Deer strike.

[flynrider]

Anyone have any strategies for minimizing risk?

Those "deer whistles" have pretty much been discredited. Now, when I'm on the job, running a locomotive...and we have deer in the track (I don't like to hit them for several reasons) there are things I've found I can do. The air horn...is just music to their ears. It seems to soothe them...really. But putting on the BELL...that BANG! BANG! BANG! of the clapper whacking the bell...that raises alarm to them.

The headlight, just freezes them. Just like jacking deer with a spotlight. So...put the bell ON, and turn the lights OFF...and they scurry away.

Now, there's no headlight switch on a motorcycle...and anyway, you don't have that kind of advance time, to turn it off. When deer are busiest, you need a light even in a car. But...one thing I've done when I HAD to run, in dawn or dusk, through high-risk areas, when there are no homes or police about...is continuously toot the horn.

Does it help? Do rain dances end droughts? Who knows?

I vaguely remember reading of someone who claimed to have put an MP3 look of a dog barking, and playing it on a speaker on the roof of his truck when going through deer country. Claimed it had them running. I'm dubious...but I'll consider anything.

I think one of the reasons I encountered Bambi on that road at 10 AM (usually later than deer hang out in the open) was that there was virtually no traffic on the road. That, coupled with my extremely quiet approach around a hard curve with a stock exhaust seems to have set me up.

My strategy for the rest of the trip (particularly on low traffic roads) was to keep a vehicle or two in front of me in places where leaping deer would be most likely.