Along with that...........

.....do Deer Whistles actually work?? (getting the deer's attention)

 

.....do Deer Whistles actually work?? (getting the deer's attention)

See http://www.ibmwr.org/otech/deerw.html

 

I agree with rjsurfer. You never know where the big rat will go. Scrubbing off as much speed as possible seems the best action. I would favor angling toward the rear if practical as it takes longer for it to back up or turn around.

 

Deer can kill you pretty easily so while you see lots of utubes with guys cutting them in half etc. and walking away without a scratch they were just lucky. Deer will often jump at the last minute and if your timing is right it will be right in your face.
Best to restrict your riding in deer country to avoid early morning and early evening as well as night time because thats when they are most active. The rest of the time you should never let your guard down and make it a point to be scanning the sides of roads and ditches. If I've got 4 lanes or a passing lane not being used then I like to ride as close to the center of the road as I can to give me the most room to maneuver in areas of high deer population. In the end if you spot a deer on the roadside you should slow right down because there is no way to anticipate which way they will go and how they will get there.

 

My biggest problem is deer. I see more deer on my commute than cars. I have to go through 35 miles of farmland and nat'l forest. The only thing I can think of is braking as best you can and maybe right at the end a swerve to the posterior of the beast. A friend of a friend recently hit one at 70+ mph. It cut the deer in half. He remained on the motorcycle (what was left of it). I'm not sure of those deer whistles work. I've heard people swear by them, but there's now way to substantiate if they truly work. The best solution is hunting.

 

I'm not sure of those deer whistles work. I've heard people swear by them, but there's now way to substantiate if they truly work.

Read this:

http://www.homeproductsnmore.net/deer-whistles/DeerWhistlesFinalReportModocCounty.pdf

 

I live in a high deer density area. When you see a deer ahead beside the road brake as if they are in the road because they could take a single leap and end up in your path.

But deer often respond to your horn. Next time you see a deer try your horn. You'll be pleasantly surprised.

The real danger comes from deer we don't see. They can seemly come from nowhere. They can end up straddling your fuel tank. They can run into you from the front or from the side. My solution to this is avoid riding at night. Seriously. I now seldom ride at night because of the danger of deer.

 

This is a great thread, as it's a subject that impacts (no pun intended - okay, maybe a little) on our daily riding, whether we're talking about deer, cars, dogs, or pedestrians, or anything else that foolishly decides to get in the way.

From my chair, slowing down is the single best thing to do. Destroyed front ends, fairings, and split-in-half deer come from the force at impact. If a deer is travelling perpendicular to your direction of travel, then all of that force comes from your mass and velocity.

If (big if) you see a deer coming your way, get on the brakes. Collision avoidance steering is a lovely thought, but in my limited experience with deer, isn't in the cards. Hitting the big softish side of a deer at highway speed will be a significantly different experience than hitting it at parking lot speed; the latter might involve some broken plastic and "Holy Shit!"s.

My closest freaky deer experience came on my road bike (bicycle) on a cottage country two-lane highway (169 between Gravenhurst and Bala). Car traffic was moderate. The drop-offs on either side of the road were about five meters down into ditches and the area is forested beyond that. I was pedalling at a goodly pace up around a curve, some cars had gone by, and I sensed rather than saw the deer jump across in front of me. The deer came up from the bottom of the ditch at the right side of the road and I'm pretty sure she never landed on the pavement, rather she went right over the road and down into the other ditch. I suspect she didn't pay much attention to me, being much quieter than the cars except for my pedalling grunts. She was so close I felt the fur brush past my face as she went over.

 

AFAIK, deer whistles don't work. And even if they did get the deer's attention, deer are so unpredictable that there's no guarantee the whistles wouldn't just attract them.

I'm with wolf and the others. When I see a deer I slow down as much as possible before I get to them. I've even stopped on the road and blown the horn at them, that usually gets them to run off.

Had a weird deer experience in Idaho last year. Came around a corner on a heavily forested section in the early morning. Was on high bambi alert anyway. There was a doe laying in the middle of the highway, right on the centerline, looked exactly like she was just nesting in the forest. Legs curled up under her, head semi-upright, eyes open. Absolutely no blood. I'm sure she was dead, but it looked for all the world as if she was just ready to get up.

 

...I'm almost thinking just slow down (emergency braking) as much as you can and hold your course might not be a better course of action, and of course prey.

The reason I say that is, most of the roads I travel on that I have deer encounters with, always have steep drop offs on the sides and of course plenty of trees. I would rather hit a deer head on because I know, at speed with full on brakes, it would take a miracle maneuver to avoid the critter, stay upright and get back on course.

What do you think?

Ron W.

I agree, braking hard in a straight line is probably the best strategy. No absolutes of course, but I think the impact with the deer is more likely to be survivable than running off the road into a rock or tree.

Hunting, we need more hunting.

 

I had a doe walk across the road in front of me so I slowed way down in case it made a stupid move. Then another one followed it and I had to brake hard. If you see one, watch out for companions. They are rarely alone unless they have antlers.

 

Definitely slow down as safely and and as soon as possible. If you see one doe by the side of the road there's likely more of them there. Bucks aren't as likely to move within a herd unless they're chasing some (white)tail.

 

pray and hopefully not prey

Deer crossings are highest dusk and dawn especially when close to water.

What you can do:

Slow down
practice "panic" stops
practice evasive manuvers (countersteering, weight transitions, slow is smooth and smooth is fast)
avoid target fixation...look where you want to go
know your switchgear by muscle memory (horn and headlight to get the deers attention)
and Slow down!

 

Having recently had a close encounter of the deer kind I have to agree with what most have said here:

SLOW THE HELL DOWN ASAP!!!

About a month and a half ago I was riding on a semi-rural road north of Tampa Florida around 7pm on my Gold Wing with my wife riding behind me on her VTX 1300R. We were finishing up an excellent 12 hour day of riding and were about 4 miles from home.

As usual I was leading (better lighting than her VTX) and scanning the road as much as possible when I spotted a psycho doe on the right shoulder.

This doe ran into the road, back onto the shoulder and away from me, then back towards me. While this was happening I was hard on the brakes and alerted the wife over the CB calling "DEER DEER DEER" (surprised she didn't respond "what what what"

Anyway, I had been movin' around 55 or so and figure I had dropped it down to 30, maybe 20mph when the damned forest rat leapt out directly in front of me.

She impacted the right side of the fairing (got a good glimpse of the "deer in the headlights look" as I went :yikes: ) and the bike went down onto the right side. Thankfully the engineers that designed the GL1800 made HUGE engine and passenger crash guards 'cuz my legs nor arms ever hit the ground.

I slid a bit on the right side, then the bike caught and high sided - I think I left the bike at that point...not really sure.

End result was about $4200 in damages to the 'wing and one helmet that did it's job (LOVE THAT RF1000!!!)

I truely feel that the only reason I was not injured was the fact that as soon as I saw the deer I was HARD on the brakes and got slowed down as much as possible!!!:thumbup:

Previously I had worried about upsetting people behind me if I slowed too much. NOW, I don't give a rat's patootie what they think - I will come to a complete stop till the boogers are gone and out of my way!!

Six weeks later I still have minor shoulder stiffness when I wake up but it's gettin better.

Moral of this long-winded story - SLOW WAY THE *YADDA* down when ya see those critters. Better to have someone honk at ya than an ambulance wailing for ya!!!

Ride safe for me while I'm deployed!!

Dave in Doha, Qatar
June 5th I'm Americade-Bound!! WOOHOO!!!

 

I disagree with everyone that says deer are unpredictable, I'm not saying that they are 100% predictable or predictable at all when you encounter them

Deer are creatures of habit, they generally use the same travel corridors day in day out, probably the worse problem is that our state highway departments encourage them to hang out near roads & medians by planting healthy forage grasses & legumes

On one of my local roads that I travel regularly, I rarely if ever see deer randomly, they are always seen on the same general stretches of road at the same time of day/night

I guess what I'm sayin is that pay attention, at some point in your lifetime you will know where to expect them and where you are unlikely to see them

 

Excellent advice here but I'd like to add something................when you have riders behind you make sure they know that if you see a deer you are going to slow down or come to a stop very quickly and instruct them leave enough room between AND stagger (don't ride straight behind you). It'd suck to slow or stop, successfully avoid a forest rat only to be ass packed by the person riding behind you. Also give some thought to whether or not you want to swerve after slowing down so quickly when someones behind you. They may not be able to slow down as quickly as you due to numerous reasons and may climb up your butt when you swerve in to their path of travel.

 

Like others have said, deer are unpredictable in there actions. I've seen'm bolt/stop and continue on, swap ends and go back the other way, and just freeze in place. When it's impossible to slow down enough to avoid intersecting their line, trying to evade them in an emergency situation is just a crap shoot.

In the best of the worst scenerios of going down, I'll take my chances sliding or tumbling straight down the road in my lane rather than chancing the rocks, road signs, trees, fences, telephone poles, etc that I'd likely encounter off road. Where I ride, there's just no good spot to run off the road.

So I agree with everyone who says to hold a course that does not point you off road, and scrub speed as fast as possible.

 

I think we're saying their habits may be predictable but their reactions often produce unpredictable results. They tend to use the same paths every day at the same times relative to sun position but they may do anything when they become aware of the bike's presence. It's like they are hard wired to move unpredictably when threatened so that a predator can't tell which direction they will take or whether they will fight or flee. The idea that their locations and times are somewhat predictable is very helpful for those with deer in their neighborhoods.

 

I think it's actually the highway dept. fault, if they would quit posting those damn deer xing signs the deer would not try to cross.:furious:

 

Those signs are supposed to get the deer to cross there. The program to provide deer with stop signs and fluorescent vests and get them to volunteer to deer those areas at dusk and dawn is severely underfunded.

 

I regularly ride a 15 mile stretch of mountain road that probably has a couple road kill a night. When I am riding at dusk or later what has helped is kinda like slowing down, I wait for an escort of cars and get behind the motorcade.

 

Good idea about having "escort cars"

I WILL pull over on 2 laner's and let an ass hat tailing closely behind me, be the guinea pig.

Ron W.

 

The car escort theory doesn't always work. There's plenty of incidents where the deer ran in front of, or broadsided the following vehicles. We've had deer and other animals cross the road between us many times.

 

The only sure fire method is to stay on the couch, but I have yet to see a deer jump out into the middle of a caravan of cars, the front sure but the middle, not yet. (I have probably just condemned my next ride). I am describing the car line-up one runs into on mountain roads (speed limit is 55, one could easily do more, but lead car is gripped doing 45) where cars stack up, like cord wood, behind the hopelessly slow car (or HD). On busy Sunday nights these line ups can be over 50 cars deep. Out in the flatlands with multiple lanes in each direction I know its a different ballgame but I think it would still significantly cut down on the number of close calls to travel at the tail end of a pack of cars.

 

Back in 1994 I had a pregnant doe jump from an elevated position in someone's front yard right down into the road about 20 feet in front of my 1984 T-bird. I was going 40 MPH with Washington State Trooper riding my butt. I didn't even have time to hit the brakes before I plowed into her. Blew the whole front end off that car, punched the radiator, etc. $1800 damage. Didn't kill the deer, but broke three of her legs. The trooper (not a trained marksman) put three 9mm's into her head before she expired.

I didn't own motorcycles then, but if I'd been on a bike, I'd be dead.

Everyone out here where I live has deer collision stories. Right now, there are three dead ones in the ditch on the county road between my house and the main highway, that's a 3.5 mile stretch.

They tend to hang out on the INSIDE of corners for some reason, and will stand there until a vehicle gets about 50 - 100 feet away, then leap into the road. The problem is that your headlights blind them, and they panic, and head for the easiest escape route they can think if with their walnut-sized brains, and that escape route tends to be the open space of the road.

When riding in deer country, which is just about everywhere around here, I pay more attention to the sides of the road and I am always scanning the shoulders, ditches, berms, etc. Since I ride to work in the dark at 4:30 am, I'm almost certain that one will take me out some day.

The reference to them as "tall rats" is dead-on. They are nothing but pests and should be treated as such. I wish there was a federal statue allowing hunting them without permits, year-round, no bag limits. They should be hunted to extinction.

 

You must live North of Spokane. My in laws live in Chewelah. That whole area is lousy with deer. I damn near refuse to ride up there except between the hours of 10 AM and 3 PM, even then it is with great paranoia.

If you see one deer, aggressively scan for numbers 2, 3, and 4. They are there, trust me. Look well off the road. If you see one away from the road, SLOW DOWN! See above.

I hate deer. That is until they are securely ensconced in my Traegar Pellet grill at about 275 degrees and well seasoned!!!!

Dusty

 

deer on the

Fortunately I've not had an emergency encounter with a deer or moose. I've been threatened by wild turkeys and and domestic geese ... does that count?

I hope that my reaction will be to brake hard and keep traveling as straight as possible.
In the fall of 2008 I was at Seneca Rocks WV and worried constantly about a crash because each morning I'd see many freshly road kills along the roadside from night-time accidents.
But only a few days later, back near home in Ontario, I was driving along multiple lanes of very congested hwy#401 risking my life with semis and cagers. To put it all in proper perspective I rather "do it" with a deer than be in a multiple vehicle accident and be run over a dozen or so trucks.

So sharing the roads with deer is probably safer than sharing with cars and trucks.

 

ABS, just like American Express- "don't leave home without it". You should practice your emergency braking and swerving on a regular basis.

And for all the deer hunters out there. Please kill as many of these bastards as you can. It's ok with me if you use any means at your disposal. Dynamite, bazookas, LAWs rockets, arrows, rifles, pistols. Hell drop some big assed boulders on them if you like. If there's anything left, take the meat and give it to the hungry folks out there. :yesnod:

 

I have always wondered about what to do when I see deer ahead and even worse, if they should start to bolt in front of me.

I was coming down cypress at full speed when I spotted some deer by the side of the road at the exit of a curve I was in. I straightened the bike and got hard on the brakes. one ran across my path, the other started running next to me for a while before swerving away and finally jumping across my path. I don't think that pre-emptive swerving would have helped me any.
the quick loss of speed however was of great help. if you're going the same speed or slower as the deer you have a lot more time to react, and so do they. deer can change direction a lot quicker than motorcycles, but motorcycles stop faster.

- Slow way down. engage the abs on both wheels (if you have it) until you're at a speed where dropping the bike won't hurt you or it.

- stay predictable to the deer; they're not going to try to crash into you, so stay on your course as much as possible.

- swerve only as a last resort and at the absolute last split-second, as any abrupt change in your direction will cause the deer to react (it's in predator-avoidance mode).

I think that the most important thing to remember is that the deer is not trying to attack you. you're an alien object in its environment and it will try to get away from you.

deer is prey, it has very good peripheral vision, and if you swerve too much or accelerate, it will notice and feel threatened by this and fall back on instinctive prey behaviour:
- it will run erratically to foil any pounce type of attack
- it will try to flock with other deer (be near them, or run in the same direction) so as not to stand out to a predator. Make sure to know where the rest of them are and what direction they're running in.

deer whistles don't work, except to make fools feel secure.

I don't think deer will freeze in front of bikes as much as in front of cars. I'm no expert on animal thinking, but i think the deer believes the car's headlights are two separate objects and that if it stays perfectly still, one will pass on each side of it. If this were true, then the deer would freeze on one side or the other of a motorcycle's path. any movement of the m/c might cause the deer to rethink its strategy though, so the only advice i'll offer with confidence is to slow down and be predictable/non-threatening.

 

- stay predictable to the deer; they're not going to try to crash into you, so stay on your course as much as possible.

- swerve only as a last resort and at the absolute last split-second, as any abrupt change in your direction will cause the deer to react (it's in predator-avoidance mode).

Although I agree with staying the course (pointed down the road), they will definately crash into you. I personaly know 2 riders who have been broadsided by deer, and several cage drivers (yes, they run into the sides of moving cars too). One of them was a co-workers wife who was riding pillion, it mangled her right leg badly. They were on a cruiser and did not go down. The other guy was on his fjr and he did not go down.

I disagree with last second swerving. Of all the people I've known and heard of that didn't crash when they hit a deer, the impact occured while straight up vertical and heading straight down the road(see above). Any lean during impact will most likely put you on the road and/or in the ditch.

When a deer gets spooked, there is no telling what it's going to do. I've hunted them long enough to know this. I've watched them do things in the woods that I wouldn't tell anyone about, especialy a non hunter. On the road, you have no control over IF they spook or not.

 

I had 2 deer whistles mounted on my 04 FJR when a small mule deer leaped directly in front of me in 2008. We were travelling at the speed limit of 70 mph and by some miracle hit that deer perfectly behind her rib cage splitting her into two halves and were able to keep the bike upright. She killed that bike too - $11,000 repair estimate including all of the plastic from the headlights south - but we were able to ride it 60 miles back home that evening.

I don't for a minute disagree with all of the advice above recommending hard braking/scrubbing off speed if you see deer beside the road which may become a hazard. They are totally unpredictable and irrational creatures.

But in the event that one leaps into your immediate path I believe that either emergency braking or emergency swerving may be potentially fatal to you. Had my suspension collapsed 10 or 12 inches due to emergency braking, that little doe would probably have been shunted over the nose of my bike, through the windshield and into me and my wife. It is quite possible that one or both of us would have been split open rather than that deer - despite ATGATT.

I have seen and read a lot of reports of people attempting last-second emergency swerves, resulting in a glancing blow off the animal which sends the bike down, or off the road altogether.

FWIW, in those cases allowing you only enough reaction time to say "WTF" I believe a steady throttle, no braking, and no steering to be your best chance of survival. If it's a moose in your path - different deal. But I don't believe they move quite so quickly and unpredictably either... Just my $.02

Dave

 

Had my suspension collapsed 10 or 12 inches due to emergency braking

That's alot of travel for an FJR. Must be a special off road edition.:thumbup: