Frankly, my deer, they’re all on my watch list

My wife and I recently completed a six-hour defensive driving course. 

It was a delightful way to start the month. I can’t wait for my root canal next week.

But we saved almost $200 on our car insurance premium by taking the online course and passing a multiple-choice test. 

There was a short quiz at the end of each of the 10 chapters, then a “final” exam with 25 questions. I managed to get all of them correct. Delinda got 24. I’m the valedictorian at our house.  

The test was not mandatory. We are both safe drivers. We don’t speed or run stop signs. No school zone infractions. We haven’t been at fault in any accident. My lone crime was a parking ticket downtown last December.

A section of the course covered animal hazards. This hit home, no pun intended.

I don’t keep a roadkill scorebook, but I have run over a few dogs and a couple of cats. The flight path of several birds has collided with my windshield. I’ve lost count of how many squirrels, possum, turtles, field mice, raccoons and armadillas I’ve flattened. 

I once smacked a skunk on the outskirts of Shady Dale. Fortunately, its final act wasn’t spraying the underbelly of the car. A co-worker once hit an escaped cow in Crawford County. That did not end well for his car … or the cow. (No it wasn’t Macon Burger Week.)

According to the most recent data from State Farm Insurance, a motorist in Georgia has a 1 in 109 chance of being involved in an animal-related accident. Our state ranks No. 9 nationally in animal collisions, and deer are at the top of the list. 

There are between 1.5 and 2.1 million car-deer collisions in the U.S. annually, with an estimated 150-200 deaths, thousands of injuries and more than $1 billion in vehicle damage.  

I have spent the majority of my adult driving life traveling the back roads of Middle and South Georgia. I have dodged deer in Dodge County. I have watched them leap in my path from Monticello to Montezuma. They have taunted me in my own suburban neighborhood. 

Once upon a time, on a winter night north of Cochran, I crossed a bridge and came face to face with a buck. Stand down, buckeroo. Don’t flinch. Share the road, big boy.

I once rounded a curve in broad daylight to witness a terrible car-deer collision on Greene Settlement Road in Jones County. Another time, I counted more than two dozen deer like a silent army on the side of the road while driving back from a Georgia football game late at night.

That trip was so intense I was braking for mailboxes. I have experienced many other Bambi-induced headaches.

It’s breeding season, and hunters have them on the move. Fall is the peak three months for deer migration. According to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, the first two weeks of November are the most high-risk stretch of deer accidents on the calendar.

I once invested in a pair of deer whistles and mounted them on my front bumper. At speeds of 35 mph or more, the wind-activated whistles are supposed to produce a high frequency sound unnerving to deer.

Although there is limited scientific evidence that deer whistles are anything more than glorified bumper ornaments, I tried them anyway.  When people asked if they worked, I would shrug and say I hadn’t hit one yet. I never replaced the last pair after they broke off going through a car wash.

The only time I have regretted not having them was on October 25, 2005. That was 20 years ago this fall. The law of averages finally caught up with me. After decades of batting .000 against them, my luck ran out.

It was the week of the 25th anniversary of one of the most famous plays in Georgia football history – the Buck Belue-to-Lindsay Scott touchdown pass to beat Florida in 1980, opening the door for a national championship.

I had driven to Valdosta to interview the Georgia quarterback’s parents, Ben and Sandra Belue. Buck was born in Macon, and his dad had named him Buck in honor of Coach Selby Buck, who had been Ben’s father figure at old Lanier High School.

It was dusk. I was less than a mile from home. I was listening to a replay of the Neal Boortz Show on the radio. Suddenly, a deer darted out of nowhere on a lonely stretch of road. I had no time to react. The animal was killed instantly. At least, she did not suffer. 

The irony was not lost on me. I hit a doe coming home from doing an interview about a Buck.

Although the crash damaged the front of my van, it was not significant enough to meet the deductible on my insurance. 

I patched the front bumper with duct tape. My kids were embarrassed about that, but those “bandages” served as a reminder. 

Be vigilant out there, especially this time of year. 

Sometimes you hit a deer. Sometimes a deer hits you.

Send your deer stories to Ed Grisamore at gris@maconmelody.com