Close call last night!

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Redbone

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jun 19, 2007
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Location
Brimley in Michigan's U.P.
My brother and I were riding home on Lakeshore drive last night and the bugs were thick! The road runs along the shore then runs up the ridge then runs along the top for a while then back down next to Lake Superior shoreline. It does this in a couple places in about 28 miles through senic (read curvy) roadway in Hiawatha National Forest. This road is known for deer and we had seen a couple already. We have traveled this road and other deer heavy roads throughout our lives so we were alert.
We had just reached the top of the ridge with my brother in the right hand part of the lane (2 lane road) and I was about 20-25 feet behind him in the left hand part of the lane. We were doing about 60 mph when I saw this doe is in the ditch on our side of the road feeding. As our lights hit her she picks her head up and takes a step toward the road and stops. I close the throttle as soon as I see her trying to figure out what she is going to do. My brother must not have seen her as soon as I did and didn't immediatly slow down but by this time he is right on her but she is still 5-6 feet off the road. Well, she bolted forward at the last possible second and her head hits my brothers FZ1 headlight area with her head, neck then hits his handlebar, shoulder glances heavily off his knee but he still keeps the bike up with nary a wobble! I am hitting the brakes thinking the worst is going to happen but it dosen't! So this deer is spinning through the air and now that I have slowed down it is headed towards me! I let off the brake in a attempt to get past her but her head lightly clips my foot peg/ foot then either my r exhaust pipe or wheel, not sure which. It does nothing to uspset my balance so I turn to see what my brother is doing. He raises his hand to say he's ok and we get stopped in about 70 feet or so.
We both turn to look for the deer but it is up and running off into the woods! I have seen many deer get hit and get up and run off so I guess I wasn't too surprised. My brother was fine, said his knee hurt a little but could walk with no problem.
I check out the damage: Vmax - zero damage, FZ-1 - broken r headlight, but that is all we could see in a quick roadway inspection. We headed up the road a couple miles to a paved turn off and I pointed my headlight so we could inspect the damage more closely. The r headlight was broken, the plastic around it had cracked but not broken completely, and a small dent in the exhaust. That was it for damage! We smoked a couple of cigarettes and were still amazed what just happened.
Today, after better inspection of the FZ1 in the daylight we found one of the support bars for the fairing was bent pretty good too, The Vmax, a spot of blood on my footpeg, a tuft of hair and a whisker on my radiator side cover.
The motorcycle gods were looking out for us last night for sure!:punk:
 
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Re: Cose call last night!

Damn Redbone, that sure was a close one!

Glad to hear that nobody was hurt - except maybe the deer.

Mike
 
Re: Cose call last night!

I'm still amazed at how little damage the deer caused to his bike. I do know we were very lucky it wasn't a full broadside hit on the deer, that may have taken us both down.
 
Re: Cose call last night!

Glad you and your brother are OK ( Except fot the stains on the Max"s seat).
I have deer here also. A friend on another site has hit two and survived. I hate them.
Lew
 
Re: Cose call last night!

Go ahead and paint a small deer on your tank somewhere. You know, like when you shoot down a bogey....

I saw a pic on another forum where someone who was riding a Valkyrie smacked a deer good. The deer lost it's head. Lots of blood. The rider survived with minor injuries.
 
Re: Cose call last night!

WOW!!!!!!! Thank goodness neither of you were hurt!!!! Friggin deer, at least it aint a moose like some on this board can see on the roads at times.
 
Re: Cose call last night!

We have a newly signed section of road stating "Moose crossing area". We went through that section too on our ill fated trip home from Whitefish Point on Friday. We only have a few moose in our area, nothing like what you have across the border, that's for sure!
It was a 50 mile drive home and we had to stop to clean our shields from all the bugs! We also saw rabbits and a racoon. We normally see animals on our rides, so we are always on the look-out.
 
Re: Cose call last night!

Redbone,
Glad you are both all right. Last night me and the wife were coming home from an evening out. Just a couple miles from our place, this doe walks out of the woods and right in front of us. I had put that dumb assed stock seat back on the day before, just for a change from the corbin, bad move. The front portion is so short it alway scoochs me so far forward my long legs are bent too far, making my feet hang off the front of the pegs, under the brake lever. Sure as hell, when I need BIG application of both brakes my brake toe was under the lever, so it was full on front.. BIG dive, smoking front Metzler, lots of squiming. and my wife squshing my nuts up against the faux. 58 feet of front rubber left on the pavement. Way better than a big assed crash, missed the deer's ass by two feet, let off the brakes and went home. Time to start hunting again..see attached pic.
 

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I have mooses (or do you call em elk?) in my garden every fall. They like to eat apples and can get serusly aggressive, especally cows (females) with kids (whatever they are called in english). On my roads I have had to break both for moose and deer. However, never with my Harley with something best described as dragpipes.

This is one more reason to open up the pipes.
 
Damn! Nice patch of rubber you left there cool1442.
 
I have mooses (or do you call em elk?) in my garden every fall. They like to eat apples and can get serusly aggressive, especally cows (females) with kids (whatever they are called in english). On my roads I have had to break both for moose and deer. However, never with my Harley with something best described as drag pipes.

This is one more reason to open up the pipes.

A moose and an Elk are two different animals... You hit either on a bike and you're probably toast!:damn angry:
 
A moose and an Elk are two different animals... You hit either on a bike and you're probably toast!:damn angry:

I had to look this up in wikipedia:


Moose (Alces alces) is the North American name for the largest extant species in the deer family. The same animal is called the Elk in Europe. The name moose is derived from the Algonquian Eastern Abnaki name moz, meaning "he trims, shaves". Moose are distinguished by the palmate antlers of the males; other members of the family have antlers with a "twig-like" configuration. In North America, Elk refers to the second largest deer species, Cervus canadensis.

So Moose in North America and and Elk here in Sweden is the same thing, Elk in northen America is another thing. :punk:
 
I had to look this up in wikipedia:


Moose (Alces alces) is the North American name for the largest extant species in the deer family. The same animal is called the Elk in Europe. The name moose is derived from the Algonquian Eastern Abnaki name moz, meaning "he trims, shaves". Moose are distinguished by the palmate antlers of the males; other members of the family have antlers with a "twig-like" configuration. In North America, Elk refers to the second largest deer species, Cervus canadensis.

So Moose in North America and and Elk here in Sweden is the same thing, Elk in northen America is another thing. :punk:

Weird!

Yet good to know!
 
The riding gods were with me last night! I "gently" hit a deer last night.Cruising down the rd @55 AND "POOFF" theres a deer in front of me,jumped on the binders as the deer jumped over my front wheel and proceeded to kick my foot.when I got home I expected to see a scratched fender and this is what I found,Im sure there was more I took this after riding the rest of the way home...........THANK YOU RIDING GODS!
 

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The riding gods were with me last night! I "gently" hit a deer last night.Cruising down the rd @55 AND "POOFF" theres a deer in front of me,jumped on the binders as the deer jumped over my front wheel and proceeded to kick my foot.when I got home I expected to see a scratched fender and this is what I found,Im sure there was more I took this after riding the rest of the way home...........THANK YOU RIDING GODS!
Glad you're ok Rick, they do come out of nowhere don't they!
 
One of my friends is a Mi State U veterinary school grad. He's retired now, for the most part. He was a farm vet & worked for the MI Dept. of Natural Resources. One of his jobs has been doing research on the incidence of TB in the deer population of MI. Evidently, that is a real problem. He's a private pilot & we used to race hare & hounds, hare scrambles & enduros when I lived in MI. He tells me stories of the deer population & the problem of overpopulation, evidently MI has a real problem. One of my friends in the Kalamazoo/Battle Creek area totalled two family cars in < 1 month not too-long ago. The insurance agent must cringe when he/she gets a call from them now!

Glad you made-out OK, it could have been a tragedy. How many people saw the recent article on the mcy driver taken-out by a turkey? He died. Striking a blow for holiday victims everywhere! (the turkey) I don't think he was wearing a helmet (the wingless turkey). One of my brothers sent me the article.

One of my buddies who rides a CBR600 & works for GM recently bought a Lake Superior cabin from the estate of a deceased relative, not sure exactly where it is, but it's on the lake, a really rustic 3 season only cabin. When I was in college, I hitched from by East Lansing to Detroit, then to NMU in Marquette with 3 girls who went to college w/me, they wanted a guy to go w/them to get to visit their friends @ NMU, quite a trip. Three attractive Detroit-area women from the tony suburbs-Grosse Pointe, Birmingham. Best ride was a woman who picked us up in a two-seater new AMX, she said she couldn't pass-up 3 women hitching on the side of the road. It got us across the Mackinac Bridge. It all happened back when the Honda 750-4 was new.

Late last summer I visited my friend by Lake Orion. MI & in the morning he had a whole family of deer passing thru his backyard, which he said was a frequent occurence. Those 'deer whistles?' The ones you glue to your bumper? Supposed to be a deterrent? Don't waste your $.
 
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