the US-10 expressway. Many were nothing but bloody lumps of hair and large blood stains. Some deer were hit, and bounced off to the side of the road, and I'd wager there were more deer and other animals that I didn't see."

He said it was equally bad between the M-115 and the US-10 freeway junction, and I-75 at Bay City. He counted well over 60 deer in that stretch. Some were so destroyed by an impact with an 18-wheeler and other vehicles as to be near unrecognizable except for their size.

"There were deer in the median, dead deer on the shoulders, and in two or three places I had to swerve to avoid dead deer in the road. It seems such a tragic waste, but no one appears to be slowing down.

And therein is the problem. The past several nights have been reasonably warm, and deer come up to graze on grasses and weeds growing alongside the highways. People, in their perpetual rush to go somewhere and get there fast, slam into them without much warning.

Most car-deer crashes come without any warning. One must stay alert.

Car-killed deer often litter road-sides.

A friend that lives in the north delivers newspapers after midnight, seven days a week. He killed three deer during the winter months, and had several near misses. Speed in this case was not the cause. The deer often run down driveways in the dark, and bang into his car.

Normally, the deer die in this uneven contest an easily moved animal being hit by a speeding vehicle. Occasionally, deer hurtle up over the hood and through the front windshield. Every year thousands of car-deer accidents occur, and in some cases, humans get injured or killed in these wrecks.

Spring months are almost as deadly as the autumn when rut-crazed deer cross roads without stopping. There are some basic rules for safe driving if only people will heed this advice.

Gas is too costly to waste by driving fast, and speed kills deer & some people.

• Slow down. Besides saving gasoline, which when last I looked, was $4.15 per gallon, and increasing the miles-per-gallon ratio, also would allow more braking time if a deer jumps in front of the vehicle.
• Those "deer crossing" signs erected along state highways serve a greater purpose than as road ornaments to amuse bored drivers. They are placed in certain locations because it is a well-used deer crossing site. Such areas funnel deer movements, and the animals can quickly jump out in front of a vehicle without warning.
• Newly growing grasses and weeds attract feeding deer. Areas where salt has been used also attract deer to road edges. Does, soon to drop this year's fawns, frequent roadsides at night.
• Speed Kills means more than running head-on into another vehicle. Too much speed, and a collision with a deer, is due cause for many accidents and injuries every year. In some cases, the vehicle doesn't have to hit the deer. The driver swerves, misses the animal, and loses control, rolls over, hits a tree or nose-dives into a ditch. All can be hazardous to your health.
• Driving defensively applies as much to deer as it does to watching for stupid drivers who drive too fast, swerve in and out of traffic, and who pay little attention to traffic and road signs. To drive defensively in deer country (which now covers the entire state including the Detroit area) means slowing down, using caution, looking ahead and to both sides of the road for deer eyes that are reflected in the headlights. If one deer crosses the road in front of you, slow down because there often are others coming behind, and beware of the deer that stands transfixed in the headlights. That deer is confused, and may run in any direction.
• Dawn and dusk are key times for high deer movement. However, many deer are hit in broad daylight as well. The defensive driving suggestion applies to daylight hours as well as during the evening.
• Some drivers believe in those little deer whistles that mount on the vehicle's grille. Do they work? It depends on who you talk to, but I don't use them but that doesn't mean you shouldn't.

Follow these tips when driving in deer country.

Car-deer accidents are a fact of life in this and many other states with high deer numbers. Not only is killing the deer a terrible waste (except for feeding crows, eagles and other scavengers), it is very costly. Car insurance rates are high enough without smashing up a vehicle by hitting a deer.

Highway carnage is a problem every year when one or two tons of vehicle meets 100 or more pounds of deer. The impact is predictable in most cases: the deer dies, the vehicle gets busted up, insurance companies whine and raise their rates, and if humans are lucky, no one gets injured or dies in the crash.

Slow down and take it easy in deer country. The life you save may be your own.

Memorable turkey blunders

Cathy Beutler with a dandy gobbler she shot while hunting with me.

"Keep your powder dry" was the motto in the 1700 and 1800s when muzzleloading hunters and frontiersmen roamed parts of North America. Those who failed to follow that sage advice often went hungry or had their hair lifted and cut off below the roots.

My list of hunting mistakes with game, especially turkeys, is endless. Years ago, while hunting in a heavy rain with a muzzleloader, I forgot to cover the muzzle. I set my front-loader against a tree with the powder and shot charge in the barrel but the shotgun wasn't primed.

I set out my decoy, retreated to my chosen spot, and primed the muzzleloading shotgun. A large number of gobblers and hens came, and milled around in a tight circle near the decoy, and I couldn't shoot. They eventually left, and I called again.

Good thing a desperado wasn’t trying to take my money.

A lone gobbler a half-mile away answered, and I sweet talked him with a soft yelp and some hen jabber with a push-pull call. He came running up. I saw him first at 30 yards, and then he dropped into a little dip in the ground, and popped up again at 20 yards and stopped. The shotgun was up, and when I pulled the trigger, the primer went off with a pop. The powder did not.

I'd forgotten to put a balloon or anything else over the muzzle to keep the powder dry. The Pyrodex was a black semi-liquid. It was a lesson well learned and never forgotten.

I took a guy out one day, late in the season, and spotted a jake 150 yards away. This guy wanted to shoot a gobbler, and beard length didn't matter. It took 30 minutes to bring the jake within 80 yards, and the guy was aiming at the bird.

"He's too far away," I whispered. "Don't shoot yet. Let him get to within 35 yards." He said the bird was only 35 yards away, aimed and shot.

The young gobbler hauled tail feathers into the woods. The man maintained the bird was only 35 yards away until I asked him to give me a prominent landmark where the bird had been standing. He said the bird was right near that little bush that stood three feet high.

That bush was much farther away than he thought. He shouldn’t have shot.

He was urged to pace it off in approximately 36-inch steps as I walked beside him counting the paces. I got 80 steps and he got 77 steps, and then he realized the mistake he had made. It was the last gobbler we saw that day.

This didn't happen to me but to a friend. He knew, within 50 yards of where a gobbler had roosted the night before. He snuck in the next morning, and stopped well short of the roosting area to wait for the first gobbles of the morning. The sun came up and all was silent.

He gave a very soft tree yelp or two but nothing responded. He stuck with it, and finally with a great deal of impatience, he uncorked a loud yelp on his box call and something happened. A big gobbler bailed out of the tree he was sitting under, and it flew 75 yards, hit the ground a'runnin', and that was it. He had set up directly under the gobbler and missed his big chance.

The author carries a nice longbeard out od the woods to his car.

Two friends, on their first gobbler hunt, went looking before dusk and spotted several dark birds on the ground. Just before dark they flew up into a tree. These guys knew about roosting birds and were happy.

They returned the next morning well before dawn, set up about 100 yards away, and waited for the day to wake up. Tweety birds tweeted, crows cawed, and they yelped on box calls. They could see several dark forms in the trees, and called again and again.

A big surprise was in store for those two turkey hunters.

Eventually the birds flew down, and went to where the hunters had seen them the previous night. No amount of calling seemed to work, so one of them slowly eased his binoculars from his backpack, and with infinite slowness, eased them up to his face and studied the birds.

The birds they had roosted the night before were not real turkeys. They were turkey vultures, and they were feeding on carrion on the ground. They admitted it, and took their share of ribbing.

There is only one sure thing when turkey hunting. Murphy's Law always applies, and simply stated: If anything can go wrong, it will. Keep Mr. Murphy in mind, try to outguess him, and sometimes the gobblers react as you plan and the hunt is a success.

Of course, when we mess up, it's still good for a laugh even when we don't feel much like laughing at our silly mistakes. Trust me on this: if you hunt wild turkeys long enough, you too will make a blunder or two.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors