Deer near dusk... be careful!

[Chuck78]

Well today I put a silencer that I made in my muffler and went for a 370 mile ride, about 260 miles of twisties. I've seen many many deer while riding in the past few years, and they all seemed to be scared away from my aggressive GS750 camshafts amplified through the free flowing baffle that I made (very loud).

Well not the case with this volume reducing baffle insert I made. 20 miles of the best southeast ohio twisties left to go out of around 260 miles, 4:40pm (40 minutes before sunset, got off to a later start in the AM than I planned due to excessive winds), I am cruising along a steep hillside around a curve and into a straight at 47-58mph somewhere, and I see a quick flash of a deer bolting like lightning up the hill and into the road in front of me! I don't know if I even had time to grab the brakes, it happened so fast. the deer and I t-boned each other really hard, but somehow I was very fortunate to keep the bike upright and not steer onto the ditch on the uphill side of the hill climb to my right. Wow. I am LUCKY. Bike was running poorly as I pulled over to a stop. My knee was/is throbbing. Headlight was demolished with 20 minutes of the best of the twisties on OH-550 left to go, and then 1 hour 10 minutes on the highway home in the dark...

The deer took out my headlight lens/bulb/bucket, turn signal and bracket, demolished my speedometer and that side of the housing, broke my #1 plug wire resistor cap and bent the top of the spark plug, caused an oil leak on my stator cover gasket, and tried it's hand at bodywork to make my bike look like a cafe racer with knee dents, using my knee as the body dolly and it's head as the hammer to give me a real nifty knee dent in the left side of my almost perfect tank... doh! that was the only thing I was really sad about other than my knee, waiting 2 hours for the highway patrol, and going home with no headlights on a AAA flatbed.

I was always the one to tell my friends "watch out for deer, ESPECIALLY starting 1 hour before sunset. All the other 40 deer I've seen this year just looked at me or ran away out of shock or their ears being shocked from the loud pipe on my bike, but with a quieter muffler and during "rut" or whatever deer hunters call deer mating season, this guy just bolted out across the road full speed on a steep uphill sprint with very little time for me to react... I think I had about 10 feet at 50-ish mph to react, which basically left me doomed to collide.

While waiting for the state troopers (AAA said "deer? oh we can't touch your vehicle until you've filed a report with OSP"), after the sun set, I watched about half of the locals cruising by in their cars at 35-45 mph, probably because they know there is a huge deer population in the area...



My headlight was awesome, a T-5 replaceable halogen bulb lens, it was sooooo bright, I loved it. It was laying next to an 81 GS650GZ in the junkyard. That thing was the best light of all the bikes I;ve ever road tripped wtih. Now to track down another... Also I now have motivation to do that custom gauge face project on these GS400X dual pod gauges I'm reconditioning for the beast! And also time to install those EMGO headlight brackets that I loved the look of.

BE CAREFUL!!!!

[cowboyup3371]

Glad to hear you made it home though.

[chuck hahn]

They are in the rut now and chasing forest whores all times of the day..not just dawn and dusk...So be careful ALL THE TIME in the fall!!!

[Eli69]

we hates 'em. hooved devils. anti-biker missiles. at least three guys i know have hit them with bikes. my kid has hit 3 deer himself.

don't get me started... they cause millions of $ damage to vehicles and people every year yet the hunting folk say they should be protected. believe me there are plenty.

[Chuck78]

Well where the needle is stuck is approximately how fast I was going when the deer and I had an unfortunate run-in. I thought about 47-50, but who knows, that road was an absolute blast from OH-555 to Athens,Ohio.

Southeast Ohio has some amazing twisties to ride, but the deer... wow I am lucky.

[Roland5color]

Your very lucky. I hit a small dog and went down hard. Had to have my ACL replaced. The fact that you didn't go down is amazing. If I were you I would go buy a lottery ticket before it wears off. Sucks about the bike but you can replace the parts and be back on the road in no time.

[Chuck78]

my knee is swollen quite a bit and hurting a lot today, but not as bad as the first 10 minutes after the accident. The timing of the accident was perfect because if I was going just 1-2mph slower, I would have just T-boned the deer and probably gone over the bars. It clipped right into the side of my front end just in the nick of time to spin the deer around in the road instead of me being on top of the deer going over the bars! let me reiterate that I am very very very lucky!

I thought my leg gouged by the deer but now I'm thinking that it was from the petcock upon the impact of the deer's head into my knee.

my spark plug top is bent and the resistor cap smashed up, and there is deer fur jammed into the rubber seal/cover on the end of the cap around the plug wire! also a bunch of deer fur lodged around the headlight bezel screws. I am so lucky. amazing to think that I had a deer right in my lap at extreme speed and I made it through with just swollen up kneecap.

[Eli69]

when my brother hit a deer it came right up on his lap. he basically rode out the crash on the deer, using it's festering corpse as a cushion. killed the sh!t out of it. broke his leg though.

glad ya made it.

[Gorminrider]

me too. Glad you came through at all,let alone looking around for parts! Good on you for turning a wreck into an opportunity to make the Bike better! True warrior spirit, there. But it's a bugger about your knee- that stuff can come back to haunt you when you get older.

not wanting to hijack your thread exactly but Do you really think the louder pipes made a difference? I mean there's lots of theories out there, and I wonder if getting their attention without other clues isn't as bad as any. Deer stop and think when they are puzzled. They don't seem run away until they get an idea where to go...often a bad one when there's a road nearby.
I have walked on highways quite a lot and just a quiet vehicle's rubber tires at 50mph can be heard for a long way. and don't plenty of loud trucks hit deer too? or not? ...I'd be interested in seeing some statistics that weren't selling something.
I wonder if the real issue isn't depth-perception by the deer unable to figure how close and exactly where the oncoming "monster" is.
When I am walking, they see my legs moving and that's all they need- but not true of wheels or just a headlight.If they have no depth perception, an oncoming thing just grows with no other clue- no moving branches,no moving legs...

[Chuck78]

I've seen dozens of deer just this year on my motorcycle , more than ever before, As I am riding a whole lot more on the back roads and in the hills this year. with my really unrestricted loud baffle or open exhaust, I never had a single deer run out in front of me. honestly they would look frightened as they were running away. A couple of them looked at me and even walked towards me as I slowed down. But this is the first one that actually bolted like lightning across the road in front of me, and on the very first long country ride with a quieter muffler baffle. I really do think there is a correlation, because the 1st generation GS 750 and 550 had really aggressive camshaft with long duration on the valve opening the timing. They sound very aggressive especially with an unrestricted exhaust. I can't ride my bike on the highway or long ride without ear plugs with the original baffle that I made for it.

from first hand experience, I definitely definitely would say that it seems as if all the tears were frightened and ran away from me with the old baffle that was quite loud. the fact that it is deer mating season definitely increased my chances of hitting one.

[Gorminrider]

There's a very good point in what you're saying (Beyond "if it works keep doin' it, man! " )You could be making the sound that triggers fear, like they do in movie theaters with the deep base to create tension...Harleys strive for this. and/or maybe the rythm in it too.
I heard an suv go by with deer-whistles while walking the hwy yesterday. Yes ,perhaps I'm not supposed to but I heard it's lower range at least...and it made me think of birds. it's been theorised that Birds make high-pitched contact calls because direction is harder to identify and I think the the distance of propagation is also less.

[Gorminrider]

It's a bit odd, but if there was a way to test it, something easily visible that moves on the bike still appeals to me as an idea. I wonder if flashing lights would also work? Do ambulances hit more deer?the siren confuses the result though.
The "waving machine" joke comes to mind too (unfortunately)

[1948man]

I T-boned one on May 24 and went down at about 55 mph. Killed it and totalled my Bandit. I was lucky, a bunch of road rash and a concussion. The wife swears the concussion has not resolved. I also hate them and find myself daydreaming of ways to trap them and eat them. i guess that's the concussion talking.

[Griffyn]

My brother hasn't ridden regularly since he was T-boned by a deer on his CB back in the early 90s. Middle of the day, rolling 10mph in slow traffic.

The first thing I did was get some of those 'deer whistles' and mounted them to my bike's front fender. I have never had trouble with the creatures, so I suppose the cheap plastic ones work fine.

[Gregory]

I just drove from DFW to Amarillo and back today. I saw at least 8 dead deer on the side of the road.